News & Commentary

The pressure is on in Congress, where Section 215 of the Patriot Act is up for expiration come June 1. Our fight to rein in the surveillance state got a historic boost last week, when a federal appeals court ruled the NSA’s mass call-tracking program, the first program to be revealed by Edward Snowden, is illegal.
Yet some members of Congress, like Sen

Starting Monday, the United States' human rights record will be subject to international scrutiny by the U.N. Human Rights Council. It may just be the perfect catalyst for the Obama administration to make good on past and present wrongs that should never be associated with a liberal democracy predicated on respect for human rights.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is

A recent analysis of abortion attitudes by The New York Times came to the right conclusion: The divide on how Americans feel about abortion is much smaller than partisan politics would have us believe.
But there's a bigger idea that the pie

Since 1967, when five days of violent clashes between police and community members left 26 dead and hundreds injured, residents of my great city of Newark have protested police abuse and impunity. A reminder of one of their most desired reforms sits on my desk: a sepia-toned photo of civil rights marchers with signs demanding the creation of a civilian review board to provide citizen oversight of the police.
Nearly 50 years of fortitude later, th

In a landmark victory for privacy, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that the mass phone-records program exposed two years ago by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is illegal because it goes far beyond what Congress ever intended to permit when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The ruling in

Nebraska recently made national headlines when someone filed a lawsuit here against all "homosexuals." While this lawsuit is clearly bunk and has already been dismissed, as a Nebraskan who is fighting for equal treatment of LGBT people in my home state, I would be remiss if I didn't use this as an opportunity to share the stories of those who are fighting alongside us.
There was a time I didn't know how my

A new study released this week and explored in depth in The New York Times shows what civil rights advocates have long known: in raising children, as in real estate, location is (nearly) everything.
By examining data about poor children

Ever since the New Deal era, U.S. labor laws guaranteeing minimum wages and overtime pay have excluded workers who care for elderly individuals and people with disabilities in their homes. These home health care workers — 90 percent of whom are women and most of whom are women of color — perform strenuous labor for long hours, helping those who need assistance with everything from dressing to meal preparation to eating to going to the bathroom to getting around. To this very day, these workers are denied the basic protections of minimum wages and overtime pay, even as demand for their services grows. They are among the poorest workers in our country, barely getting by on low wages, with 23 percent living below the poverty line.
At the same time, the home health care

Spring may have finally arrived in D.C., but Senator McConnell isn't being called a flip-flopper for his footwear.
Last month, in the face of a strong de