On Monday, the US Supreme Court struck down most of the provisions of the Arizona law SB 1070. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports, the sections that were struck down were “provisions that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek or engage in work or to fail to carry documents proving they are in the country legally. Also struck down was the provision that authorized state and local law enforcement officers to arrest anyone based solely on the suspicion that the individual is in the country illegally.” [Read more…]

Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore of The Daily Show have one of their always worth watching discussions on race issues, funny on the surface but also making serious points.

(This clip appeared on June 11, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

I wasn’t so long ago that ‘death squads’, shadowy groups that murdered enemies of a government, used to be the prerogative of despised authoritarian governments, usually in developing countries. But that has changed. [Read more…]