A US House subcommittee report on released detainees from Guantanamo criticizes the Bush and Obama administrations for releasing some prisoners who went on to become involved in terrorist activities (AP, Reuters, The New York Times).

A legal loophole in Illinois is causing some to be put in debtor’s prison, the State Journal Register reports.

Similarly, Rhode Island lawmakers want to lower the threshold that would put individuals owing child support in jail (AP).

Senator Tester (D-MT) follows the lead of Senator Scott Brown and his opponent Elizabeth Warren in calling for a Super PAC pact in his re-election campaign (Politico).

The Huffington Post’s Dan Collins says New York needs Lady Gaga to stop the state’s redistricting disaster.

Unfortunately, the United States, where 35 percent of citizens — about 73.5 million — who are eligible to vote are not registered, does not have this policy in place.  With such low registration rates, it is hard to imagine that in the last few years multiple laws have been approved across the country to restrict the ability of people to vote.  In many states, there are even new burdens being placed specifically on the ability of community groups to register voters. One of the most onerous laws that passed was in Florida, and those restrictions are so severe that the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had to suspend their voter registration drives.

Voting is not only a right, but a fundamental part of building an engaged citizenry and the foundation for civic participation. The Brennan Center advocates for a number of ways to modernize our country’s voter registration process that would be helpful to states to facilitate widespread registration. These provisions of voter registration modernization include automated registration (or automatically registering eligible citizens based on lists from other governmental agencies), online registration and access (being able to register to vote; or check, and edit one’s registration online), and permanent state registration (a voter’s registration record is moved as needed among jurisdictions within the state, but the voter is kept on the voter rolls as long as she resides in the state). All of these measures would effectively and efficiently improve voter registration, and enable more Americans to vote.

In addition to making our democracy more inclusive, voter registration modernization could make voting rolls more clean and accurate. The key is in sharing and comparing information between government agencies while moving away from the antiquated paper-based system on which most states rely. In too many states, a form has to get mailed to the county election office where it is hard-entered into the state voter registration database. This paper based systems is not only labor intensive, but also error prone, and can lead to numerous problems in the electoral process. These systems are also incredibly costly at a time when money is particularly tight in the states. Moving to a paperless system can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they saved $450,000 by switching to online registration and partial automation, and in Delaware, they saved $200,000 just on personnel costs. Voter registration modernization has also gained bipartisan support around the country, as it is an area in which both parties can come together in the common goal of efficiency and cost reduction.

By following in the footsteps of many of the world’s developed democracies, Chile took an essential step toward modernizing its voter registration system. As a first-rate democracy the United States should do no less.

The Director of the Brennan Center’s DC office, Nicole Austin-Hillery, writes in today’s Roll Call about Congressional partisanship and inaction, saying lawmakers should heed the President’s State of the Union plea to “get each others’ backs.”

The Democracy Program’s Jonathan Brater articulates why the US still needs Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in The Boston Review.

“We must not lose sight of the homeowners and communities who suffer the collateral damages of foreclosure,” as we await economic recovery and justice for victims of banking abuses, the Justice Program’s Neeta Pal writes at The Huffington Post.

USA Today:  “The FBI has begun cutting back GPS surveillance in an array of criminal and intelligence investigations following a Supreme Court ruling last month restricting its use.”

California lawmakers are pushing for reform of the state’s harsh 3-strikes law (KQED).

The New York Times editorial board lambastes President Obama’s decision to begin fundraising for a major Super PAC that supports his re-election. Think Progress says the move is the best way to fight Citizens United in the long run.

The president’s apparent about-face — from condemning “the corrosive influence of money in politics” in the State of the Union to his campaign’s announcement that it will “do what [it] can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA” — provided plenty of fodder for critics. But it’s not surprising. In 2008, Obama reversed course, too — he first planned to participate in the presidential public financing program, but later eschewed it when it became clear he could raise more money outside the system.

The reality in 2012 is that no candidate with a serious chance of winning can afford, in the words of Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina, to “unilaterally disarm.” The campaign fundraising arms race this election cycle, like it or not, involves Super PACs. They’ve already dumped $40 million of slash-and-burn attack ads into the Republican presidential primaries. Karl Rove’s Super PAC alone, working with a related non-profit group, raised $51 million last year.

However disappointing it was to campaign reform advocates, the only surprise about the Obama campaign’s decision to play by the same rules is that it waited this long to make the announcement. Any campaign that doesn’t take advantage of the rules that permit super spending by Super PACs doesn’t stand a chance.

The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC helped enable the Super PAC takeover of elections (as did other court decisions), but the Supreme Court isn’t entirely to blame. Under the Court’s decisions, the only groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums are groups that are completely independent of the campaigns. The candidate-specific Super PACs are anything but.

Why do these groups, which look like shadow arms of the campaigns to any common-sense viewer, operate under rules designed for groups that are wholly independent of campaigns? In large part, the answer has to do with the Federal Election Commission.

In 2010, the FEC issued an advisory opinion that green-lighted Super PACs: as long as a group tells the FEC it’s not affiliated with any campaign and won’t make direct contributions to candidates, it can raise and spend without limit. Later, in spite of laws providing that groups like Super PACs can’t coordinate with candidates and still claim to be independent, the FEC said that Super PACs could legally do a whole lot that looks like coordination. Only at the FEC can a group run ads that are “fully coordinated” with a candidate and still say it is “wholly independent” of his campaign.

The FEC was created under the Federal Election Campaign Act, enacted 40 years ago today, and the last four decades have shown that the agency isn’t up to the task of enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws. The Alice-in-Wonderland approach it has taken to the Super PACs dominating this year’s election is just its latest failure.

Congress should replace the FEC with an agency that will actually carry out its mission. (While it’s at it, Congress could fix the Super PAC problem by passing laws that give real meaning to words like “independence” and “coordination.”) The abuses that will inevitably emerge from this year’s orgy of Super PAC spending should be sufficient to galvanize support from both sides of the aisle to pass meaningful campaign reform.

