By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 4:30pm
Today's utterance by Chief Judge Sandra Lynch, of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, gives me hope that the court will do justice for the victims of human trafficking who will be impacted by how the First Circuit rules in a case argued before it this morning.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 6:10pm
Reports that the so-called "behavioral detection program" at Logan Airport leads to racial profiling is front-page news in today's Sunday New York Times. You have to admire the courage of the TSA screeners who raised the alarm that pressure from TSA management to meet quotas leads to targeting of passengers based on their race, ethnicity, and religion-- even when they clearly pose no terrorist threat.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 4:16pm
The mandatory-sentencing bill that Gov. Patrick said today he will sign should have been better, but could have been worse. The ACLU of Massachusetts opposed this bill because it takes our justice system in the wrong direction, expanding unjust, wasteful mandatory sentencing and depriving judges of the ability to depart from required mandatory maximum sentences for so-called 'habitual offenders'.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 10:27am
You know we are in the silly season of summer when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino fires up the old bully pulpit to roast his political enemies and fire up his base.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 10:28am
Sen. Scott Brown can make good on his promise to support our troops and veterans this week by supporting a proposal by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen to ensure that military servicewomen and their families have the same access to medical care as their civilian counterparts.
Sen. Shaheen’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (the Act that funds our troops) would allow the military health system to cover abortion care in cases of rape and incest — and only in those cases — just as the federal government does for all otherfederal employees, women enrolled in Medicaid, and women in federal prisons.
Last year, the Patrick administration surprised everyone by announcing that it would sign on to the controversial “Secure Communities” or S-Comm program that tries to force local police to do the bidding of federal immigration agents by requiring them to feed information through a shared database and fuel an indiscriminate deportation mill.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 11:00am
Whether you’re a member of the ACLU, the Tea Party, or the Beer Lovers Party, one of the things that distinguishes you from people living in more authoritarian regimes — Iran, China, Libya, to name a few — is your right to form political associations without fear of government reprisal.
Freedom of association is so vital to our democracy that the framers put it in the First Amendment, alongside freedoms of speech, press, religion, and petition. After all, what good is the right to speak, pray, or petition the government if you can’t freely associate with other people who support your cause?
Geraldine Ferraro shaped history because she took a chance in the national spotlight. She gave our nation — and me — an important lesson in gender equality at just the right political moment.
Ferraro was the first woman to win a spot on the Democratic party’s presidential ticket when she became Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984.
In his recent memoir and book tour, Senator Scott Brown showed courage and compassion by speaking candidly about having been sexually and emotionally abused as a child.
