News & Commentary

David Eckert was pulling out of a Wal-Mart parking lot when police officers pulled him over for failing to stop at a parking lot stop sign. Police ordered Eckert to step out of his vehicle, and that's when he committed the highly suspicious act of "clenching his buttocks." The officers' natural reaction? This man must be hiding narcotics in his anal cavity.

Am I confused, or didn't we celebrate Halloween last week? I distinctly remember handing out candy to the ghouls and goblins that banged on my door demanding sweets. But it looks like anti-choice lawmakers didn't check their calendar, because they're scaring the U.S. populace with terrible legislation introduced today threatening women's health and wellbeing. That's enough to snap you out of your Halloween candy-induced sugar coma.

Ruth Moore was raped by her supervisor while serving in the Navy. After she left the service, she fought for 23 years with the Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA") before obtaining disability benefits based on the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ("PTSD") she experienced after the sexual assault. She is one of many veterans who faced, and continue to face, a difficult and unfair struggle with the VA to obtain the compensation they deserve.

2013 could easily be christened the year of the drone. It was the first full state legislative session after Congress passed a law requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to open up domestic airspace much more widely to drones, and it brought an avalanche of state legislative activity as legislators and the public across the country grappled with how to protect privacy in the face of this fast-approaching technology.

This morning, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Town of Greece v. Galloway, a First Amendment challenge to a New York town's practice of solemnizing its local board meetings with Christian prayer. The argument revealed the weak constitutional footing on which the town stands when it argues that it may invite local clergy, the vast majority of whom are Christian, to deliver official invocations that are overwhelmingly Christian. It also served as a stark reminder of how the Supreme Court has failed citizens who are non-believers when it comes to this issue.

Today, we filed our second motion in five months in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) asking for public access to secret court opinions authorizing government surveillance en masse. The motion seeks to uncover the original and complete legal underpinnings of the government’s bulk collection of Americans’ records, such as our internet-usage history and location information. It was filed by the national ACLU, the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School (MFIA).

This was originally posted by the ACLU of Northern California.

Another day, another historic victory for LGBT people.

This is the story of how I ended up pumping breast milk while sitting on a filthy floor, covered in dirt and dead bugs, at the plant where I work – and what I decided to do about it.