But even if partisan gridlock in Congress continues to stymie legislative reform, the president can take a significant step toward addressing the current state of dysfunction at the FEC. Five of the six commissioners who “lead” the agency are serving with expired terms, and the president has the power to appoint competent replacements committed to enforcing the nation’s campaign laws.

A coalition of reform groups under the leadership of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been calling on President Obama to do just that — since 2009. So far, the president has ignored the calls to appoint new leaders to the FEC.

There is no excuse for further delay. If President Obama is genuinely concerned about the “corrosive” impact of big money in our elections, he should demonstrate it with action, not rhetoric.

Andrew Cohen looks back on the torture memos, 10 years later, at The Atlantic.

Both chambers of the Virginia legislature have now passed voter ID bills. A Virginian-Pilot opinion article on why the proposed laws are a bad idea quotes the Brennan Center’s Keesha Gaskins.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on how mandatory minimum sentences for federal gun crimes cause disparities and unduly long sentences.

Under the Radar: South Carolina Rushes Through Yet another Voter Suppression Bill (ACLU).

U.S. Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota is leading the charge in Congress and his home state to fight suppressive voting laws, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.

CNN: “While the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in later this year, some observers say our political leaders have already forgotten a key lesson of Watergate: that anonymous money corrupts political campaigns.”

At the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting this weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder announced $2.4 million in grant money for indigent defense services and research.

“Thirty-three civil rights groups from around the country complained to the New York attorney general Friday about police documents that showed the New York Police Department recommending increased surveillance of Shiite mosques based on their religion.” - AP

The Washington Post editorial board bemoans the Virginia legislature’s efforts to enact a voter ID law, citing Brennan Center research on how many people lack proper ID.

Actual confirmed voter fraud: the Indiana Secretary of State, the state’s chief elections official, was found guilty of multiple voter fraud-related charges, including lying about his address on voter registration forms (AP).

Two weeks ago, I made my first trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I went as a representative of one of several non-governmental organizations invited to observe the military commissions that the government has established to try terrorist suspects it does not wish to try in federal court.

A few days before the trip, the Office of Military Commissions e-mailed me a twelve-page Power Point presentation of information for travelers. It appeared to have been written primarily for military personnel and was sprinkled with indecipherable jargon and acronyms, but as I anxiously skimmed the bullet points for my marching orders, my eyes fell upon this clear directive:

“It is illegal to harm, kill or eat an iguana.”

At last! The rule of law has come to Guantanamo!

There were no caveats, no exemptions, no loopholes, no equivocations. To my knowledge, the Office of Legal Counsel has issued no opinion concluding that the statute prohibiting the harming of iguanas does not constrain the President when acting as Commander-in-Chief — as it did when construing the equally clear language of the statute prohibiting torture. Nor has that office, to my knowledge, shown the same creativity in defining “harm” that it showed in defining “torture,” when it opined that a person hasn’t been tortured unless he experiences the kind of pain associated with “organ failure or death.” The government has not argued that Congress surely did not intend the law to extend to Guantanamo Bay — as it did when detainees sought to avail themselves of the statutory right to habeas corpus.

As others have observed, the impressive 20-pound lizards who roam the island are experiencing a very different Guantanamo than the nearly 800 detainees who have been imprisoned there since 9/11. For those detainees, the story of Guantanamo can be boiled down to a series of efforts on the part of the government to avoid the clear application of the law. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected these efforts — holding that the President cannot create ad hoc military commissions without congressional authorization, that due process requires giving U.S. citizens a meaningful opportunity to contest their status as “enemy combatants,” that detainees have a constitutional right to challenge the basis for their detention — the government’s efforts to avoid the law have become more limited, less brazen. But they have not stopped.

The government’s propensity to get creative with the law was on full display in the pre-trial hearing in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen, is charged with planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, which killed 17 sailors. Arrested in 2002, al-Nashiri spent the next four years in secret CIA prisons, where (according to a CIA Inspector General report) he was waterboarded, threatened with a loaded gun, and interrogated with a revving power drill next to his head. Al-Nashiri, who faces the death penalty, will likely be the first “high-value detainee” to go to trial — although that may not be until 2015.

The main issue before the Commission at the hearing was attorney-client privilege. A defendant in regular criminal proceedings has a constitutional right to confidentiality in his communications with his attorney. The rights to effective assistance of counsel and due process, as well as the right not to incriminate oneself, would be meaningless if the government could eavesdrop on these attorney-client exchanges.

The government says that the Constitution ends at the tip of Florida; it relies instead on the Military Commission Rules of Evidence. But even those rules recognize attorney-client privilege. “[A] client has a privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent any other person from disclosing confidential communications made for the purpose of facilitating the rendition of professional legal services to the client . . . between the client or the client’s representative and the lawyer or the lawyer’s representative.” Clear enough. Communications between the detainees and their attorneys are like iguanas: protected.  

Except when the government says they’re not. In December, Rear Admiral David Woods, the commander in charge of the detention facilities at Guantanamo, issued a policy allowing a team of contractors hired by the Defense Department — a so-called “privilege team,” consisting of intelligence professionals and translators — to inspect the incoming legal mail of detainees involved in military commissions proceedings. At the hearing, al-Nashiri’s lawyers asked the judge to bar implementation of the policy in his case.

The government’s attorneys assured the military judge that there was nothing to worry about, because the contractors were not actually “reading” the mail; they were just looking to see whether any “informational contraband” — defined as anything that the GTMO commander deemed “impermissible or inappropriate” — was in “plain view.” In two days of argument, however, they were able to cite only two types of information that that privilege team might uncover without actually reading a document: classified markings (which are not necessarily “contraband,” as al-Nashiri is entitled to receive some classified information about his case) and diagrams of the detention facilities (an example that prompted visible skepticism on the part of the judge, presumably because of the implausible implication that defense counsel might be conspiring with al-Nashiri to stage a jailbreak). The other examples of “informational contraband” listed in the policy — things like “current political or military events in any country” — could never be detected without the act of reading because they would be embedded in the text of the document. (If you’re asking yourself why al-Nashiri — who has been in captivity for a decade — can’t receive political news about “any country,” you’re not alone.)

