The House of Representatives today passed a bill on a voice vote to send the Terry Schiavo case to federal court:

Under the House legislation, a federal judge would decide whether withholding or withdrawing food, fluids or medical treatment from an incapacitated person violates the Constitution or U.S. law. It would apply only to incapacitated people who had not left directives dealing with being kept alive artificially and for whom a state judge had authorized the withholding of food or medical treatment.

by TChris

Prepare to hear more complaints about "activist" judges -- "activist" being defined as any judge who interprets the law in a way that upsets the religious right -- after a California Superior Court judge ruled today that the state's voter-approved definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman violates the state's constitution.

"The denial of marriage to same-sex couples appears impermissibly arbitrary," wrote San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer. "Simply put, same-sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before."

Drawing an analogy to the "separate-but-equal" justification for school segregation that prevailed before the Brown decision, the judge held that providing "marriage-like rights without marriage" is insufficient to assure equal protection of the law.

by TChris

If you put up a sign on a Greenwich, Connecticut telephone pole seeking help in rescuing your lost cat, the local police will leave you alone. If you put up a sign complaining about the environmental policies of J.P. Morgan Chase, however, the local police will charge you with disturbing the peace -- at least if you post the sign on the street where the bank's CEO lives.

That lesson was learned by three environmental activists working on behalf of the Rainforest Action Network. The selective enforcement of an ordinance that bans signs on public property, and of the state law prohibiting disturbances of the peace, appears to hinge on the content of the posted sign, with police taking action only in response to political messages that offend neighborhood residents.

The decision to punish speech on the basis of its political contents violates the First Amendment. The ACLU of Connecticut may (and should) step in to help the activists.

David Lane, Ward Churchill's attorney, said tonight that while C.U. and Churchill were able to agree on the amount of money for a buyout, other conditions have stalled the talks. The news article says that word of a plagerism investigation by Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia nine years ago made the C.U. Regents want more time to consider the buyout. Churchill denies the plagerism charge and says it was based upon one footnote in a work he assembled, that the inclusion of the footnote was inadvertant and that he did not take credit for the work.

Local Denver news is reporting the amount agreed upon was between $300,000 and $400,000. Lane says if C.U. doesn't want to settle, fine, Churchill will continue teaching. If he's fired, there will be a lawsuit.

Ward Churchill's lawyer has confirmed that there will be a final buyout agreement between the embattled Professor and the University of Colorado by the end of the weekend. The money has been agreed upon, a few terms still need to be hashed out.

Via AmericaBlog:

A federal judge in Washington, DC just granted the gay couple's request for a Temporary Restraining Order against USA Next, requiring the organization to cease and desist from further use of the couple's photos for any purpose. This is a big deal because it means the judge has found that the guys have a very good chance of winning their case, and he also said he could see how they could get damages.

The couple depicted in the ad sued over having their wedding photo used without their consent. At the tro hearing yesterday,

A consultant hired by USA Next, Mark Montini, took the photo from the Portland Tribune's Web site. He said Wednesday that ``it looks like we made a mistake'' in not first getting permission from the Tribune. ``At the end of the day the worst case scenario was something fell through the cracks in our office,'' he said in an interview.

A University of Colorado regent has confirmed to a local news station that an attempt will be made to buy Professor Ward Churchill out of his contract. The report on his scholarship has been delayed until next week.

Choice Point is not alone. LexisNexis, through its parent company, Reed Elsevier, announced today that a database it acquired from Seisint has been hacked and up to 32,000 files with personal information have been breached.

Federal and company investigators were looking into the breach at Seisint, which was recently acquired by Lexis Nexis and includes millions of personal files for use by such customers as police and legal professionals. Information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers, but not credit history, medical records or financial information, corporate parent Reed Elsevier Group PLC said in a statement.

Reed-Elsevier's statement is here.

The incidents arose from the misappropriation by third parties of IDs and passwords from legitimate customers. LexisNexis has notified law enforcement authorities and is proactively assisting in law enforcement investigations of these incidents.LexisNexis is also working with customers to enhance security procedures.

Good news for civil liberties: Matrix, the multi-state police database effort, is on its last leg. It began with 13 participating states, and is now down to three. Today, Michigan announced it would leave the program.

...only Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut remain. State police also said they were concerned about future funding and unrealistic expectations to expand the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.

The program's potential for abuse contributed to states' decisions to abandon it.

©ivil libertarians and those opposed to big government fear the breadth of data stored in the MATRIX will allow law enforcement to spy on law abiding citizens. Its data mining capabilities, for example, would allow police to create lists of people who fit criminal profiles based on their ethnicity, address or credit history.

by TChris

Commemorating the "Bloody Sunday" demonstration for voting rights 40 years ago, politicians and civil rights supporters crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge again today.

Nearly 40 members of Congress, led by [Rep. John] Lewis, linked arms and sang spirituals and protest songs as they marched from Brown Chapel AME Church through downtown Selma and across the bridge, following the route that Lewis, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and more than 500 others walked on March 7, 1965.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson worries that Congress will water down the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007.

That act, passed in the wake of the "Bloody Sunday" march, abolished Jim Crow obstacles that kept black people from the polls, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. The act required specific states, mainly in the South, to submit their electoral processes to federal supervision.

Criticizing Bush directly, Jackson said the president told members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), that he was not familiar with the act. President Bush was once governor of Texas, one of the states covered by the act. "How can you be fighting for democracy and be unclear" on what the Voting Rights Act says? Jackson asked.

Crooks and Liars has the video of embattled C.U. Professor Ward Churchill on the Bill Maher show.

Identity theft and fraud are big problems, and data accumulator and seller Choice Point seems headed into deep trouble, as the FBI and Secret Service get on its case:

Yesterday, the burgeoning scandal led ChoicePoint to cut off access to some sensitive data to thousands of small businesses. The company also announced in filings with the government that two senior executives were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for stock trades that took place after they learned about the scheme last fall but before they made it public.