The ACLU of Colorado has threatened to sue a Colorado school district for its practice of searching student cellphone text messages, according to its press release issued yesterday:

According to the ACLU's letter [to the school district], the searching and transcribing of students' text messages violates a Colorado statute that was enacted to protect the privacy of telephone and electronic communications. That statute makes it a felony to read, copy, or record a telephone or electronic communication without the consent of the sender or receiver. The letter also explains that searches of cell phones at Monarch High School also violate state and federal constitutional provisions that forbid unreasonable searches and seizures.

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Los Angeles may finally have ended its war against the homeless. LA's police officers were routinely arresting the homeless for sleeping on sidewalks, despite the lack of sufficient shelters and the city's closure of parks at night, leaving the homeless with no choice but to forgo sleep. A federal court concluded that the practice violated the Constitution by punishing people for being homeless.

The city reached a settlement yesterday with the ACLU of Southern California, resolving a lawsuit filed on behalf of homeless people who were illegally arrested.

[T]he city will allow sleeping on sidewalks from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. People will not be able to bed down within 10 feet of the entrance of a building, parking lot or loading dock. The policy will remain in effect until Los Angeles builds 1,250 units of low-cost housing with services for homeless people, with half of the units in and around the downtown area.

The settlement won't solve the problem of homelessness in LA, and the city's belief that the units will be completed in three years, with half the cost to come from nonprofit organizations and developers, will likely prove to be unduly optimistic. It is at least a productive step, particularly if the police honor the settlement's promise to stop harassing homeless people who just want to get a few hours of sleep.

Similar unwarranted arrests of the homeless in New York City are discussed here and here.

OnStar service, with 5M subscribers, will be able to stop cars so equipped by slowing the engine starting with the 2009 models. OnStar from General Motors is seeking to sell its service to other manufacturers. The GPS system of OnStar already tracks 800-900 cars a month that are stolen. This is reported in today's New York Times.

Where else can this go? [More...]

The New York Times reports on the sad fact of extreme prejudice against gays in nursing homes.

Elderly gay people... living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.

Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated. Others live in fear of the day when they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care. That dread alone can be damaging, physically and emotionally, say geriatric doctors, psychiatrists and social workers.

To combat the discrimination, L.G.B.T. Aging Projects are becoming more frequent:

Only a prosecutor with nothing better to do would prosecute an obscenity case. Only a prosecutor who lacks an appreciation of the First Amendment would prosecute a writer for producing an obscene text -- no pictures, no graphics, just words. For those of you who thought that words were protected by the First Amendment, meet Mary Beth Buchanan, the crusading U.S. Attorney in Western Pennsylvania.

Buchanan is going after Karen Fletcher, "a 56-year-old recluse living on disability payments," on "six felony counts for operating a Web site called Red Rose, which featured detailed fictional accounts of the molesting, torture and sometimes gruesome murders of children under the age of 10, mostly girls." Disturbing, yes, but the Constitution protects speech that disturbs -- the only kind of speech that needs protection from censorship.

Fletcher maintains, with some credibility, that her website isn't meant to titillate.

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This is disturbing:

Nooses were left in a black Coast Guard cadet's bag and in the office of a white officer who conducted race relations training after the incident, leading a congressman to call Tuesday for a thorough military investigation.

A Coast Guard probe was unable to determine who left the nooses, said Chief Warrant Officer David M. French, a spokesman for the Coast Guard Academy.

This is even more disturbing:

A task force found that minority members comprised 13.5 percent of the Coast Guard's student body, compared with 16 percent in 1991, Cummings said. Minorities comprised only 7 percent of the faculty and staff, and fewer than 1 percent of captains on active duty are black, Cummings said.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a Seventh Circuit decision upholding Indiana's voter ID law. In a piece published yesterday, Adam Liptak questioned whether Judge Posner's opinion for the Seventh Circuit represented a privileged view that is out of touch with the reality of low income life:

“It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today’s America without a photo ID,” Judge Posner wrote for a divided panel of the federal appeals court in Chicago in January, upholding an Indiana voter identification law enacted in 2005. “Try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit.”

But somewhere between 13 million and 22 million Americans of voting age, most of them poor, get by without driver’s licenses, passports and other kinds of government documents bearing their pictures, perhaps because they do not have the money to drive, much less to fly.

Liptak also exposed the latest justification for passing laws that burden the right to vote in the name of preventing the virtually nonexistent problem of fraudulent voting. more ...

Compassionate conservatism at work again. The Bush Administration is telling New York health officials not to approve chemotherapy for undocumented residents because it's not a medical emergency.

The change comes amid a fierce national debate on providing medical care to immigrants, with New York State officials and critics saying this latest move is one more indication of the Bush administration’s efforts to exclude the uninsured from public health services.

Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.

While states differ on what is or is not a medical emergency, it should be obvious that the states that define it as "any condition that could become an emergency or lead to death without treatment" is the proper one.

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New York Governor Eliot Spitzer deserves praise today for announcing a new policy: Drivers' licenses will be granted to all residents without regard to immigration status.

