American Civil Liberties Union

Earlier in the month, the Washington Times published a story about the EMD bracelet that the TSA supposedly expressed interest in deploying for every air traveler to wear. The pros to wearing this bracelet: speeding through security, as the bracelet would contain all of your flight info and personal information, and have GPS-like capability that would be able to track both you and your luggage. Nifty! Even more surveillance when you travel!

For most of us, getting a passport is a pretty straightforward process. Go to the post office for an application, fill it out, get a picture taken, make a copy of your birth certificate, write a check for $100 and mail it in. A few weeks later, voila! Passport!

Unfortunately, this isn't the case for thousands of U.S. citizens living along the U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has been quietly carrying out a policy that discriminates against U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who live along the border and whose births were attended by midwives or took place at a local clinic.

In a speech delivered before the Memorial de Caen International Human Rights Competition in Caen, France, yesterday, New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak said:

The death penalty is a random act of brutality. Its application throughout the United States is random, depending on where the murder occurred, the race and economic status of who committed the murder, the race and economic status of the person murdered and, of course, the quality of the legal defense.

…The worse damage [the death penalty] does is to a society that believes it needs to seek revenge over redemption.

The need for revenge leads to hate and violence. Redemption opens the door to healing and peace. Revenge slams it shut.

A society that turns its back on redemption commits itself to holding on to anger and a need for vengeance in a quest for fulfillment that can not be met by those destructive emotions. Redemption instead opens the door to the space that asks healing questions in the wake of violence: questions of crime prevention, questions of why some human beings put such a low value on life that they readily take it from others, questions that help us understand how to help those impacted by violence; questions that take a back seat, and are often ignored, when our minds and emotions are filled with a need for revenge.

Yesterday, Vanessa at Feministing blogged on a study by the Center for Public Integrity about sexual assault on campus. The figure of campus rapes that go unreported is 95 percent—a sad and shocking state of affairs. And for those that are reported, disciplinary actions schools take against student perpetrators include measures such as: