Washington, U.S.A. — A recent vote showed overwhelming support for Personhood in Georgia, with 66% of voters showing support to amend the Georgia constitution to grant the paramount right to life to all innocent human beings.  The measure was passed in 158 of the 159 counties in Georgia.

The non-binding GOP primary results overwhelmingly supported Georgia’s Personhood amendment. Georgia Right to Life President Dan Becker has called on the State Legislature to approve the amendment to go before voters; acknowledging the clearly expressed will of the Georgia voters.

“The message has been sent,” Becker said, “the legislature needs to let every Georgian decide the human rights issue of the 21st century.”

Support for the Personhood movement has been growing rapidly; both in the US with Personhood USA’s attempts multiplying state by state, as well as internationally; with a similar, Vatican-approved amendment in Europe.

“Personhood amendments do not grant rights to anyone – they merely recognize the God-given rights of every individual human being,” explained Keith Mason, President of Personhood USA. “The people of Georgia have shown that they are ready to vote ‘Yes’ on personhood, and now it is time for the legislature to ensure that the Georgia Personhood amendment is on the ballot.”

In a statement, Georgia Right to Life calculated that nearly 1.5 million children have been killed in Georgia since 1973′s Roe v. Wade decision, with an astonishing total of 56 million children killed nationwide.

“We’re living in a society that sadly accepts death—either abortion or the willful neglect of the fragile—as a way to deal with perceived problems,” continued Becker, “and that violates both God’s will and our right to life guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence.”

Personhood USA is a grassroots, Christian organization founded to establish personhood efforts across America to create protection for every child by love and by law. Personhood USA is committed to assisting and supporting Personhood Legislation and Constitutional Amendments and building local pro-life organizations through raising awareness of the personhood of the pre-born in all 50 states and internationally.

Image Courtesy of  infomatique

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A version of this story was co-published with The Washington Post.

Clarence Aaron seemed to be especially deserving of a federal commutation, an immediate release from prison granted by the president of the United States.

At 24, he was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a cocaine deal, even though it was his first criminal offense and he was not the buyer, seller or supplier of the drugs. Of all those convicted in the case, Aaron received the stiffest sentence.

For those reasons, his case for early release was championed by lawmakers and civil rights activists, and taken up by the media, from PBS to Fox News.

And, ultimately, the prosecutor’s office and the sentencing judge supported an immediate commutation for Aaron.

Yet the George W. Bush administration, in its final year in office, never knew the full extent of their views, which were compiled in a confidential Justice Department review, and Aaron’s application was denied, according to an examination of the case by ProPublica based on interviews with participants and internal records.

That Aaron joined the long line of rejected applicants illuminates the extraordinary, secretive powers wielded by the Office of the Pardon Attorney, the branch of the Justice Department that reviews commutation requests. Records show that Ronald Rodgers, the current pardon attorney, left out critical information in recommending that the White House deny Aaron’s application.

In a confidential note to a White House lawyer, Rodgers failed to accurately convey the views of the prosecutor and judge and did not disclose that they had advocated for Aaron’s immediate commutation.

Kenneth Lee, the lawyer who shepherded Aaron’s case on behalf of the White House, was aghast when ProPublica provided him with original statements from the judge and prosecutor to compare with Rodgers’s summary. Had he read the statements at the time, Lee said, he would have urged Bush to commute Aaron’s sentence.

“This case was such a close call,” Lee said. “We had been asking the pardons office to reconsider it all year. We made clear we were interested in this case.”

The work of the pardon office has come under heightened scrutiny since December, when ProPublica and The Washington Post published stories showing that, from 2001 to 2008, white applicants were nearly four times as likely to receive presidential pardons as minorities. The pardon office, which recommends applicants to the White House, is reviewing a new application from Aaron. Without a commutation, he will die in prison.

Through the Justice Department, Rodgers declined repeated requests for an interview, and the department itself declined to comment on any aspect of the Aaron case, citing “privacy and privilege concerns.”

“Every clemency request — whether it be for commutation of sentence or for pardon — is considered carefully and thoroughly by the Office of the Pardon Attorney,” spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said.

Last week, the American Constitution Society sponsored a panel discussion on Capitol Hill devoted to the pardon issue. President Obama’s former White House counsel Gregory B. Craig said the president could issue an executive order eliminating the pardon office.

