Making contraceptives more readily available to kids prevents unwanted pregnancies. Opponents of abortion should be pleased that women have birth control options that make abortion less likely. Instead, the Republican Party chairman in Portland, Maine echoes the right's familiar response to governmental efforts to broaden access to birth control:

“It is an attack on the moral fabric of our community, and a black eye for our state.”

As if a middle school girl in Portland won't dare to have sex unless the school clinic will fill her birth control prescription.

Here's the moral of the story:

The problem is that when the police focus on gangs rather than the crimes they commit, they are apt to sweep up innocent bystanders, who may dress like a gang member, talk like a gang member and even live in a gang neighborhood, but are not gang members.

Solomon Moore's first-hand experience with abusive police behavior toward suspected gang members -- "Reporting While Black" -- is worth your time.

It is not ordinarily a crime to be in the United States without proper authorization. Police therefore have no right to detain individuals and command them to "show me your papers" when those individuals aren't reasonably suspected of criminal activity. Immigration advocates believe that's exactly what's happening in Irving, Texas.

Father Pedro Portillo, of Santa Maria de Guadalupe Church in Irving, said he's talked to several people who say they were approached by officers without cause and asked for immigration documents.

The suspicion is that Irving police officers are engaging in "racial profiling and overzealously arresting suspected illegal immigrants so they can be deported, a claim the Mexican Consulate takes so seriously it's advising people to avoid driving through this Dallas suburb."

Mexican Consulate staff in Dallas attempt to interview Mexicans being deported, and say that over the past few weeks it appears a disproportionate number have been from Irving. The consulate covers a huge area, from East Texas all the way to the Texas Panhandle, and Hubbard Urrea said about half those interviewed were from Irving, a Dallas suburb of 206,000.

Taking another time-out from the serious issues of the day, Congress held a hearing to complain about music lyrics that "exploit violence and sexism for profit." As if television doesn’t. Here’s a voice of sanity:

At least one performer at the hearing told lawmakers that rap music had been unfairly singled out as a scapegoat for deeper social problems. "Gang violence was here before rap music," said David Banner, a rapper who records for Universal Music and whose real name is Levell Crump. "I can admit that there are some problems in hip-hop, but it is only a reflection of what is taking place in our society. Hip-hop is sick because America is sick."

If Congress wants to be taken seriously, it should focus on the underlying societal problems of racism and sexism and inequality and poverty, not on the reflection of those problems in rap or hip-hop.

The New York Times has a long expose today on how private capital groups are buying up the large chains of nursing home and cutting staff and care. If you have a loved one in a nursing, you should read it. It's very frightenting. First, what the Times did:

The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2000, and more than 14,000 other homes. The analysis compared investor-owned homes against national averages in multiple categories, including complaints received by regulators, health and safety violations cited by regulators, fines levied by state and federal authorities, the performance of homes as reported in a national database known as the Minimum Data Set Repository and the performance of homes as reported in the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting database.

What it found:

As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains. But by many regulatory benchmarks, residents at those nursing homes are worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data collected by government agencies from 2000 to 2006.

More...

Entrapment has typically been the result of lazy police work by officers who find it easier to manufacture offenses than to solve crimes that have already occurred. Now some complain that private entities are playing the entrapment game. Specifically:

A company that sells antipiracy services to major studios and recording firms is being accused by some bloggers of trying to entrap individuals by getting them to download illegal copies of major Hollywood movies.

It's a brilliant (albeit sleazy) idea, if true: encourage the pirating of movies to boost sales of anti-piracy software. Media Defender denies that the story is true, but doesn't have a convincing explanation for the piracy-encouraging website's existence, or for its sudden disappearance after its connection to Media Defender was exposed.

For more than a decade, Guy and Genevieve Vang waited for the immigration bureaucracy to respond to their application for political asylum. They had two children, U.S. citizens by birth, before the government decided, in late 2000, to begin removal proceedings.

They and their [first] two children came to the United States from France, the country they fled to after they escaped war in Laos and Vietnam. They got working papers, filed for political asylum and waited.