Rather than speculate about whether the privilege team might be reading the mail, one of al-Nashiri’s lawyers, Lieutenant Commander Stephen Reyes, asked to have a member of the privilege team testify about what the team actually was doing. Commander Andrea Lockhart, one of the prosecutors, countered that the current practice of the privilege team was irrelevant: the judge in al-Nashiri’s case could place any restrictions on the team that he wished and would have complete control over its actions. 

The next day, Lockhart confessed error. She admitted that the team was bound only by the terms of its contract, and neither the prosecutors nor Admiral Woods — who issued the privilege team policy in the first place — knew what that contract said. But Lockhart nonetheless assured the judge that he could enter an order specifying what he would like the contractors to do, and if they didn’t do it, surely whoever was supervising their contract would take some sort of employment action. Perhaps not surprisingly, the notion of an optional judicial order did not give her pause.

The government also repeatedly claimed that Admiral Woods’ policy, which applies to detainees in military commissions proceedings, is no different than the procedure that has been in place for years for another group of detainees — those who have filed habeas petitions in federal court. But when the judge requested a copy of the court order governing the privilege team in habeas cases, he discovered that the order permits the team to inspect incoming legal mail only for physical contraband: weapons, files, or the like. Instead of apologizing profusely for having misled the judge, Commander Lockhart maintained that, in fact, the order permitting inspection only for physical contraband had the exact same meaning as Woods’ policy, which permits inspection for both physical and informational contraband.  There was no sign of cognitive dissonance in her presentation. This rule, like so many others, simply didn’t mean what it said.

Judge Pohl was no pushover. When Admiral Woods was late to give his testimony, Pohl scolded the prosecutors and admonished them to have their witnesses ready on time: “I really don’t care what their rank is.” He clearly will not entertain any suggestion that the officers who run the prison also run his courtroom. But by the same token, he appeared reluctant to insert himself in matters relating to the security of the detention facility — the purported reason for the privilege team review. Although he reserved judgment, he signaled that he is at least considering allowing some kind of “plain view” review.  Which would simply confirm once again that at Guantanamo, no matter how clearly a rule may be stated, you can never be truly sure what it means or whether it will be followed.

Unless, of course, you’re an iguana.

“There’s really no way for shareholders to have any say in how money is being spent, even though it’s their money,” the Brennan Center’s Mark Ladov told Washington Post reporter T.W. Farnam for a piece on corporations contributing to Super PACs.

The Raw Story covers efforts by the ACLU and other advocacy groups, including the Brennan Center, to pass the End Racial Profiling Act.

Think Progress: “The biggest critic of a massive prison privatization scheme in Florida was stripped of his chairmanship of the Budget Subcommittee on Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriation for opposing Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) plan to outsource prison oversight to the lowest bidder.” The privatization of prisons creates perverse incentives for increasing the inmate population while spending as little as possible on their care.

A group of Michigan lawmakers introduced a package of ethics and campaign finance reforms to require greater disclosure by corporations, The Detroit News reports.

Ari Berman writes in The Nation: How the GOP Is Resegregating the South.

Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics — and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Dan Rockoff.

For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics

NY Campaign Finance:

1. Today, over 100 organizations that support Fair Elections for New York wrote Governor Cuomo detailing the need for publicly financed campaigns, lower contribution limits, and better enforcement. The civil rights, business, faith, grassroots community, good government, environmental, and labor organizations who signed the letter, thanked the Governor for his strong support and expressed their enthusiasm to work with him and members of the Legislature to pass publicly financed elections and other campaign finance reforms during this legislative session.

2. Despite the annual $150,000 contribution limit by individuals to candidates in New York, luxury-apartment mogul Leonard Litwin gave almost $700,000 to candidates in 2011. A study by the New York Public Interest Research Group revealed that Litwin was the biggest individual donor in the state. Litwin was able to dodge the state’s campaign finance laws by utilizing the limited liability company (LLC) loophole, which allows companies to contribute multiple times through affiliated LLC’s, even when the LLC is completely controlled by a corporation or individual who has already reached the maximum contribution limit.

3. Governor Cuomo spoke with reporters about the need for public financing and campaign finance reform after participating in a fundraising event for the Democratic Governors Association. “One of the things we have to work on is getting money out of politics,” Cuomo said. In response to a reporter’s question about the meeting, Cuomo replied, “Your issue of, ‘You are in a room where people contribute money’ — that is the current state of politics and that is (the case for) every elected official in every fundraising forum.”

4. Manuel Ortega, law chairman of the Staten Island Democratic Party, filed a complaint with the FEC against Republican Representative Michael Grimm. The complaint alleges excessive and illegal cash contributions. A key fundraiser of Grimm’s is now being investigated for embezzling millions of dollars from a rabbi’s congregation. According to the New York Times story that Ortega used as the basis for his FEC complaint, unnamed followers allege that Grimm sought donations over the legal limit, and that he sought those donations in cash and from undocumented aliens.

5. The Democrat and Chronicle calls for Governor Cuomo to follow through on his election promises for public financing and campaign finance reform. The newspaper notes that “the governor continues to say the right things” and urges him to “prod the Legislature to deliver.”

Other News Nationwide:

1. In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke about the “corrosive influence of money in politics.” He called for “a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress,” places limits on incumbents’ ability to own stocks in industries they impact, and restricts the ability of bundlers to lobby Congress.

2. The New York Times editorializes that under the federal lobbying law, “Newt Gingrich can legitimately claim that he is not a lobbyist.” The paper stated that Gingrich had “made a great deal of money in Washington peddling his influence, while carefully staying about half-an-inch short of the legal definition of lobbyist.” The paper calls for a better law limiting lobbyist activity and promoting disclosure. Part of the problem is that many Members of Congress use the revolving door—more than 400 former members have become lobbyists or consultants in the last decade.