“We cannot improve or strengthen the exercise of this power without taking it out of the Department of Justice,” Craig said.

He advocated for a bipartisan review panel that would report directly to the president.

The number of pardons awarded has declined sharply in the past 30 years, as have commutations. Obama has rejected nearly 3,800 commutation requests from prisoners. He has approved one. Bush commuted the sentences of 11 people, turning down nearly 7,500 applicants.

A former pardon office lawyer said some applicants have been turned down “en masse” with little, if any, review, a claim the Justice Department disputes.

Aaron, now 43 and in his 19th year behind bars, had not known how close to success his request had come, or what had barred his way, until he was contacted by ProPublica. Still, he said, it gave him hope.

“I didn’t know I had that type of support” from the judge and prosecutor, he said in a phone interview from the Alabama correctional facility where he is held. “When you do the right things each day, there really are people out there watching, and for those who still haven’t given me their support, I will keep working for them, too.”

A High Hurdle

Aaron stumbled into the “war on drugs” near its peak, in 1992. Then a linebacker at Southern University in Baton Rouge, he introduced a classmate whose brother was a drug supplier to a cocaine dealer he knew from high school in Mobile, Ala.

Aaron was present for the sale of nine kilograms of cocaine and the conversion of one kilogram to crack, according to court records. He was paid $1,500 by the dealer.

After federal authorities busted the ring and the case went to trial, Aaron claimed his role was so limited that he knew almost nothing about the deal. But he refused to testify against friends, and others fingered Aaron as a major player and testified against him in exchange for reduced sentences.

Though it was Aaron’s first criminal offense, he received the stiffest sentence of anyone involved in the conspiracy. Only Aaron and the drug supplier, who is scheduled to be released in 2014, remain behind bars.

Aaron’s case gained national attention in 1999 when he appeared in “Snitch,” a PBS “Frontline” documentary about prisoners serving long sentences after refusing to turn informant. The film helped him garner support in Congress and from civil rights organizations.

In January 2001, Aaron submitted an application for a commutation. He faced a high hurdle.

Between 1980 and 2010, requests for commutations rose sharply, reflecting lengthier sentences and the elimination of paroles for federal inmates, while the number of successful applicants plummeted.

“The reason that some people should have their sentences commuted is because they have been over-sentenced,” said Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor who runs the country’s only law school clinic for commutations.

Under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both two-term presidents, one applicant in 100 was successful. Under Bush, approvals fell to barely better than one in 1,000. So far, Obama has commuted the sentences of fewer than one in 5,000. The only person freed by Obama had support from one of the president’s closest congressional allies, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

Aaron’s high profile boosted his chances, as did his track records as a model inmate. He wrote in an amended petition that he was deeply ashamed of his actions and felt “terrible remorse. I also regret that I further compounded my mistake by not admitting to my participation at trial.”

But his petition had a critical weakness.

U.S. Attorney David York, the top prosecutor for the Southern District of Alabama, opposed reducing Aaron’s sentence.

In 2004, then-Pardon Attorney Roger Adams recommended the White House deny Aaron’s request. Adams said in a recent interview that he wrote the recommendation with some ambivalence.

“Anyone who looks at Clarence Aaron will see a really, really tough case of a young guy in prison for the rest of his life,” Adams said.

His report went to the White House, where it sat for three years among a growing stack of recommendations.

A Cursory Review

In 2008, Rodgers, a former military judge and federal prosecutor, took over the pardon office and changed the way it handled commutation applications.

Under Rodgers’s predecessors, staff lawyers reviewed each case, gathered pre-sentence and Bureau of Prisons progress reports and wrote recommendations based on their research.

“Some reports were shorter, just a paragraph or two,” said Margaret Love, who served as a pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997. “But there was always enough of a report that you could get an idea of what the basic facts and issues were.”

For the first 2 1/2 years under Rodgers, however, most petitions were handled by paralegals, not staff attorneys, and recommended for denial in batches, said Samuel Morison, a lawyer who spent more than a decade in the pardons office before leaving in 2010 to work for the Defense Department. He said Rodgers instituted the change when there was a significant backlog.

