From Kim Ahern at RIFuture:

While other states in the country are passing Constitutional Amendments to ban same sex marriages, civil unions and even as far as contracts between same sex couples - New England has turned into a bastion of equality and rights. From Massachusetts’s landmark decision in Goodridge to Connecticut currently taking up the case if there is a legal difference between civil unions and marriage - why has New England (with the notable exception of Rhode Island) been such a unique place for LGBT equality?

Come learn more at Roger Williams School of Law, in what is bound to be a provocative discussion involving a fantastic panel and keynote:

What: The Culture of Same Sex Marriage Symposium

Where: Roger Williams School of Law (Bristol, RI)

When: Friday, March 28 from Noon - 4:45PM.

Panel 1: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in the State of Rhode Island

Panel 2: Civil Unions v. Marriage in New England

Cost: Free! Includes lunch and wine and cheese reception following the panels. However - if you are an attorney and would like to receive the 5 CLE credits available, the cost for that is $25. Co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association and the RWU Law Alliance for LGBT Students.

Click HERE to register and to read more about the Keynote Address [ David Wilson - original plaintiff in Goodridge and Board Member of both HRC and Mass Equality] and each of the panelists!

Liberal columnist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Anthony Lewis, will be speaking Wednesday, March 19th, at the Roger Williams University School of Law. Following the lecture, Mr. Lewis will sign copies of his books, including Freedom For the Thought We Hate. (Turns out the First Amendment was designed for guys like Ralph Papitto. But shunning is still pretty effective.)

lecture March 19/starts 5PM/ RWU School of Law rm 283

RSVP by March 12 to Barbara Slover whose email addy is, I kid you not, bslover@rwu.edu. Or call (401) 254-4573.

RIFuture has coverage of the legislative package that we unveiled at the Assembly today:

Rep. Grace Diaz, Sen. Juan Pichardo, Sen. Charles Levesque, Rep. David Segal, and Rep. Joe Almeida will join Immigrants United at a news conference to unveil the Campaign for Fairness, Respect and Civil Rights - a legislative platform that promotes racial and economic equality for every Rhode Islander.

The platform consists of 10 bills that promote community safety, civil rights and economic opportunity and strength. Attendees will include the International Institute of Rhode Island, the American Friends Service Committee; Comite de Inmigrantes en Accion; English for Action; Fuerza Laboral; Immigrant Students in Action; RI Jobs with Justice; Ocean State Action; Olneyville Neighborhood Association; Progreso Latino; R.I. Affiliate, ACLU and the R.I. Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison:

More than one in 100 adults Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

I guess this is last week’s news, but I somehow missed it until now. The post office recently announced that they’re putting rates up again. Stamps that now cost 41 cents will soon be 42. Also, the USPS will introduce a 62 cent stamp for those of you who like to send square greeting cards.

Apparently all the revenue generated from converting mailboxes into R2D2s wasn’t enough, and the Postal Service now plans to raise prices every May. This year’s rate increase is happening on May 12th, which just happens to be my birthday. (And Burt Bacharach’s! And Ian Dury’s! And Henry Cabot Lodge’s!) Since I was born way back in 1981, the cost of mailing a letter has gone up 233%, which makes the 24% increase since 2000 seem almost tiny.

Check out the graph after the jump to see the damage: (more…)

This is too horrible:

A 14-day-old infant traveling here for heart surgery died at Honolulu International Airport on Friday after he, his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room, a lawyer for the boy’s family said.

The Honolulu medical examiner’s office yesterday identified the infant as Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa’s largest village, which is located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings have been deferred.

When there was a “Total Recall” device in the Public Safety Complex, recording every single call that went in and out, including privileged calls between lawyers and their clients?

The good old days…

PROVIDENCE — It was “despicable,” an indignant mayor said. A hue and cry was raised. And criminal investigators were summoned.

As the years have passed, however, the public may have forgotten about the brief controversy that erupted at the Providence Public Safety Complex. After all, a state criminal probe petered out. A follow-up review by the U.S. Attorney’s office produced nothing.

It was all about an allegedly secret telephone monitoring system — ambitiously brand-named Total Recall — that missed nothing and kept all that it heard stored in its huge memory. The system was tucked away in a locked utility closet at the complex, only to be discovered by a mayoral task force examining the city Department of Communications.

Are you planning a children’s party or some other event in which you need a magician? Consider hiring President Bush’s newly appointed Attorney General, Michael Mukasey. He is a master of sleight-of-hand tricks. Under fire because of his agency’s support of torture, Mukasey has launched a national campaign to change the subject.