3. In Massachusetts, Senator Scott Brown and likely Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren agreed on a plan to stop outside groups from running negative ads. The agreement “requires each side to donate to a charity of the other’s choosing” when benefiting from a third-party ad, and also requires each side to write to outside groups and television station managers requesting a cease-fire. Brown, who is up for re-election to a full term, said that third-party ads “spend millions of dollars from anonymous donors portraying their opposition unfairly and misleading voters.” The question now is whether the agreement is enforceable.

4, In Montana, the State Supreme Court upheld by a 5-2 vote a law banning corporations from making political expenditures. A New York Times editorial praised the Montana Supreme Court, stating that “in Citizens United, the conservative majority turned itself into a copper kings’ court.” The majority rejected Justice Kennedy’s “misguided reasoning” that money does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” The court’s dissenters, however, argued that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision dictates the opposite result, and warned that the Supreme Court would not allow Montana to ignore precedent.

The Associated Press reports on a secret NYPD document that recommends increasing surveillance of mosques and Muslim individuals based solely on their religion.

Senate Democrats plan to hold hearings next month on the influence of Super PACs, MSNBC’s First Read reports.

The California DISCLOSE Act, which would have required greater transparency in election spending, failed a vote in the state Assembly due to nearly unanimous Republican opposition.

Brian Michael Jenkins writes at Foreign Affairs that the National Defense Authorization Act, which affirms murky provisions surrounding indefinite detention, potentially of US citizens, makes it harder to fight terrorism.

Massachusetts: “The State Senate and Governor Deval Patrick are trying to make the best of” the state House’s insistence on passing a harsh 3-strikes law “by attaching a piece of long-needed sentencing reform, but the House of Representatives is so far refusing to accept it.” (The Boston Phoenix). 

The Brennan Center’s Adam Skaggs writes at Salon.com that Tuesday’s primary election in Florida showed why lawmakers must act to end the farce of so-called independent expenditures.

The New York Times has an interactive guide to the funding sources of the most active Super PACs, according to disclosure reports released yesterday.

Given widespread disenfranchisement and confusion about laws regarding voting rights for the formerly incarcerated, a Minnesota task force is considering allowing all individuals with criminal convictions to regain their right to vote upon leaving prison. A federal bill supported by the Brennan Center, the Democracy Restoration Act, would enact this change for all voters in federal elections.

About 300 people rallied in Virginia’s capital yesterday to protest a proposed voter ID bill they say evokes racist Jim Crow laws (AP).

“Last month, Barack Obama's administration resisted provisions codifying the right to detain prisoners indefinitely, arguing that putting such language into law was unnecessary and redundant. Now, the administration is using those very provisions to defend its detention of a suspected al Qaeda militant in federal courts.” – Foreign Policy

New York City Councilman Brad Lander echoes the Brennan Center’s Liza Goitein and Faiza Patel in calling for oversight of the NYPD given recent reports of NYPD training practices that incorporated the use of what many are calling an anti-Muslim film (AP).

US Representatives Garamendi and Heinrich say that while civil libertarians were successful in stripping some dubious provisions from the recent National Defense Authorization Act, there is still work to be done to clarify the US’ commitment to due process in its detainee policy, and that passing the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011 can help (The Hill’s Congress Blog).

NPR reports on a new study of independent campaign expenditures during the 2012 election cycle: nearly half of all political ads are financed by Super PACs.

The Tampa Bay Times editorial board reflects upon a recent US Senate field hearing in Florida on voting rights and concludes, “the state does have a fairness problem, with an election law designed to keep some people from participating in the democratic process.”

“College Democrats castigated the voter-ID legislation announced last week by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in a statement released on Monday to the Des Moines Register.”

Two politicians, however, have now mustered more than rhetoric to rein in the Super PACs. Last week, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Senator Scott Brown called for Super PACs and other outside groups to stop running ads in their election. To provide a disincentive for Super PACs to ignore their request, Brown and Warren each vowed to donate 50 percent of the cost of all such ads to charity. Most groups have reluctantly agreed to abide by the request.

Both candidates demonstrated genuine concern for the role of Super PACs in the political system. Brown criticized Super PACs for “trying to buy elections and do[ing] things inappropriately.” Warren praised the agreement as an attempt to move “beyond talk to real action to stop advertising from third-party groups.” Both candidates should be commended for taking concrete steps to change the tone and restore accountability to their electoral contest.

The goodwill of candidates, however, should not be the only barrier to unrestrained and secretive corporate spending in politics. Government needs to restore common-sense rules so that the public can hold outside groups accountable in the post-Citizens United era. Reportedly, Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Robert Brady (D-PA) will soon introduce legislation that would require outside groups to disclose the underlying sources of their funding. Such legislation would be an important first step to ensuring that outside groups are held accountable in future elections.

James Madison defended the role of a robust federal government in our political system by saying, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” If all candidates were as attuned to the perils of unlimited and opaque political spending by corporations as Brown and Warren are, perhaps we would not need campaign finance regulation. But there are too many candidates who are willing to rhetorically distance themselves from outside groups while doing nothing to rein in their worst practices. It’s time for government to play a proactive role in protecting our democracy again.

The Brennan Center's Faiza Patel and Liza Goitein call for NYPD oversight after an anti-Muslim film was shown during training.

The AP reports that the CIA officer working with the NYPD will leave his post in April. Coordination between the CIA and NYPD for domestic terrorism surveillance has come under intense scrutiny in recent months.

NPR quotes the Brennan Center’s Larry Norden on how voter ID laws could potentially disenfranchise millions.

The New York Times editorial board praises Tennessee’s new rules for judicial ethics and recusals, crafted with suggestions from the Brennan Center.

“The New York State Bar Association is proposing a change to state law that would allow more types of criminal records to be sealed, saying the shift would give offenders who stay out of trouble a better chance to rebuild their lives.”

