Civil Rights

Laura Coon | Fathers are losing their rights, and giving up their lives, because the courts are biased. They discriminate against a father only because of his gender, no other reason. Fathers are going in the poor house, where most of them start anyway, just to try and fight for the right to help raise their own flesh and blood. Between lawyers who really don't care and judges who pass out child support just because he has no guts to pass out a fair ruling. Fathers should have their children half the time. This should be the norm.

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

Arizona became the third state last week to volunteer for a Homeland Security Department program in which it will develop a hybrid identification card that combines a state driver’s license with a U.S. border-crossing card.

DHS and state officials announced an agreement to partner in development of the “enhanced” driver’s license that is expected to meet the department’s Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requirements as well as align with future driver’s license requirements of the Real ID Act, DHS said in a news release.

“Arizona’s new driver’s license is poised to be one of the nation’s first to comply with Real ID requirements,” the news release said.

U.S. government silences "We Will Not Be Silent" t-shirt

The New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that a Transportation Security Administration official and JetBlue Airways illegally discriminated against an American resident based solely on the Arabic message on his t-shirt and his ethnicity.