ACLU of Kentucky

Robin S. Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, writes an opinion piece for USA Today about why Arizona's mandatory E-Verify law is problematic:

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, a constitutional challenge to the Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007, one of thousands of overlapping and conflicting state and local immigration laws proposed in recent years. A strange bedfellows alliance of business organizations, civil rights and immigrant rights groups, labor unions, current and former congressmen and the Obama administration united to challenge the Arizona law because it is bad for business, and bad for workers.

...Rather than solving the nation's immigration problems, this patchwork of state immigration laws drowns employers in regulations and exposes job applicants to increased risk of discrimination. Fortunately, the Constitution includes a provision for resolving conflicts between state and federal law. Article VI of the Constitution states, "The laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme law of the land." To the extent that Arizona's statute and other state and local laws frustrate Congress' objective of establishing a uniform framework, the Constitution is clear: Federal law is the "supreme law of the land."

Read the entire column here.

The Washington Post reports on a new study that finds that bullying isn't the only major problem facing LGBT teens:

Gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts... [G]irls are especially at risk for unequal treatment.

Read the whole article here.

From Bluegrass Politics:

FRANKFORT — A legislative task force aimed at reducing the state’s incarceration rates will present draft legislation by Jan. 19, the group's co-chairs announced on Thursday.

Rep. John Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, said the Task Force on the Penal Code and Controlled Substances Act will meet on Dec. 14 and 15 to discuss a multitude of issues that could be included in potential legislation, including looking at Kentucky’s sentencing laws, ways to help addicted and mentally ill prisoners and stronger parole programs.

The task force has partnered with the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has helped other states save money on the skyrocketing costs of prisons.

According to state officials, since 1980, the state’s prison population has grown 442 percent from 3,723 inmates to about 20,200 inmates in 2010. To pay for this increase, total state spending on corrections in 2009 reached $513 million, up from $117 million in fiscal year 1989.

"The cost of doing nothing is the real question we need to ask here," Tilley said.

 See the original post...

From the Texas Observer:

Claude Jones always claimed that he wasn't the man who walked into an East Texas liquor store in 1989 and shot the owner. He professed his innocence right up until the moment he was strapped to a gurney in the Texas execution chamber and put to death on Dec. 7, 2000. His murder conviction was based on a single piece of forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene -- a strand of hair -- that prosecutors claimed belonged to Jones.

But DNA tests completed this week at the request of the Observer and the New York-based Innocence Project show the hair didn’t belong to Jones after all. The day before his death in December 2000, Jones asked for a stay of execution so the strand of hair could be submitted for DNA testing. He was denied by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

 Read more at the Texas Observer's website...