Peter Dreier: Although no one can be sure how the current Supreme Court justices will vote, the American public has already made up its mind. Public support for gay marriage has hit a new high.
Forum: Getting Money Out of Politics – Tuesday, July 10th
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ACLU-SC Pasadena/Foothiils Chapter forum on Getting Money Out of Politics, with Mary Beth Fiedler of Move to Amend LA and Stephen Rohde, ACLU Southern California board member — Tuesday, July 10, 7 p.m., Pasadena
SB 1070: California Is Not Arizona
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Hector Villagra: Monday’s decision shows that Arizona is a failed experiment. Most of this law – most of it has been struck down. And the piece that remains is obviously on life support. And it’s just a matter of time before that dies the death that it deserves.
A New Conversation about Public Spending Needed
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Tanya Acker: People who can’t read, however, are very easy to divide and even easier to command. No demagoguery can save us from that.
Right-Wing Supreme Court Judges Join GOP War on Women
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Brent Budowsky: If the Supreme Court throws out the healthcare law as unconstitutional it will foment a powerful political backlash and escalate the judicial front in the war against women.
Bend Over America: Supreme Court OK’s Strip Searches
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Andy Love: Earlier this week, in a — say it with me — “5-4 decision,” the United States Supreme Court held that corrections officials may strip search people who are arrested for all offenses, including those not involving drugs or violence, and without any suspicion that they may be hiding contraband.
What We Can Learn from Surveys
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Steve Hochstadt: Once the enforced segregation of black and gay Americans into closets and ghettos was broken, discriminatory ideas have lost their persuasive power.
Controlling Women’s Bodies
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Ruth Rosen: What neither side wants to say is that this is a counter-reformation, an attempt to return women to the early 1960s, before birth control pill existed and the Supreme Court established the right of contraception in the United States.
Dead Under the “Custody and Care” of…
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Bruce Reilly: Christian Gomez was one of thousands in California struggling for things such as food, sunlight, and changes to the segregation policies — the everyday torture in America’s prisons.
How Will Local Communities Cope with the Sudden Influx of Newly Released Prisoners?
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ACLU Forum: The number of nonviolent, non-serious, non-sexual prisoners the San Gabriel Valley alone will receive through 2012 is between 1,000 and 1,500. What will be the impact on local communities and families of these (primarily) men?
Supreme Court Set to End Affirmative Action in U.S. Schools
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Randy Shaw: In accepting a Texas case of a white student challenging racial preferences, the United States Supreme Court is again set to reverse decades of court precedents and impose its own conservative agenda.
Calling Wealthy Democrats
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Brent Budowsky: Will men and women of the center and left fight as hard as those on the right for their vision of America, or will they surrender from the sidelines? If they surrender, I tremble for the future of the nation.
Why “Narrow” Prop 8 Decision is Good for Marriage Equality
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Paul Hogarth: While it would have been great to have the Court rule sexual orientation a “suspect class” and put Prop 8 under a strict scrutiny test, that would have made the decision far more likely to be reversed.
Who Is Sheldon Adelson and What Has Newt Promised Him?
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Robert Reich: Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact than Sheldon Adelson and his wife – all courtesy of the Supreme Court and its grotesque decisions that speech is money.
Ron Paul, Ross Perot
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Brent Budowsky: Whether the 2012 champion of patriotic capitalism against crony capitalism is Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, Obama or someone else, that candidate will win a standing ovation from a grateful nation rebelling against corruption, whether that leader is Democratic, Republican or Independent.
LA City Council Shames the U.S. Supreme Court
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On the issue of corporate personhood, is the Los Angeles City Council smarter than the United States Supreme Court? Incredibly, Yes! Last week in a huge victory for Angelenos, the Los Angeles City Council voted against the 2010 Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case that found that corporations were entitled to the same rights [...]
The GOP Is Occupied with Amending the Constitution
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Tina Dupuy: English author Samuel Johnson famously said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. For Republicans, talking about amending the Constitution is the first defense against having actual policy discussions.
Do State-Owned Banks Violate State Constitutional Provisions? No
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Ellen Brown: The recent interest in state-owned banks has provoked challenges on grounds that they violate state constitutional prohibitions against lending the credit of the state. The argument is not valid.
Occupy LA Backed Corporate Personhood Resolution as Eviction Loomed
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Michael R. Evans: On the night that Occupy Los Angeles protesters were given as a deadline to begin vacating the land around City Hall, their general assembly unanimously passed a resolution to end corporate personhood through constitutional amendment
Why We Must Occupy Democracy
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Robert Reich: The First Amendment is being stood on its head. Money speaks, and an unlimited amount of it can now be spent bribing and cajoling politicians. Yet peaceful assembly is viewed as a public nuisance and removed by force.
Occupiers Occupied: Hijacking the First Amendment
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Robert Reich: If Occupiers are expelled from specific geographic locations the Occupier movement can shift to broad-based organizing around the simple idea at the core of the movement: It’s time to occupy our democracy.
The Personhood of a Mississippi Zygote
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Walter Brasch: With all the distortions by the lyin’ liberal left-wing, it can get confusing. But, it’s really simple. A person is an egg that has just been fertilized by a sperm. We call this young person a Zygote.
Duane Buck: Tolerating Racism In Capital Cases
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Andy Love: After we we take a collective sigh of relief that Hank Skinner obtained a last minute stay so that his lawyers can once again seek to have key evidence DNA tested, we must then sigh in despair over the result of another Texas death penalty case.
The Corporate Pledge of Allegiance
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Robert Reich: The Court thinks corporations have First Amendment rights to spend as much as they want on politics, and Romney (and most of his fellow Regressives) think they need lower taxes and fewer regulations in order to be competitive. These positions are absurd on their face.
King Memorial: Now More than a Scar on the Nation’s Conscience
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Anthony Samad: King meant different things to different people, but one thing is for sure…America, black and white, had not gotten over King’s death – not if you have any sort of a conscience.
Romney Gets Borked
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Andy Love: Imagine if Bork hadn’t been Borked. There he would sit with the other radicals on the Court — Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito,
Evolution/Devolution
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Andy Love: With recent polling that shows support for the death penalty has hit a 39-year low, and widespread discomfort over the execution of Troy Davis, a backlash is to be expected.
Contemplating the Supremes
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Tom Degan: It’s time we have a serious discussion regarding the ramifications of a Republican victory in 2012 – and what it would mean for the future of this Republic if even one more right wing extremist is appointed to sit on that court.
The Death Penalty as Ritualized Mob Violence
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David Love: When a white conservative audience cheered presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry over his execution record at a recent debate, it underscored what is wrong with the death penalty.
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Is California Reducing Prison Overcrowding Without Fixing Its Cause?
Sharon Kyle: In a relatively short period of time, our nation has incarcerated enough people to create the second largest city in the United States. Releasing a few tens of thousand prisoners for overcrowding won’t change much or will it?