“The office types up a list of names, along with basic sentencing and offense information for each prisoner, and sends the list to the White House with a note that says the attached cases are meritless and should be denied,” Morison said.

At the end of 2010, Rodgers reverted to the old system. He now assigns a lawyer, along with paralegals, to review commutation requests, the Justice Department said.

Still, in the past four years, applications from more than 7,000 prisoners have been denied — 22 times as many as were rejected during Reagan’s eight-year presidency.

The Justice Department insists the accelerated process did not mean applicants got short shrift.

Rodgers “personally reviewed every application for commutation of sentence before recommending their disposition,” a Justice Department official said.

The dwindling numbers have caught the eye of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who has complained publicly about the lack of commutations. “A people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy,” Kennedy said in a 2003 speech to the American Bar Association. He urged members to tell president and governors, “this young man has not served his full sentence but he has served long enough. Give him what only you can give him. Give him another chance. Give him a priceless gift. Give him liberty.”

But applicants who most need the pardon office’s support have increasingly hit a wall, advocates say.

“We have never found a political opposition to the idea or concept of commutations,” said Mary Price, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that pushes for judicial discretion in sentencing and, in certain cases, shortening of terms. “The chief impediment lies in the pardon attorney’s office.”

A Nine-Year Odissey

The White House sent Aaron’s application back to the pardon office for reconsideration in early 2008 as part of a larger push to find clemency candidates.

According to former White House counsel Fred Fielding, his staff had become frustrated by the lack of positive recommendations from the pardon office. In Bush’s final year in office, lawyers began searching through denial recommendations for promising cases and found Aaron.

This time, key elements shifted in Aaron’s favor. Unlike her predecessor, Deborah J. Rhodes, the new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, supported the petition.

“I have reviewed various documents submitted by Clarence Aaron in support of his petition for commutation of sentence and agree that Aaron should receive a commutation of his life sentence,” her November 2008 memo to Rodgers began.

Rhodes suggested Aaron’s triple life sentence be commuted to the equivalent of a 25-year sentence, with credit for good behavior. Under this calculation, Aaron would be released in 2014.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Butler Jr., who had sentenced Aaron, changed his earlier stance of no position, opting this time to support commutation.

“Looking through the prism of hindsight, and considering the many factors argued by the defendant that were not present at the time of his initial sentencing, one can argue that a less harsh sentence might have been more equitable,” he wrote in response to a motion filed by Aaron’s attorneys.

In a phone interview with the pardons office on Dec. 2, 2008, Butler told Morison, the lawyer in the office, that Aaron “should be granted relief” by the president immediately.

Morison sent an e-mail to Rodgers sharing his transcribed notes from the call with Butler. Morison asked Rodgers if he should update the draft recommendation on file for Aaron’s release in light of the views expressed by Rhodes and the judge. Rodgers responded minutes later: “Thanks Sam. I’ll take it from here.”

Instead, Rodgers offered no new recommendation to the White House and did not revise the old one. He did not pass on years of favorable prisoner reports describing Aaron’s successful rehabilitation. He also made no mention of an affidavit Aaron filed with the pardons office in 2007 in which he expressed further remorse and asked “for a second chance to be a productive citizen.”

Rodgers resubmitted the 2004 denial recommendation, unchanged, to the White House.

In an email the next day to Kenneth Lee, associate White House counsel, Rodgers did not disclose that Rhodes and the sentencing judge now agreed that Aaron should receive an immediate commutation. He told Lee that Rhodes suggested Aaron’s sentence should be commuted to a term of 25 years “at some point.” Rodgers also said that Rhodes believed “Aaron’s commutation request is about 10 years premature.”

No such language is in Rhodes’s memo.

All Rodgers told the White House about Butler’s views was that the judge had “no objection to commuting the sentence presently.”

Rhodes would not comment on Rodgers’s handling of the petition except to reiterate that she had recommended an immediate commutation for Aaron.

“I reviewed the case myself and thought it was a good one,” she said.

Butler declined to comment for this story.

The Justice Department would not answer questions about the way Rodgers characterized the views of Rhodes and Butler, or how Rodgers had arrived at his recommendation on Aaron.

Lee, the former associate White House counsel, said Rodgers had presented the views of Rhodes and Butler “in the least favorable light to the applicant.”

