Federal report: Arizona has shown ‘systematic disregard’ for constitutional protections

Senator OKs field hearings on Florida’s ‘disenfranchising’ voting law

 

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has granted Sen. Bill Nelson’s request for field hearings into Florida’s controversial new voting law that many say could disenfranchise minorities, young voters and low-income citizens.

Alabama immigration law panned by local and national media

With State Senator Russell Pearce’s dramatic recall in Arizona behind us, the nation’s immigration watchers turn their eyes to Alabama, now home to the nation’s fiercest immigration laws.

In Alabama, comparisons to the civil rights battles of the 1960s are hard to avoid. From local press to the New More…

New Mexico fines prison company for inadequate staffing

The New Mexico Department of Corrections is fining GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison operator, $1.1 million for understaffing one of its prisons.GEO manages three of the four private prisons in the state, including Lea County Correctional Facility, where from September of 2010 to March of 2011 one out More…

Sheriffs Association says jails have rules for shackling pregnant women, new bill unnecessary

Responding to a new bill introduced in the Florida Legislature, spokespeople for the Florida Sheriffs Association say that jails are not neglecting the health and safety of incarcerated pregnant women.

Sierra Club opposes Minn. anti-gay marriage amendment

The North Star chapter of the Sierra Club is the latest statewide group to come out against a 2012 ballot question that would add a ban on same-sex marriage to the Minnesota Constitution.

The influential lobby for the environment said Friday that it was jumping into the same-sex marriage debate More…

North Dakota nears completion of health insurance exchange, would be first in the U.S.

North Dakota is on its way to becoming the first state in the country to have an operating health insurance exchange program. Each state is required by the Affordable Care Act to have some infrastructure in place by January 2013 for an exchange. Florida remains one of the More…

Crisis pregnancy centers join anti-abortion groups in support of N.C. ultrasound law

Minority teachers underrepresented in New Mexico schools

Fifty-eight percent of New Mexico teachers are white, despite minorities constituting an overwhelming majority of the state’s student body.

In newly released grand jury testimony, Nixon leaned on familiar national security tropes

Richard Nixon is perhaps the best-known outed liar in history. In 1975, the year after he resigned in disgrace and was lifted away from the White House in a helicopter, the ex-president gave testimony before a grand jury investigating his administration. University of Wisconsin professor Stanley Kutler recently persuaded a More…