Maybe you’ve seen his handiwork in your local newspaper: “The U.S. Sentencing Commission is letting violent criminals out of prison!” “20,000 crack dealers about to be released into your neighborhood!!” “And they’re all black!!!” “Crack!” “Black Men!!” “Scared yet, America?”

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• Kentucky: House committee approves bill that would amend the Kentucky Constitution to restore voting rights to offenders who have completed their sentences. Kentucky and Virginia are now the only two states that permanently disenfranchise offenders unless the Governor grants individual restorations. This marks the fourth time that the Democratic-controlled House has supported such a measure, but the bill has yet to gain enough support in the Republican-controlled Senate. If the bill were to pass both chambers, the voters of Kentucky would have the chance to ratify the measure, thus restoring voting rights to approximately 128,000 Kentuckians.
• Arizona Daily Star: Amy Goodman on the impact of felony disenfranchisement.
• Claremont Port Side Magazine: history of felony disenfranchisement in the United States since the Civil War.
• Alabama: Rev. Kenneth Glasgow on registering jail inmates to vote in the Birmingham News. When I met Glasgow in April 2006, he told me that he was Al Sharpton’s brother-in-law.
• California: Jail inmates eligible to vote; Prisoners and parolees are not.

OH. MY. GAWD. Speaking of awesome February events at Brown, my ultimate hero, Angela Y. Davis, will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture on February 7 at 4PM in Brown’s Salomon Center for Teaching. Her talk, titled “Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neo-Liberalism,” will be free and open to the public. Just so you know: it took a lot of love for you to get me to post this, because if you all turn out and I don’t get a seat, shit’s gonna hit the fan.

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Over at RIFuture, Kim gives us a heads-up on the film screening:

Tomorrow night (Sunday, 1/27), is the Premier of Venus, Priests, and Superwomen, a documentary about censorship and the banning of the Vagina Monologues at Providence College.

The film examines the varied and conflictive perspectives concerning the play’s censorship at Providence College and also examines wide-ranging views on what some consider offensive and demeaning about the performance, from both Fr. Shanley’s perspective to some of the young women that organized the event.

Details:

Tomorrow night, 7:00 - 8:00PM, at the Columbus Theatre (270 Broadway) in Providence.

Come on America… NUT UP! When did we become a nation of such fraidy-babies? The Providence Journal reports today that Attorney General Patrick Lynch is one of 21 state AG’s who have signed a letter “supporting immunity for the telephone companies accused of illegally turning over the telephone records of millions of Americans”. This is the level of insight one can expect from a man whose legal inspiration comes from comic book superheros. Happily, the attorneys general from several other states are capable of more nuanced thought, and are taking the other side of the issue. This unfettered surveillance does not make us one bit safer.

Perhaps Patrick should consider a new brass plaque for the front of his office building. Instead of Stan Lee, how about this?

“Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security”

… Benjamin Franklin

Encouraging news from the National Law Journal this week:

BOSTON ­— A federal judge in Boston has issued a ruling allowing an interlocutory appeal of a lawsuit challenging a Massachusetts state constitutional amendment and a state law banning imprisoned felons from voting in state and federal elections.

The three plaintiffs suing Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin claim the rules’ disproportionate impact on African-American and Hispanic-American voters in Massachusetts violate the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 2000 Massachusetts constitutional change prohibits incarcerated felons from voting in certain election categories. The 2001 law expanded the bar to all elections held in the state. Simmons v. Galvin, No. 01-11040 (D. Mass.)

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At the Projo’s online poll.   About half of the remainder support civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Mark Arsenault has a great, and relatively hard-hitting, interview with Bishop Tobin about gay rights.

Some interesting questions, and some awkward answers:

Gay couples married in Massachusetts say they are in love, and that their weddings brought them joy. Are those emotions real?

I’m sure they’re very real. And I love all sorts of people I can’t have sex with. So, yeah, the feelings can be very real and the emotions can be very intense. That does not give me the right to have sex with people because I love them, whether heterosexual or homosexual….

Many people cite scripture to show that homosexuality is immoral. But few quote Deuteronomy 22:11, which commands: “Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sort, as of woolen and linen together.” There are also prohibitions against planting two kinds of seed in the same field. Why are some lines in scripture followed, and others ignored?

There are tons of things in the Bible that have to be taken in context. We believe it’s the church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that is properly equipped to interpret the Bible. We need to make the distinction between things that are — how should I say it? — essential moral norms, and those things that are purely accidental, related to a specific time and culture. Who does that? The church does that. We do it in the context of our 2,000-year tradition; we do it, we believe, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. You cannot take everything in the Bible literally. The church has to sort that out.