When Democrats in Congress consider gun control, it is always through the optics of 1994, the year Republicans recaptured the House of Representatives after 40 years as the minority party. Democrats had passed (by a razor-thin 216-214 margin in the House) a crime bill that included a ban on 19 specific assault weapons. The National […]

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In November, Mauritius’ ambassador to the U.S., Somduth Soborun (pictured, right), pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to pay his domestic worker the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour). Authorities said the worker, a Filipina national whom they identified only as C.V., came to the U.S. on a visa to work for Soborun, […]

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1. Amnesty International Amnesty International is engaged in a campaign to pressure President Obama to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo. 2. National Religious Campaign Against Torture NRCAT is lobbying the White House and Congress to create an independent commission of inquiry on torture. 3. Open Society Justice Initiative The Justice Initiative has sued Romania […]

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In July 2007, George W. Bush invited the families of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to the White House Rose Garden signing of the Voting Rights 
Act. The 25-year extension of civil rights legislation enacted in 1965 passed by a 98-0 vote in the Senate and by 390-33 in the […]

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“The court explained that the challenged at-large electoral systems had been created against the backdrop of Alabama’s ‘unrelenting historical agenda, spanning from the late 1800s to the 1980s, to keep its black citizens economically, socially, and politically downtrodden, from the cradle to the grave.’” —U.S. District Judge John D. Bates Shelby County v. Holder, September […]

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