As the US Senate convenes a field hearing on new suppressive voting laws in Florida tomorrow, the Brennan Center’s Jonathan Brater writes that it’s time for lawmakers to “come together to improve voter registration to make it more accurate, secure and voter-friendly” (Tampa Bay Times).

Brennan Center attorney Michael Price is quoted in a Technology Review article on the Fourth Amendment implications of new technology that would allow police officers to detect concealed weapons on individuals from as far as 75 feet away.

While the Supreme Court’s ruling in US v. Jones has generally been well-received, there is some concern that the court left too many questions unanswered, potentially leaving the door open for infringements upon Fourth Amendment rights. Read editorials by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Washington Times.

The Lexington Herald-Leader editorial board calls upon Kentucky lawmakers to approve a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to individuals with criminal convictions. Kentucky is one of only four states that permanently disenfranchise individuals with criminal convictions.

Representative Chris Van Hollen will introduce a bill to require better disclosure and transparency in campaign spending.

In a joint op-ed in today’s Times-Union, former New York State Congressmen Sherwood Boehlert and Scott Murphy voiced their support for Governor Cuomo’s plan to enact a system of public financing of elections, an issue he gave prominence in his State of the State address.

Speaking from their experiences as former members of Congress representing both major political parties, Boehlert and Murphy acknowledge the “corrosive role that private money plays in political campaigns and the legislative process,” both in Washington and Albany. The increased cost of running for office in New York means that candidates have to spend more and more time courting special interests to raise money for their campaigns. This has only contributed to Albany’s culture of dependence on big money.

The solution for our state: adopt a system of voluntary public financing of elections with matching funds like we have in New York City. If small donor contributions are matched on a 4-to-1 ratio, politicians would be able to spend less time raising money from lobbyists and special interests, and more time focusing on serving the interests of their constituents.

A recent Siena poll indicates that public financing of elections has broad support among both Republicans and Democrats in New York. Boehlert and Murphy have now added to the growing — and bipartisan — chorus of calls for meaningful campaign finance reform in Albany.

As the President explained: “I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”

This announcement offers hope that the long-delayed (and much-criticized) 50-state settlement talks over “robo-signing” by foreclosing lenders will be only a first step. The reported rumors surrounding the talks have suggested that a handful of major lenders (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Ally Financial) would be required to contribute up to $8 billion for foreclosure prevention and refinancing efforts. This is in addition to setting aside $17 billion for principal reductions for underwater mortgages.

In exchange, the banks would receive waivers of liability for past unlawful practices. The critical question is how broad these liability waivers will be. If the banks are let off the hook, not just for “robo-signing,” but also for abusive and misleading practices in their loan origination and securitization, then there will be little leverage left to ensure future settlements that are better matched to the enormity of the current crisis. Attorney General Schneiderman has been a key critic of any deal that would let lenders off the hook, and his participation in this new effort is a positive sign.

President Obama also illustrated a keen awareness of the roots of this problem. As he said: “Let’s remember how we got here…In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them. Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior.”

More than three years later, we are only halfway through our nation’s foreclosure crisis — but we have yet to see accountability for this misconduct. Instead, lenders have dragged their feet on helping to get borrowers back on track with their payments — despite the fact that foreclosure prevention will benefit families, communities, and the lenders themselves by helping the housing market to recover.

We need a serious investigation into the origins of this crisis. And we need federal and state authorities to leverage those investigations, and to press lenders to finally embrace the kind of large-scale modifications of failing and at-risk mortgages that must take place to dig us out of our economic malaise. We hope this federal/state initiative will help provide the leadership needed to steer us out of this crisis once and for all.

“Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that New York police used ‘terrible judgment’ in showing officers a film about Muslims that Islamic groups have complained is inflammatory,” the AP reports. The Brennan Center helped to unearth documents revealing that the NYPD showed the anti-Muslim film to nearly 1,500 officers.

A group of citizens is suing to block Missouri’s redistricting plans on the grounds that the districts aren’t equal in size, violating “one-person, one-vote” constitutional requirements.

ProPublica’s “Pac Track” allows users to see where outside money is heading during this 2012 election cycle.

Some East Haven, Connecticut police officers have been accused of racial profiling (NBC).

The San Francisco Police Department is coming under scrutiny for its involvement with an FBI anti-terrorism unit, The San Francisco Examiner reports. 

Documents uncovered by the Brennan Center show that 1,500 NYPD officers saw what The New York Times calls a “dark film on US Muslims.” The NYPD initially said the film was only shown a "couple of times."

Brennan Center Executive Director (and former Clinton speechwriter) Michael Waldman spoke with The Root about President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight.

Adam Skaggs of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program is skeptical that a pledge by Sen. Scott Brown and his opponent Elizabeth Warren intended to limit third party spending will work (International Business Times).

The Milford Daily News editorial board encourages Massachusetts lawmakers to pass a package of sentencing reforms to address prison overcrowding and the 30% increase in Department of Corrections spending over the past decade through reductions in harsh mandatory minimum sentences and through greater post-release supervision.

Only 17% of Americans, according to a new poll by the Center for American Progress, agree that corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited money on elections.

Two primaries in Texas? (SCOTUS blog)

The Supreme Court ruled today in US v. Jones that GPS tracking constitutes a search, and therefore requires a warrant from law enforcement (Politico).

The Brennan Center’s Mimi Marziani, two years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, says it’s a matter of how, not when, the case will no longer be the law of the land given steadily increasing backlash.

Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos decries voter suppression laws passed in states around the country, citing the Brennan Center’s research on the impact of these voting law changes.

William Yeomans, a former aide to late Senator Ted Kennedy, says South Carolina’s racially discriminatory voter ID law only exacerbates the need for the Voting Rights Act, making plain the case for its continued importance (Politico).

As legal aid programs around the country struggle to meet demand, a group of Massachusetts lawyers, including state Supreme Judicial Court Justice Ralph Gants, is calling for increased state funding to civil legal aid programs, the AP reports.

