Tag Archives: ACLU

legal news, State news

When did civil liberties protection become evil?

Democrat Rochelle Garza wants to become Texas’s next attorney general. She is running against a seriously flawed incumbent, Ken Paxton, who already has been re-elected once while running with a felony indictment hanging over his head.

Garza, though, has a curious bit of baggage as she seeks to defeat her Republican opponent. She is a lawyer steeped in the tradition of the American Civil Liberties Union. She fights to protect our civil liberties, you know, those lined out in the Constitution.

She’s also not scarred by the kind of wounds inflicted on Paxton. A Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton in 2015 on an allegation of securities fraud. He hasn’t stood trial yet.

However, in this curious and infuriating political climate, Garza must defend her work as a civil liberties lawyer. It’s a throwback to an earlier campaign, the 1988 presidential election between Vice President George H.W. Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

President Bush vilified Dukakis because of the governor’s belief in the ACLU mission, which is to protect our civil liberties.

I keep wondering: How did ACLU membership and a defense of that legal organization’s mission become a punchline, an epithet, a four-letter word?

It has become all of that.

For my money, I would rather be represented by a legal eagle who isn’t stained by allegations of misconduct. Toss aside political affiliation and ask: Do you want to be represented by an individual who faces possible prison time if his case ever gets adjudicated, or do you want your AG to be someone whose record is clean and clear of any suspicion?

I’ll stick with Rochelle Garza.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

WH adviser burnishes his bogeyman image

Stephen Miller is quite the attraction for Donald J. Trump and his administration.

The young policy adviser seems to relish appearing on TV simply to make inflammatory statements. Now we find out through some leaked e-mails that Miller harbored some dark and sinister thoughts about white nationalism and assorted racist philosophies.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Congressional Caucus and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups all have called for Miller to resign. The White House stands by their man, presumably with the president’s blessing.

Of course he should quit. Miller had no business being involved in such a senior policy adviser role in the first place. He is a flame-thrower, a provocateur, a living, breathing symbol of the politics of division that have highlighted (or lowlighted) the Trump administration.

I say all that, naturally, knowing that nothing will happen as long as Donald Trump is president of the United States.

One batch of e-mails suggests that Miller favored restricting legal immigration from Third World countries, favoring a policy more disposed to welcoming immigrants from, um, blonde-blue-eyed regions of the world.

I believe Stephen Miller is a toxic dude. He doesn’t belong in the White House, let alone working hand-in-glove with the president of the United States.

Will he be shown the door? Hah!

International news, national news, political news

WW II internment camps serve as justification?

bowers

This takes the cake.

Of all the things that have been said in recent days about Syrian refugees and whether the United States should ban any more of them from coming to this country, the mayor of a significant U.S. city invokes the memory of … Japanese-American internment camps.

Roanoke (Va.) Mayor David Bowers, a Democrat, said this: “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

Oh, my.

The internment of Japanese-Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 — over the course of history — been declared a national tragedy. Yes, FDR felt compelled to order the internment of those loyal Americans out of fear of what he thought might happen. It was in fact a xenophobic response aimed at imprisoning people of a certain racial minority. The U.S. government did not respond in nearly that fashion to German-Americans or Italian-Americans, whose own ethnic ancestors also had declared war on the United States.

Now we have the mayor of Roanoke suggesting that the internment camps justify the near-panic being expressed in many political corners of this country in response to what occurred this past week in Paris with the massacre of 129 innocent victims by European jihadists.

I should add that many decades after the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans the U.S. government issued a formal apology to the descendants of those who were held captive by their own government. The actions taken then are now considered a shameful breach of our Constitution’s guarantee of civil liberties for all its citizens.

The ACLU of Virginia issued this statement: “The government’s denial of liberty and freedom to over 100,000 individuals of Japanese descent — many of whom were citizens or legal residents and half of whom were children — is a dark stain on America’s history that Mayor Bowers should learn from rather than seek to emulate.”

Mayor Bowers has said he never intended to offend anyone with his remarks.

Well, Mr. Mayor, you damn sure did.

See story here.

 

legal news, national news

When is a debt ever repaid in full?

Shari Thomas committed a terrible crime.

She was sentenced to prison. She served 18 years behind bars. Her debt to society was repaid. She was released and she has sought to get on with her life.

Then something got in her way. It was her past.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/she%e2%80%99s-been-out-of-prison-for-18-years-employers-still-see-her-as-a-convict/ar-AAaeVlo

Thomas’s story is not uncommon among those who have been sent to prison.

In her case, she killed the man who she said had abused her as a child. The crime took place a quarter-century ago. Now that she’s out of prison, she has sought to restart her life. Employers, though, still see her as a criminal. She cannot escape her past.

Her record is clean. She earned a master’s degree while behind bars. Thomas has sought to improve herself and by all accounts she’s been a model citizen since stepping out from her incarceration.

As the Washington Post reported: “In the past few years, perhaps because of the nation’s abiding fear of crime, its litigiousness, or the Internet’s ease at churning up background information that may not have surfaced before, Thomas has been rejected or terminated from several high-paying jobs.

“She had been making $150,000 six years ago. Now she is on food stamps. Sheetz, Wal-Mart and other retailers have turned her down for jobs. She could lose her Cecil County, Md., home.”

Is that fair? I think not.

The Post reports that Thomas is one of about 600,000 former prisoners who are let out each year. Many of them end up back in prison. “Thomas is not the only ex-convict asking for a second chance. But because she was a violent offender, her path to acceptance is hardest, even as Americans reconsider long-standing views of crime and punishment,” the Post reports.

Thomas asks: “When is enough enough?”

One idea being considered, is a move to “Ban the Box.” According to the Post: “To break the cycle, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and other organizations have been pushing ‘Ban the Box’ legislation that would prohibit employers, during preliminary screening, from disqualifying job seekers on the basis of a criminal record. Fourteen states and the District have signed on to such policies, as have 100 cities and counties, according to the National Employment Law Project.”

Sure, employers ought to know as much as is relevant about prospective employees. But why disqualify someone automatically if they check the “the Box” that says they served prison time?

If they’ve been model citizens, such as Shari Thomas, then their debt to society is repaid in full.

Correct? Then let them back fully into society.