Under the new rules, the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept a current foreign passport as proof of identity without also requiring a valid yearlong visa or other evidence of legal immigration.

The policy, which does not require legislative approval, will be phased in starting in December.

His reasoning: [More...]

Matt Browner Hamlin informs us:

The cloture vote on the Leahy-Specter-Dodd amendment to restore habeas corpus will take place this morning at 10:30 AM Eastern. We need 60 votes to overcome the Republican filibuster of this crucial legislation. As you can see, we're closing in on the votes we need to take this first critical step towards restoring America's moral authority in the world. With almost 700 calls logged through our Citizen-Generated Whip Count tool at Restore-Habeas.org, we've watched the number of "Yes" votes steadily rise. This is going to be a close vote. Almost every Republican office is punting on telling their constituents how they will vote. It seems most will announce whether or not they think America should continue to stand by the Great Writ of habeas corpus with their vote alone.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The politics of fear and prejudice are front and center. Conservative politicians and talk show hosts can’t seem to get enough of it.

Two unrelated, random crimes on opposite sides of the country are the genesis of the latest wave of immigrant-bashing — a gangland-style execution of three college students in Newark, N.J., and the slaying of a 15-year-old girl in Oregon.

One of the suspects in the Newark case is an undocumented resident from Peru who was out on bail on a serious felony charge at the time of the crime. Both suspects in the Oregon case are noncitizens, one of whom has a DUI conviction and the other a clear record. The two cases are fueling unwarranted hysteria against immigrants.

There is no immigrant crime wave in the United States. Statistics prove it. In June, as it does every year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its “Report on the Number of Prison and Jail Inmates.”

As of June 2006, there were more than 2.25 million federal and state inmates. Just 4 percent — fewer than 100,000 — were noncitizens, a group that includes both those here legally and those here without proper documentation. While there were 331 more noncitizen inmates in 2006 than 2005, that number was still 700 less than in 2004.

In 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, young foreign-born men were five times less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S, accounting for only 4 percent of the prison population.

While our immigrant population has increased in the past decade, the crime rate has dropped dramatically, both for violent crimes and property crimes.

There is no correlation between where one is born and his or her propensity to commit a crime. Crime is the result of myriad conditions, from poverty to drug and alcohol abuse to a variety of other factors. Immigration is not one of them.

We have effective laws for the removal of noncitizens who are convicted of crime. Since 1996, the list of “aggravated felonies” mandating deportation has steadily grown. When a person subject to deportation is charged with a crime, the law allows for the placing of a detainer on that person so that when released from state or federal custody, whether on bail or following conviction, he or she is transported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for continued detention or to face deportation proceedings, rather than be released into the community.

Sometimes, people fall through the cracks. It may have happened in Newark and Oregon. That doesn’t mean we need different laws. It means we need to enforce the ones we have. We don’t need a “one strike, you’re out” or a no-bail policy for immigrants.

Politicians will do anything to get elected, as demonstrated by their recent and nonstop hue and cry against “sanctuary cities” and “illegal immigration.” In their demagoguery, they encourage fear, prejudice and bigotry. In their attempts to be viewed as tough on illegal immigration, they foster inaccurate stereotypes.

The vast majority of immigrants in this country, whether present with or without proper papers, are hardworking, law-abiding people with strong family ties. They are little different from the immigrants of 100 years ago. They are not stealing our jobs or draining scant public resources. They pay taxes and help make our country a better place for all of us.

Most immigrants enter the country legally. According to the INS Statistical Yearbook, 75 percent of immigrants have legal, permanent visas. Of the 25 percent who are undocumented, 40 percent overstayed temporary visas, meaning their initial entry into the country was legal.

Immigration does not breed crime. Our prisons are not overflowing because of crimes by the undocumented. They are overflowing because of our failed criminal justice policies and over reliance on incarceration versus treatment and rehabilitation with respect to our nonviolent homegrown offenders.

There is nothing wrong with having a debate about immigration. But it is deplorable to falsely stereotype and malign millions of law-abiding people because of one’s desire for a particular outcome in that debate.

That is what conservative politicians and talk show hosts are doing today. Someone needs to call them on it. Let their campaigns know you’re onto their tricks, and in the case of the talk show hosts, just change the channel. Ratings speak louder than words.

Jeralyn Merritt is a member of The Examiner’s Board of Bloggers and blogs at Talkleft.com.

The ACLU scored a big victory for all of us today. A federal judge in New York found the Patriot Act provision pertaining to national security letters -- specifically, the part that gagged recipients of the letter -- unconstitutional.

A federal court today struck down the amended Patriot Act’s National Security Letter (NSL) provision. The law has permitted the FBI to issue NSLs demanding private information about people within the United States without court approval, and to gag those who receive NSLs from discussing them. The court found that the gag power was unconstitutional and that because the statute prevented courts from engaging in meaningful judicial review of gags, it violated the First Amendment and the principle of separation of powers.

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