“Recent evidence shows that the collaboration between the NYPD and CIA, which turned the NYPD into one of the most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, may not have been by the book.” – International Business Times

Meet the super super PAC.

The financial crisis has taken a terrible toll on our state’s homeowners, forcing many out of their homes and putting many others at risk of foreclosure. Banks are unable or unwilling to renegotiate loans, and many of their foreclosure practices were questionable.

However, Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal failed to include a much-needed restoration of the $25 million appropriation for the Foreclosure Prevention Services Program that last year’s budget eliminated. This statewide network of housing counselors and legal aid lawyers has saved New York money by keeping families in their homes, and deserves the Governor’s support.

Foreclosures are devastating families and neighborhoods, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color. The foreclosure crisis is also dragging down our housing market. Financial analysts say that a strong response to help struggling homeowners is needed to lift our state and nation out of the current financial downturn. As Governor Cuomo declared, “We need to resolve this crisis so we can move on.”

Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal recognized that foreclosures are one of the critical issues facing New York State. Notably, he proposed the creation of a Foreclosure Relief Unit in the Department of Financial Services. This unit will focus on educating homeowners on the foreclosure process and its various rules and regulations, and will hopefully play an important role in mobilizing New Yorkers.

In addition, the governor should be applauded for proposing a judiciary budget that includes $25 million for civil legal services, a boost in state funding that will help ensure that general legal services are not further eroded due to sinking IOLTA funds and recent cuts to the federal Legal Services Corporation. Yet this $25 million is separate from what New York has been providing — and what is needed — to support the Foreclosure Prevention Services Program, which does not receive funding from the state’s judiciary budget, and which funds vital housing counseling in addition to legal services.

We have to tackle our state’s foreclosure problem on multiple fronts — by educating homeowners, but also by providing them with ongoing counseling and legal support. Since 2009, the Foreclosure Prevention Services Program has assisted more than 80,000 homeowners. The state’s $50 million investment in this program has saved New Yorkers billions of dollars by preventing families from slipping into homelessness, shoring up property values in struggling communities, and preserving our state's property tax base. This is money well spent.

Restoring the program’s funding is absolutely necessary to ensure homeowners have a voice in the foreclosure process — a judicial proceeding that is full of legal complexities. We urge Governor Cuomo and the state legislature to heed advocates’ call to restore the $25 million dedicated to housing counseling and legal services for New Yorkers at risk of foreclosure. As the Brennan Center has stated, this is a much-needed investment that will pay off for all of us.

On the day named in Dr. King’s honor, the GOP candidates struggled to reconcile some of their controversial stances on voting rights policy with Dr. King’s celebrated struggle to expand the franchise. Former Sen. Rick Santorum invoked Dr. King’s memory by challenging the veracity of an attack ad run by a pro-Romney Super PAC, which falsely painted Santorum as supporting voting rights for incarcerated prisoners. Santorum used the opportunity to clarify that while he did support legislation, named in honor of Dr. King, to restore voting rights to people who completed their sentences, he never advocated letting current prisoners vote. Former Gov. Mitt Romney responded by taking a harder line, arguing that a person who has committed a violent crime should never be allowed to vote, regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and irrespective of whether criminal justice officials in the state have deemed the individual fit to re-enter society. This position — permanent disenfranchisement — is so extreme that only a handful of states have actually adopted the policy.

Santorum also highlighted another problem with Romney’s position: “This is Martin Luther King Day. This is a huge deal in the African-American community, because we have very high rates of incarceration — disproportionately high rates, particularly with drug crimes — in the African-American community.”

Santorum is right to highlight the link between the mass incarceration of African Americans and the racial disparities in voting that criminal disenfranchisement laws cause. But disenfranchising people with criminal convictions is more than just a “huge deal” for the African-American community — it is an issue of fairness for all our communities. More than 4 million Americans who currently live, work, and pay taxes in our communities are disenfranchised by state laws that bar individuals with criminal convictions from voting even after they’ve been released from prison. Dr. King’s struggle for equal access to the ballot box cannot be reconciled with state policies like these that disenfranchise free citizens — something Coretta Scott King noted shortly before her death.

Dr. King’s legacy surfaced again in Monday’s debate when Texas Gov. Rick Perry, responded harshly to a question about the enduring legacy of the Voting Rights Act. Moderator Juan Williams asked Mr. Perry, “Are you suggesting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that the federal government has no business scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote?”

Rather than acknowledging the evidence of continuing racial discrimination in voting — evidence that led to the bipartisan, nearly unanimous reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 — Perry instead replied that Texas was “under assault by the federal government” and that “South Carolina is at war with this federal government,” referring to the Justice Department’s recent objections to voting changes in those states under the Voting Rights Act. Perry’s response to Williams’ question represents a very different view of the VRA than that of two of our recent presidents from Texas and of Dr. King himself. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the original VRA in Dr. King’s presence and, in 2006, President George W. Bush reauthorized the law, which was re-named in honor of Dr. King’s wife. It’s ironic that Texas’s latest presidential candidate would describe this seminal piece of civil rights legislation in such militaristic terms on the same day that the nation remembers a man who famously helped bring the law into being through nonviolent activism.

Shortly after the Civil War, with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, our country made a pledge that no state would be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race when it comes to voting. A century later, our national government reaffirmed that pledge by enacting the Voting Rights Act. There should be little doubt that Dr. King would expect the federal government, as he did during his time, to ensure that states cannot backslide on the promises this country has made to prohibit racial discrimination in voting, or to provide equal opportunity for all its citizens, including those who have paid their debts to society.

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision this morning in the Texas redistricting case disallowing the use of the Texas legislature’s un-precleared plans and directing the court that drew interim redistricting plans to re-draw those plans and provide greater legal support for them. Read coverage of the decision at The New York Times and SCOTUSblog.

The Washington Post editorial board and Charles Colson each write in support of restoring voting rights to individuals with criminal convictions, reacting to Monday’s GOP debate in which Mitt Romney took a hardline stance against voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.