Referencing ProPublica’s findings on presidential pardons — that whites were nearly four times as likely to be pardoned than minorities — he also expressed concern that the office’s approach to the case could have been affected by race. Aaron is African American.

“Had we known before about a potential subconscious bias in the office,” Lee said, “we would have liked to look at the actual letters in the Aaron case rather than rely on the pardon attorney’s summary.”

In response to the ProPublica findings, the Justice Department said it took the concerns seriously and was reviewing the statistical analysis in the article.

Reed Prior

On Dec. 23, 2008, the day Bush denied Aaron’s petition, he commuted the term of another man, Reed Prior, who was serving a life sentence for his fourth drug offense.

Prior was a major dealer of methamphetamine at the time of his conviction in 1996, according to Justice Department records.

When he was busted, police found 869 grams of meth plus nearly $18,000 in cash. He was convicted for possession, with intend to distribute.

Prior refused to cooperate with prosecutors in the Southern District of Iowa. At 46, he received a mandatory life sentence.

Prosecutors in Des Moines vehemently opposed Prior’s commutation request.

According to a copy of the recommendation sent from the pardon attorney to the White House, U.S. Attorney Matthew G. Whitaker wrote that a commutation for Prior “would have a detrimental impact on law enforcement efforts in this community as (Prior) would essentially be rewarded despite his failure to provide full and truthful information about his criminal activity and his associates.”

Prior’s initial application for commutation was denied in December 2007. A year later, he reapplied.

This time, he had the support of influential family friends, senior judges and the wife of Iowa’s then-governor. In addition to petitioning through the pardon office, Prior’s lawyer met with Fred Fielding, the White House counsel.

A week later, Prior was ordered freed after 14 years of incarceration.

“Going through the pardons office didn’t work,” said Robert Holliday, the Des Moines lawyer who handled Prior’s case for free.

“Going directly to the White House did.”

Prior, who is writing a memoir, compared his fortune to that of winning a lottery. “When I see those megamillions ticket-buyers, I think about myself sometimes.” Of Aaron, Prior said he hoped President Obama would commute his sentence. “I watched ‘Snitch’ while in prison and remember his case.”

Lee said the White House was persuaded that Prior deserved to be released.

“There was evidence that he had been rehabilitated and adjusted well during his prison sentence,” Lee said. “He seemed to have shown remorse for his actions and was very active in his prison community, helping others out and had been a changed man.”

Talladega

Aaron remains in a federal penitentiary in Talladega, Ala.

He spent the first dozen years of his sentence at maximum security prisons in Florida and Georgia, where he completed a two-year religious-studies correspondence course through Emory University. He also took courses in microeconomics, Spanish, photography and behavioral development

In 2007, he was transferred to the medium-security facility in Talladega, where he helped bring a new textiles factory onlineand works as a clerk, assisting the factory accountant.

“A lot of people think I’m crazy, to do self-help programs and stay out of trouble with a sentence like mine,” Aaron said. But “from the first day I walked into the federal prison system, I just continued to better myself and educate myself.”

He’s acutely aware of all the milestones he has missed – family birthdays, his college graduation. In 2005, his younger sister Stephaine died suddenly during radiation treatment for skin cancer. Aaron said he calls her daughters every week.

Bush formally denied Aaron’s request on Dec. 23, 2008. Aaron learned of the decision three weeks later when Rodgers sent formal notification to his attorney.

In April 2010, Aaron submitted a new petition for commutation. It is pending.

“If I was to be granted that commutation,” Aaron said, “the president who backed me wouldn’t regret it, because I would work hard every day to prove my worthiness.”

by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica, May 13, 2012, 8 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   Walter G Arce / Shutterstock.com

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More than half of America’s states now have Voter ID laws. Nine states have passed or strengthened their voter ID laws since 2008, when President Barack Obama became the first African-American President.

Critics say this is a direct rollback on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that prohibited the government from blocking people’s right to vote by using Jim Crow era tactics, such as literacy tests.

Pennsylvania’s General Assembly passed Voter ID legislation on Wednesday. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett then signed legislation law making Pennsylvania the 32nd state to adopt a Voter Identification law.