They eventually opened up a restaurant, Bangkok 96, in Dearborn, Mich., and had two more children. But they continued to wait on word from the government about their asylum application.

If the government didn't believe the Vangs were worthy of American residence, it should have rejected their application promptly. Instead, the Vangs were trapped in a paperwork maze. Their green cards were renewed annually but their asylum application languished. Shouldn't the government be obliged to act promptly if it seeks to remove people who are working legally, paying taxes, raising a family, and obeying the law?

The Vangs' only hope is legislative relief. They're scheduled to be deported in less than 60 days. Sign a petition.

Army Specialist Alex Jimenez has been missing since May 12, when his unit in Iraq was attacked by insurgents. As if his wife doesn't have enough to worry about, she's left to wonder whether she'll be deported.

"I can't imagine a bigger injustice than that, to be deporting someone's wife who is fighting and possibly dying for our country," [her attorney, Matthew] Kolken told [WBZ-TV].

Yaderlin Jimenez came to the United States from the Dominican Republic. She entered the country illegally, but after they were married, Alex thought she might be eligible for a green card and legal residence status. His efforts on her behalf only alerted the authorities that she was here illegally, triggering deportation proceedings that, fortunately, were stayed after she learned of her husband's disappearance. Kolken hopes she'll be granted a hardship waiver.

Bump and Update: You can listen to the tape here.

Original Post 4/30
Kent State Shooting Victim Asks for Re-opening of Investigation

May 4 marks the 37th anniversary of the shooting deaths of students at Kent State University. I write about it every year.

This year, there is news, and one of those injured in the shootings says he has new taped evidence to show there was an order given to open fire.

Alan Canfora, who was wounded in the right wrist during the 1970 anti-war protest, said he recently requested a government copy of the nearly 30-minute tape stored in the Yale University archive.

Just before a 13-second barrage of gunfire, a voice on the tape yells, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!" Canfora said.

The tape will be released at a news conference tomorrow.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...

More...

Federal authorities arrested 350 immigrants working at a factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, then realized that they didn't have 350 beds to house the prisoners. The decision to ship them to Texas was at best the result of poor planning. At worst, it was a deliberate attempt to impair the immigrants' access to counsel.

“The government moved them to try to interfere with their rights,” said Bernard J. Bonn III, a lawyer representing 178 immigrants who were initially taken to Fort Devens, a decommissioned Army base in Massachusetts, but flown to Texas because, federal officials said, the base did not have enough beds. “They had 11 months to plan this raid, and after two days they run out of space at Fort Devens because they needed it for someone else?”

A Justice Department spokesperson magnanimously explained "that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency gave detainees a window of time to find lawyers." How nice of them to partially open a "window" for the detainees, some of whom left their children behind as they were whisked away to Texas.

We're lucky we have celebrities. Without people like Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, and Tim Hardaway, the popular media might never pay attention to the country's most serious and enduring social problem: intolerance.

An incident this offensive deserves as much attention as the Gibson, Richards, and Hardaway rants. Will it receive comparable coverage? No celebrities were involved, so don't bet on it.

A Catholic school principal has organized sensitivity training for students who shouted "We love Jesus" during a basketball game against a school with Jewish students. The word "Jew" also was painted on a gym wall behind the seats of Bishop Sullivan Catholic High School students attending the Feb. 2 game at Norfolk Academy, said Dennis W. Price, principal of the Virginia Beach school.

Price who also watched the game, said the rivals exchanged chants, "Then, at some point, our students were chanting, 'We love Jesus.'"

"It was obviously in reference to the Jewish population of Norfolk Academy; that's the only way you can take that," he added.

Kudos to Bill Purcell, Nashville's mayor, for his veto of a mean-spirited and unnecessary ordinance that would have made English the "official language" of Nashville. The ordinance would have required nearly all governmental communications to be in English -- as if the official business of Nashville's government is transacted in any other language.

The mayor said there was the potential for litigation against the city, noting that such cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court dating back to the 1920s. He also expressed a concern that Metro employees would be put in fear of wondering whether they would get reprimanded if they did communicate in another language with someone in need of services.

Do the residents of Nashville truly believe that city employees should be prohibited from giving directions to a tourist in French?