“Protesters plan to ‘occupy’ courthouses in more than 100 cities across the U.S. on Friday to protest a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed most limits on corporate and labor spending in federal elections,” the AP reports.

While the city council of Portland, Maine passed a symbolic measure calling upon the state’s Congressional delegation to support a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and “corporate personhood,” The New Republic’s Mark Schmitt says the push for a Constitutional amendment may damage the cause.

Bucking a growing trend of sentencing reform initiatives in many states, Virginia Republicans have introduced a proposal for longer sentences for drug offenders, which would come with an $11 million price tag for two years.

Vanity Fair has compiled an oral history of Guantanamo with interviews from lawyers, soldiers, diplomats, and former detainees.

New York’s notoriously weak campaign finance laws were highlighted this week as disclosure reports revealed that former Assemblyman Carl Kruger used nearly $1.4 million from his campaign funds to pay for his legal defense against federal corruption charges. While other states require that candidates set up a legal defense fund, New York allow candidates to use cash from campaign funds pay attorney’s fees.

Susan Lerner from Common Cause/NY notes that “when contributors give to a candidate, they want to support the candidate in his election campaign — not pay for his defense against fraud charges.”

Our former colleague, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, has pointed out that lawmakers have taken advantage New York's laws by using campaign funds to pay for cars, cell phones, country clubs, sporting events tickets, legal bills, meals and even pet food.

Senator Liz Krueger introduced a bill last year that would address the misuse of campaign funds for personal purposes. Among other restrictions, S3053 would forbid the use campaign funds to “pay attorney’s fees or any costs of defending against any civil or criminal investigation or prosecution for alleged violations of state or federal law.”

Of course, this incident highlights only one of the many problems with our state’s campaign finance laws and we hope that it will be among those addressed when the promised campaign finance bill is introduced.

The Virginian-Pilot editorial board lays out a compelling argument against Virginia’s strict voter ID proposal, citing Brennan Center research and calling the bill an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Rob Richie and Lindsey Needham of FairVote have some advice for Texas as the state finds itself entangled in lawsuits over election changes. (Austin American-Statesman)

Rob Hager and James Marc Leas take on some common misconceptions about Citizens United at Truthout.

“By mixing falsehoods with racial condescension, Newt Gingrich brought a raucous presidential debate crowd to its feet on Monday night in South Carolina, further cheapening his reputation and that of the state Republican Party.” – New York Times editorial

A Texas legislator doesn’t think the Department of Justice will allow the state’s voter ID law to pass muster under the Voting Rights Act (San Antonio Express-News).

The Brennan Center’s Larry Norden appeared on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” this morning to discuss the disenfranchising effect of voter ID laws and GOP attitudes toward voting rights.

During last night’s Republican debate, Rick Santorum challenged Mitt Romney on his views on felon voting rights. Santorum supports restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals upon completion of the entirety of their sentence, but Romney said he does not think anyone who has committed a violent crime should be able to vote again. Read coverage of the exchange in the Washington Times.

Rick Hasen says the views Governor Perry articulated in last night’s debate about the Voting Rights Act and the federal government’s role in protecting voting rights marks a sea change in GOP views towards the law. Meanwhile, The New York Times editorial board articulates why the Voting Rights Act is still necessary.

On MLK Day, Connecticut lawmakers proposed voting reforms to increase voter turnout, including same-day voter registration, no-excuse-needed absentee voting, and online voter registration (CT News Junkie).

Virginia prisons’ use of solitary confinement is scrutinized (Washington Post).

Alabama lawmakers may consider a proposal to reduce prison overcrowding through reforms to release or divert low-level, first-time offenders.

Is a password something a person knows or something a person has? A bank fraud case may shed new light on how passwords fit into Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. 

Foreclosure Mediation: Emerging Research and Evaluation Practices highlights workshop participants' calls for the federal government to promote foreclosure mediation. Recommendations include establishing federal guidelines for foreclosure mediation programs; helping to fund state and local mediation programs; and requiring federally-backed loans to go through mediation as a condition of foreclosure. The report also emphasizes the need to evaluate what works in mediation programs, such as to mandate participation from homeowners. All of these strong recommendations would help to encourage greater responsibility and accountability among lenders and loan servicers who have too often raced to push homes into foreclosure rather than seeking creative solutions that would benefit homeowners and lenders alike. 

The Brennan Center has studied the need for legal representation in foreclosure proceedings (including a report co-authored by Melanca Clark, who also co-authored this week’s DOJ release) and continues to advocate for legal representation for families in foreclosure. Recent data shows that homeowners often come to mediation without the benefits of legal assistance or other counseling. For example, in Franklin County, Ohio, 87 percent of homeowner cases scheduled for mediation did not have legal representation in 2009 and 2010. Without legal assistance, these homeowners are at a significant disadvantage to effectively navigate a system where loan servicers seem more eager to set up roadblocks than facilitate solutions.

Fortunately, many policymakers recognize the need for a greater investment in foreclosure prevention services such as legal assistance and counseling. Just this week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that he would direct $1 million in unused settlement funds toward foreclosure prevention legal services. We applaud this effort and urge officials in New York and across the nation to follow this example by providing adequate support for struggling homeowners. As we have stated, more needs to be done to invest in foreclosure prevention.

Encouraging mediation and investing in counseling and legal assistance pays enormous dividends by allaying the costs of foreclosures for families, communities and our nation’s economy as a whole. The Brennan Center will continue to press for access to justice in these cases, as a matter of fairness and due process, and as a necessary investment that will help all of us out of our current fiscal crisis.

“The Navajo Nation has filed suit in U.S. District Court for Utah, alleging that San Juan County is attempting to keep Navajos from capturing a second seat on the county’s three-member commission by failing to redraw voting districts to reflect the 2010 U.S. Census” (Salt Lake Tribune).

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced yesterday that the state will allocate $1 million for legal assistance for individuals facing foreclosure. Read the Brennan Center’s work on the importance of legal representation in foreclosure matters and the current crisis in legal assistance for homeowners.