More than half the states in America have some form of voter ID laws. Nine states, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, have strict photo ID guidelines requiring photos must be used shown to vote. Another seven states ask for a photo ID, but will allow people to vote if they can provide another form of identification or meet other criteria. Those states are Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan and South Dakota. Other states require non-photo IDs which can include a bank statement or utility bill in some instances. Those states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington State.

GOP leaders say voter ID laws are needed to prevent widespread voter fraud from occurring. Republican leaders say people who are not on voter registration rolls, double voters and dead people have voted in previous elections. The GOP said Democratic-supportive organizations are to blame because they have submitted illegal voter registration ID cards.

There have been instances of voter fraud but it is extremely rare, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a division of the New York University School of Law. The Center is a non-partisan public policy and law institute which advocates for voting rights, campaign finance reform, civil justice, fair courts and racial justice.

“There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible,” according to a Justice Center policy brief.

The Center further says there is no proof that non-profit organizations have illegally registered voters. Many of the duplicate voting discrepancies have arisen through computer mistakes, people voting in two states or voting for a deceased relative. Reports from the Center also point out that these voting fraud cases would not have been prevented by asking for photo identification.

“We find absolutely no proven cases of fraudulent votes that could be prevented by the restrictive ID law being challenged,” the Justice Center said after reviewing more than 250 claims of fraud.

An interview from a top Texas Republican Party member suggests that the Republicans know that voter fraud is not an expanding problem, yet Republicans are trying to discourage primarily Democratic voters from the polls.

In a May 2007 Houston Chronicle article, former Political Director for the Texas Republican Party Royal Masset said Republicans could gain 3 percent of votes because requiring photo IDs could result in less Democratic voters casting ballots.

“Among Republicans it is an ‘article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,’ Masset said. He doesn’t agree with that, but does believe that requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote,” stated the Houston Chronicle article.

Democrats are continuing to fight against the recent wave of Voter ID registration laws. The Obama Administration’s Justice Department rejected Texas preclearance for its Voter ID law. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires Texas and 15 other states to submit changes to their Voting ID laws to the federal government for review to ensure minorities would not be discriminated against.

U.S. Asst. Attorney General Thomas Perez wrote in a letter to the Texas Secretary of State’s Director of Elections, that the Department of Justice objected to Texas’ voter identification law because it could directly and adversely affect the voting rights of up to nearly 604,000 of registered voting Hispanics. The state did not provide any data regarding how African-American or Asian voters would be impacted by the new law.

The Texas law would require people to show a state-issued id, either a driver license, personal ID card, military ID card, passport, a U.S. citizenship certificate with photo, concealed handgun permit or free voting ID card. The driver license, personal ID cards are only available through the Department of Public Safety. The lack of extended hours, the distance some people would have to travel and the availability of people affected having a vehicle to travel to a DPS office.

Only 49 of the 221 state’s DPS offices have extended hours and 81 out of the state’s 254 counties do not have an office, Perez letter stated.

Perez letter also points out that the state did not show any “significant in-person voter impersonation not already addressed by the state’s existing laws.”

The state of Texas has the option of asking the Department of Justice to reconsider its decision or seek a decision from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Image Courtesey of  Gage Skidmore

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On Martin Luther King Day, Catholic Charities USA and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington honored Martin Luther King, Jr. by presenting awards to contemporary heroes working to keep his dream alive.  This award recognizes them for their commitment to reducing poverty. Hundreds of people attended the third annual “Keep the Dream Alive” Mass & Awards ceremony, which took place at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.

Rev. Larry Snyder, President of CCUSA, said, “I can think of no better way to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy than by honoring individuals who keep his dream alive through their advocacy and service to the poor.”

CCUSA presented “Keep the Dream Alive” awards to USDA Under Secretary, Kevin Concannon, Former D.C. Mayor, Anthony Williams, and former CCUSA Board Member, Janet Pape, for their advocacy and poverty reduction work. The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington’s “Faith Does Justice” Award was presented to local television anchor Andrea Roane.

“While Dr. King’s inspiring life, built on the strength of his convictions and his sense of justice, made a tremendous difference to our nation, we know there is still much work to do,” said Msgr. John Enzler, President and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. “However, as we remember Dr. King, there’s no better moment to look around and celebrate those among us who are carrying on his work in so many different ways today.”

