News & Commentary

Like many people I have encountered who were raised in a Christian environment, I was indifferent to what I felt were minor infractions of the law that protects the separation of church and state. What's the big deal if teachers promote God in public schools? I didn't see any danger in official prayer during graduation or a football game, or in a science teacher mentioning her religious beliefs when discussing evolution. These were things that had happened when I was in school, and my experience was just fine. Even after I stopped being an active Christian, I didn't understand how any of this could be considered discrimination, as some people claimed. Didn't the Bible teach us to obey rules, and wouldn't that be a positive lesson for our children? Of course, I didn't realize the hypocrisy of breaking the law in order to teach children to obey rules.

After two hard fought games over the weekend, it was determined that the Denver Broncos would be facing the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL Super Bowl XLVIII next month. Both teams have overcome significant obstacles this season to reach the championship game—but the social media world was only focused on one thing last Sunday night — Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman's post playoff game outburst.

We've started getting a few calls asking us what we think of new GPS tracking devices that police can shoot at a car that they are pursuing from a launcher mounted to the front grille of their car. The device sticks to the car, allowing the police to track the location of the vehicle until they catch up with it. (See press stories here and here.)

The massive $1.1 trillion spending bill (“omnibus”) passed by Congress last week and signed into law by President Obama includes a significant victory: a provision aimed at ending the atrocious practice of shackling pregnant women in immigration detention facilities.

Today, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Utah to force the state to continue recognizing the marriages of more than 1,000 same-sex couples who were legally married in the weeks after a federal court struck down Utah’s bans on allowing same-sex couples to marry. From the moment the federal court in Kitchen v. Herbert issued its decision on December 20, 2013, to the moment the Supreme Court issued a stay of the ruling on January 6, 2014 while the case is appealed, there was an outpouring of same-sex couples across the state who were finally able to express their love and commitment to each other through marriage and to protect their families through the protections and responsibilities that flow from being legally married.

Last week, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have celebrated his 85th birthday in an America that, in myriad ways, is a freer, fairer, and more just nation than the one he knew. Today, we pause to remember the man for daring to dream of equality of personhood and opportunity; for having the courage to transform what he called “the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”; and — as President Obama put it so lyrically last year — for giving a “mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions” and offering a “salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike.”

Bonnie Raines broke into and stole every document from which government agency office in 1971?

President Obama just gave a landmark speech about NSA surveillance and the future of digital privacy. As we noted in our reaction to it (which you can read here), the president introduced a number of welcome, but incremental, reforms to NSA surveillance, while leaving in place — at least for now — the bulk collection of Americans' sensitive data.
In analyzi

The bad back that awakened me at 6 a.m. on this birthday morning and that spurred unpleasant thoughts of growing old dissipated in an instant with an email alert that our long-awaited decision in the voter ID had issued. I didn't have the opinion, but I had the result – we won! Thousands of hours of hard work in collaboration with my fantastic colleagues had not been a total waste. And that adrenaline rush only increased when I read the opinion.