News & Commentary

The Department of Homeland Security’s effort to get its hands on information about the road travels of all Americans is back. In a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) issued yesterday about a plan for using license plate reader data, Immigration and Customs Enforcement describes a plan to “procure the services of a commercial vendor of LPR information.” The agency pays lip service to public concerns about license plate readers and offers some improvements to the government’s current more or less unrestrained use of location tracking technology. It does not, however, remedy the fundamental civil liberties problems with such a project.

A disturbing image hit the newswires this week, highlighting the barbaric conditions that are all too common in the American prison system. The photo shows a young prisoner in Georgia, who appears to be badly beaten, on his knees with a makeshift leash around his neck, while two other prisoners pose behind him, one holding the leash.
Incredibly, Georgia prison officials h

A disturbing image hit the newswires this week, highlighting the barbaric conditions that are all too common in the American prison system. The photo shows a young prisoner in Georgia, who appears to be badly beaten, on his knees with a makeshift leash around his neck, while two other prisoners pose behind him, one holding the leash.

Let me get straight to the point – David Brooks’ column this week encouraging gay and transgender people to simply accept discrimination for as long as it takes for society to come around was more than misguided. It undercuts core American values of fairness and equality and advances the idea that’s it is acceptable to treat some people like second-class citizens because of who they are.
If David Brooks really thinks it

Let me get straight to the point – David Brooks’ column this week encouraging gay and transgender people to simply accept discrimination for as long as it takes for society to come around was more than misguided. It undercuts core American values of fairness and equality and advances the idea that’s it is acceptable to treat some people like second-class citizens because of who they are.

This blog originally appeared on The Criminal Law Practitioner.
That’s the unusual plea deal t

This blog originally appeared on The Criminal Law Practitioner.

Yesterday the United States gave the U.N. Human Rights Committee its one year follow-up report on progress made to implement four priority recommendations made by the committee a year ago. The independent human rights experts had reviewed the United States' compliance with a major human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). They found the U.S. coming up short in many areas, including accountability for torture, privacy and surveillance, Guantánamo, and gun violence.
Yesterday’s disappointing