Following the event, more than 50 individuals volunteered with women who reside at the Harriet Tubman Women’s Emergency Shelter in southeast D.C.  Volunteers worked one-on-one with women on an art project designed to allow clients to express their dreams and what Dr. King means to them.

For additional information about today’s event, including pictures and information on the awardees, please visit www.catholiccharitiesusa.org.

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Despite being only 7 kilometers apart, citizens of Villarejo, Segovia have three times less the voice in the Spanish general election than their neighbors in Somosierra, Madrid. Interestingly enough, a vote in Villarejo is equivalent to 3 votes in Somosierra.

This is possible owing the particular electoral system that Spain adopted into its constitution in 1978. Despite the bicameral system, the legislative power is nowadays mainly held by the Congress with 350 deputies selected during general elections.

For this purpose, the country is divided into 50 provinces each one granted with minimum two deputies just for the matter of being a province and two autonomous cities, both in Morocco coastline, with one deputy. So from 350 total deputies, 102 are fixed among provinces and 248 are divided equally between all the provinces by their number of registered voters.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Madrid is granted two deputies per province plus 33 deputies for its 4.5 million registered voters while Segovia has two deputies plus one for its 124,000 electors. A deputy must obtain over 128,000 votes to be elected in Madrid — far more than the whole total amount of registered voters in Segovia, where only around 40,000 votes can decide a deputy. Sometimes it gets worse — like between Barcelona and Teruel were differences are even bigger.

This makes the voting system bipolar; on one side, regional parties always campaign for their own province’s welfare, obviating the needs of other parts of the country and targeting only potential voters living within the same region. They therefore reach a very limited number of deputies.

On the other hand, the main nationwide political parties, Partido Popular (PP) and Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), target citizens throughout the country and have obtained the bulk of deputies so far. In Spain since 1982 there have been eight general elections where both PP and PSOE together obtained between 80 and 92 percent of the 350 deputies while remaining in positions covered by minority regional parties and other minority nationwide parties.

This system made a lot of sense when it was approved back in December 1978, only three years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. By that time, the dictatorship had centralized all power and control in Madrid to make it easier to oversee what was going on and rule the entire nation.

But when the democratic process began, many regions started to claim autonomy. The dictatorship had severely repressed the desire of autonomy in regions like Catalonia and Basque Country, abolishing antique fiscal privileges and suppressing the recognition of Basque and Catalan as official languages.

Regions have been struggling for more independence after Franco´s death and while dismantling the old regime structure and creating a democratic one, the makers of the constitution feared a national partition into several independent countries — or a new civil war. In order to avoid this, they developed a voting system to support more power in regional minorities.

Nowadays, all Spanish regions have obtained more authority on such matters as education, health, transportation, economy, public security and so forth, transferred by the central government over three decades. They have gained an autonomous status with their own regional elections and parliament.

Moreover, the central government has given many other authorities to Brussels after the admission to the European Union. So what is the point of maintaining the system unchanged if regional minorities today have gained most of their demands? For instance, Izquierda Unida (IU), a political party whose ideals rest between communism and socialism obtained at the last general elections almost a million votes — but only obtained two deputies.

Meanwhile, Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), a seeker for independence of Basque Country, received merely 300.000 votes but gained six deputies. Obviously, the vote to deputy ratio does not hold. Imagine that someone decides to create a new party supporting gay and lesbian rights and gains support in the community.

Unfortunately, the gay community is considered a national minority; in aggregated numbers there are several hundred thousands but divided by provinces, their numbers are limited, as low as 3 percent, and not enough to obtain a deputy to represent them. Project this to other national minorities like environmental activists, communists, immigrants with the right to vote, pacifist and so on. Under this system they will never be able to obtain a chair in the Chamber of Deputies.

In 2008, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there were 98 different political parties. Nevertheless, two parties obtained more than 90 percent of deputies, effectively holding the legislative right og Spain without effectively representing the diversity of the nation.

The last opinion poll dated September 2011, just two months before the polling day, shows the same scenario for next general elections. A scenario where the PP and PSOE will obtain over 75 percent of the total votes. Either the Spanish citizens are quite homogeneous or there is a fake democracy in place where plurality has no effect.