The New York Times editorial board says the country will go back to the days of “robber barons” if the Republican National Committee is successful in its lawsuit to scrap “the 105-year-old ban on direct corporation contributions to candidates and parties.”

Mark Schmitt at The National Memo says Super PACs help keep “zombie candidates” alive with continued funding after their viability among the electorate has faded.

Project Vote, via Think Progress, outlines a few state measures that would expand the franchise or make voting easier, notable exceptions after a year of state efforts to restrict access to the ballot.

Every 10 years, following a census, the federal government reviews population distribution across the country and, based upon a division of total population between total congressional seats, re‑allocates the appropriate number of congressional seats to each state. Any state may gain, lose or keep the same number of congressional seats in this process, depending on population growth or loss. Then, every state must redraw district lines for congressional and state legislative seats to satisfy the constitutional principle of “one-person, one-vote” in response to new population information. In 37 of 50 states, including Texas, the responsibility of drawing these lines falls to the legislature. Following the 2010 Census, Texas was allocated four additional congressional seats due to an increase of more than 4 million new residents, the overwhelming majority of which were Latino.

Due to a history of discriminatory voting practices, Texas has been under the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act since 1975. The Voting Rights Act obligates Texas to submit any election change, like its new redistricting plans, to the federal government for preapproval, or “preclearance,” through either the Department of Justice or the D.C. Circuit Court before any part of the redistricting plan may be enacted. In order for Texas to conduct elections in 2012, it needs to have redistricting plans in place no later than March so candidates have time to file for the primary election. 

In July 2011, Texas finalized new redistricting plans for its state house, state senate, and Congress and submitted those plans to the D.C. Circuit Court for preclearance. The Department of Justice opposed preclearance, alleging the Texas legislative plan unfairly discriminated against minority voters. While the preclearance process was pending in D.C., plaintiffs filed different claims in federal court in San Antonio, TX, claiming the legislative redistricting plans violated federal law and the constitution. Because the San Antonio court could not know whether the legislative plans would go into effect until after the D.C. Court made a decision about preclearance, it stayed all action until the completion of the preclearance action.

In November 2011, the D.C. Court found that the Texas plans were not entitled to preclearance as a matter of law and ordered a trial on the merits. The San Antonio Court, noting that the D.C. Court could not finish its work in time for Texas to conduct its 2012 elections, ordered the parties to submit proposed plans so it could create interim plans to use for the 2012 elections. Then, the San Antonio court produced plans that were very different than the plans produced by Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature. In response, Texas filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to intervene and stop the interim plans developed by the San Antonio Court from going into effect.

On December 9, 2011, five justices of the Supreme Court ordered the stay and an expedited hearing on the issue of whether the San Antonio Court interim plan should go into effect, which they heard Monday.

In considering this matter, the Court will weigh whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act retains its full force and effect by not allowing implementation of any non-precleared plan in whole or in part, or whether the San Antonio Court should have given greater deference to the Texas legislative plans – which have not been found to violate any state or federal law – in crafting interim redistricting plans.  

Courts are frequently called upon to craft redistricting plans. But courts typically step in only after a state legislature or commission fails to complete the plan in time or after there is a legal finding that the state plan violated state or federal law and a court must draw a remedial plan. Here, the court in San Antonio acted to create an interim redistricting plan that differed significantly from a completed legislative plan that had not been found to be illegal. But because Texas’ legislative plans are under the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, no part of the plan may be enacted until Texas achieves preclearance from the federal government.

There is legitimate concern that if the Supreme Court orders the lower court to show deference to the state legislative plan in crafting an interim solution, it will significantly undercut the ability of Section 5 to protect jurisdictions from redistricting plans that discriminate against minority voters. Moreover, such a decision could incentivize Section 5 jurisdictions to drag out the preclearance process with the intention that the non-precleared plans will serve as a benchmark for any interim plan until preclearance is granted or denied. 

It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will uphold the full force of Section 5 and refuse to permit any deference to an unprecleared plan, or whether it will require courts placed in the position of drafting interim redistricting plans to show some degree of deference to legislative redistricting plans during the preclearance process. Arguably, if the Supreme Court was going to allow the interim plans to stand, five justices would have allowed the interim plans to go into effect rather than stay the order of the San Antonio court.

At oral argument the Justices expressed clear opinions about the sufficiency of the interim plan. Certainly the “progressive” justices suggested that the San Antonio panel did an appropriate job in crafting an interim solution. However, there was an unwillingness of the more “conservative” members of the court to find the Texas legislative plan void. Because the San Antonio Court crafted an interim plan, not a remedial one, and because there was no judicial finding of infirmity, the right-leaning side of the court certainly suggested that a legislatively enacted plan is entitled to deference. While the outcome is not certain, the entire Court appeared to accept that the constitutionality of Section 5 is not at issue in this case. 

We expect that the Supreme Court will rule on this case quickly to ensure that Texas has new district lines in place for this year’s elections. The litigation in the D.C. Court and in San Antonio will continue, and legal determinations will be made as to whether the Texas district lines are legal under the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. We can only wait to see what this will mean for the future of Section 5.

The Brennan Center’s Lee Rowland writes a letter to the editors of the Sun Journal in Maine criticizing their editorial board’s endorsement of a proposed voter ID law.

Linda Greenhouse, the former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent and current contributing writer, calls voter ID laws “a problematic solution to a non-problem,” citing the Brennan Center’s research.

“In the latest GOP effort to accord corporations the same rights as people, the Republican National Committee wants to strike down the century-old ban against direct corporate contributions to candidates and party committees,” writes Dan Froomkin at The Huffington Post.

Two Pennsylvania attorneys involved with the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network say, “cuts to legal aid harm the justice system.”

The Charleston Gazette editorial board calls the massive increase in West Virginia’s prison population despite stagnant general population growth “absurd,” praising proposals to divert low-level drug offenders away from prisons.

Hundreds protest on 10th anniversary of Guantanamo prison (McClatchy-Tribune).