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Bloomberg: NYCLU ''Extremists'' Don't Keep NYC Safe

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:37:33 +0000

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg has strong words for the New York Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights activists who are concerned about racial profiling by the NYPD. He said in part:

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The Constitutional Path to Same-Sex Marriage

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 07:03:08 +0000

If we look at relevant precedents and follow them to their logical conclusions, the Supreme Court has already legalized same-sex marriage on a national level. Whether they have the political will to acknowledge this is, of course, another question entirely.

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The Privileged Court

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:30:44 +0000

To hear the U.S. Supreme Court say it, racism is incredibly simple and very easy to address. As conservative justices prepared to kill section 5 of the Voting Rights Act ...

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Can Marco Rubio Save Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:34:54 +0000

I said it in November:

[C]onservative Republicans still control the House - but it is clear that they can't afford to placate or offend their party's nativist base. If they repeat the mistakes they made when they introduced HR 4437, they will severely limit their growth potential not only among Latino voters, but also among other voters of color ... On the other hand, if the Republican Party does concede ground and allow a path to citizenship, the Tea Party will become more aggressive - and, no doubt, field primary challengers who will pick away at more moderate Republican incumbents. This is a no-win situation for Republican policymakers.

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Relax: Nobody's Going to Repeal the Second Amendment...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:45:42 +0000

...because nobody has to. It's already ineffective, and is unlikely to affect federal gun control policy in any significant way.

The first meaningful U.S. Supreme Court application of the Second Amendment ...

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Tea Party Bill Would Repeal Birthright Citizenship

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:00:23 +0000

The text of the Fourteenth Amendment is clear: if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen. Period.

But House Republicans want to change that:

[Rep. Steve King (R-IA)] is once again advocating to "clarify" the portion of the 14th Amendment that protects birthright citizenship ... King is not opposed to the Amendment on its face, but maintains that the framers did not account for illegal immigration.

In 2010, King told a Cityview, a local newspaper, that "the framers did not consider the babies of illegals when they framed the 14th amendment because we didn't have immigration law at the time, so they could not have wanted to confer automatic citizenship on the babies of people who were unlawfully in the United States."

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All I Have is a Voice

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:46:43 +0000

My favorite of W.H. Auden's poems (and one of his least favorite) is the rightly famous "September 1, 1939," which includes these memorable lines:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky...

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The Legacy of Anthony Comstock

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 22:56:08 +0000

What happens when you appoint a puritanical pro-censorship activist as a U.S. postal inspector, give him free rein, and pass a law in his honor? Civil libertarians found out a ...

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Catholicism, Abortion, and Immigration

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:36:01 +0000

The National Catholic Reporter's Michael Sean Winters has taken issue with LifeSiteNews, which has gradually expanded its focus on abortion to cover what it calls "the increasingly conjoined issues of ...

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The Trouble with Facebook (or not)

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:07:35 +0000

Facebook has a good record on some issues, and a spottier record on others. When it comes to privacy, Facebook isn't all that great--but when it comes to protecting users' ...

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