Democracy is not only the right to vote once every four years, nor the right to do it freely and secretly. Democracy must encourage dialogue, space for confrontation between ideas and ideals, space to be heard and a space to defend your rights.
Natursports / Shutterstock.com

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The September 11 terrorist attacks brought more than the loss of American lives, they brought considerable impact on internal affairs of the United States. The CIA’s involvement with the NYPD is considered, by many, another stain on the Agency’s long history of scandals.

The CIA has been accused of infiltrating the police department and using its resources to conduct spying operations on a domestic level, mainly targeting the Muslim community in New York City. After a thorough investigation, the Associated Press has published an article revealing the relationship between the Agency and the NYPD in the past ten years.

Work have been done on two main levels. First, a veteran CIA officer was assigned to be in charge of training a police officer who would put into practice new espionage techniques inside the police units. This action allowed the CIA to influence and reorient NYPD towards serving intelligence instead of fulfilling its normal duty as a law enforcement institution.

Secondly, a senior CIA officer was sent to work as a clandestine operative inside the police headquarters, with the main goal of supervising and watching the progression of the project. Bookstores, cafes, bars and nightclubs are some of the public places targeted by the program which consisted of citizens’ surveillance, also referred to in the AP report as “human mapping.”

The same reports said that the NYPD has sent “rakers” into minority neighborhoods to spy and gather data. Police have also used informants, referred to as “mosque crawlers,” to report on religious sermons or gatherings in mosques, even in the absence of suspicious activity.

In his comments on the issue, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, admitted that NYPD is working with the CIA, but defended its practices saying, “If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement and I think they follow the law. We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”

In a response to the report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, asked the Justice Department for an investigation into the case. CAIR attorney, Gadeir Abbas, believes that “the first amendment protects our right to associate freely with one another.”

“An investigation of a community [rather than of a crime or a particular person] unlawfully chills the rights of persons within that community. Furthermore, the Establishment Clause requires NYPD to maintain neutrality between all religions. Their intelligence unit appears to be failing to maintain that neutrality by institutionalizing suspicion of all things Islamic,” Abbas said.

Police involvement in CIA activities has blurred the lines of domestic and foreign affairs as well as the limits between local and federal jurisdiction.

Some say that the CIA’s dependence on the help of the NYPD is because of the the agency’s inexperience dealing with a domestic environment. The lack of diversity among the CIA’s personnel may also play into its inability to conduct operations independent of the police department. The NYPD has both features; a direct contact with citizens, as well as a culturally and linguistically diverse staff that more easily blends into the community.

Others are questioning why the CIA doesn’t try collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instead of NYPD. Whatever the reason, the issues surrounding privacy and freedom is not only found in the U.S. Many Arabs are currently fighting against regimes, where spying on citizens is routine. Meanwhile, many New Yorkers are unaware of the spying efforts of the CIA and police department.

Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com

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Texas Governor Rick Perry’s campaign is barely one week old, but has already seen its share of problems.  He used his book, “FED UP!” to answer a question at a campaign stop on day 2 of his new presidential campaign. However, the book with its radical ideas has plagued the presidential candidate on the campaign trail.

So, now his spokesman states the book is not a look forward to the future, but rather a description of the past. That is some interesting twisting.Last weekend, Perry did some more twisting at a campaign event in South Carolina comparing the Republicans struggle to lower taxes with the civil rights movement. Sigh.

“Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have,” Perry said. “We’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights, I think we all can be proud of that.

And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation.

And Americans, regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is, they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.”

Heading back to Texas for the first time since declaring his candidacy for president of the United States, Perry reportedly encouraged Texans to push back against criticism of the Lone Star State. According to the Associated Press, Perry said, “When the liberal pundits start trashing Texas … I want you all to stand up and say that dog won’t hunt.”

Meanwhile the Governor Rick Perry is sort of doing his governor type job by blocking Obamacare from being implemented in his state, a state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents. Now, there is a governor for you! Although Perry has stated that he supports a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, he is less clear about what alternatives he would support.

Texas has received various grants under Obama’s health care law to implement the health plan. But, when Republican state Rep. John Zerwas tried to move legislation to set up an insurance pool required by the national overhaul, Perry threatened to veto the legislation.

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