Civil Justice Degrees Guide Identifies Top 100 Civil Liberties Advocacy Blogs

http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/library/the-top-100-civil-liberties-advocate-blogs.html

Among the blogs are several dealing with religion, politics, and related topics.

Religion

These bloggers are committed to fighting religious discrimination by informing the public of their right to practice their religion around the world.

1. Religion News Blog: Religion News Blog is a great resource for finding quality information about religious rights and freedoms, cult issues and the presence of religion in politics.
2. Religion Clause: Howard M. Friedman, Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Toledo blogs about religious rights and how government interferes with religion in countries all over the world.
3. FaithWorld: Reuters’ religion and ethics blog reports on all the news about religion, religious freedom, and religion and politics.
4. Inspired Faith, Effective Action: This blog is associated with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and features posts about social justice, peace, environmental issues, racial justice, women’s rights and a lot more.
5. Dalit Freedom Network: Blogs written on this site tackle arranged marriages, religious and cultural discrimination, religious conversions and other issues affecting this population in India.
6. Military Religious Freedom: Though this blog is no longer active, it contains enlightening posts about discrimination, crusading Christians and other religious issues in the U.S. military.
7. The Center Blog: The Center Blog comes from the Center for Law and Religious Freedom at The Advocacy Ministry of the Christian Legal Society. Read about court cases and dialogues involving Christian doctrine and culture.
8. Apostasy and Islam: This blog follows the recent campaign of Muslims to “affirm the Freedom of Faith.” Read all about the campaign in this blog, which also connects readers to resources about Islam, religious freedom and Muslim culture.
9. The Liberty Blog: The Liberty Blog is published by the North American Religious Liberty Association, and posts discuss the free exercise of religion, U.S. rulings and laws that affect religion, religion and health, and other related topics.
10. Religion and Society: This blogger tries to understand how religion fits into contemporary culture and politics.

Constitutional Issues and Supreme Court

These analytical blogs will help you get summaries of Supreme Court rulings and dig deeper into the Constitution so that you can more effectively participate in the debate about civil liberties.

1. Brad’s Weekly Constitution Blog: Brad writes to defend “the original intent of the Constitution.” Even if you don’t agree with his stance, you can browse categories like immigration, religion, the Second Amendment and the U.N. to get a better understanding of Constitutional issues.
2. Wait a Second!: This blog reports back to its readers about “the civil rights opinions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,” including rulings on discrimination.
3. American Constitution Society Blog: Recent posts from this blog include “Due Process for Immigrants” and “Human Rights First Report on Terrorism and the Court System.”
4. Free Constitution: Read about all kinds of civil liberties issues, freedom breaches and legislations here.
5. SCOTUS Blog: Get the latest updates on Supreme Court cases and rulings from this blog.
6. U.S. Supreme Court Blog: In this unofficial blog, posts discuss civil liberties rulings affecting children, jury selection and more.
7. Supreme Court and U.S. Politics: Get summaries of opinions passed by Supreme Court Justices here.
8. Progressive Liberty Blog: This blog aims to educate readers about Constitutional issues, American freedoms and more.
9. The Populist Party Blog: This is “where the people rule,” and bloggers post about civil liberties and the demand for basic rights and protection.
10. Liberty’s Blog: This blog is written by a “Texas Yankee” who writes about American equality and liberty.

America’s Democratic Collapse – A Speech by Chris Hedges

On May 28, Pulitzer Award winning journalist, Chris Hedges, gave a speech at Furman University in South Carolina. Although we do not necessarily agree with all of it, it does raise some interesting points for discussion.

Here is the speech -click on the link to read the rest at Alternet.org:

I used to live in a country called America. It was not a perfect country, God knows, especially if you were African American or Native American or of Japanese descent in World War II, or poor or gay or a woman or an immigrant, but it was a country I loved and honored. This country gave me hope that it could be better. It paid its workers wages that were envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions. It offered good public education. It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law and respect for human rights. It had social programs from Head Start to welfare to Social Security to take care of the weakest among us, the mentally ill, the elderly and the destitute. It had a system of government that, however flawed, was dedicated to protecting the interests of its citizens. It offered the possibility of democratic change. It had a media that was diverse and endowed with the integrity to give a voice to all segments of society, including those beyond our borders, to impart to us unpleasant truths, to challenge the powerful, to explain ourselves to ourselves.

I am not blind to the imperfections of this America, or the failures to always meet these ideals at home and abroad. I spent 20 years of my life in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans as a foreign correspondent reporting in countries where crimes and injustices were committed in our name, whether during the Contra war in Nicaragua or the brutalization of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. But there was much that was good and decent and honorable in our country. And there was hope.

The country I live in today uses the same words to describe itself, the same patriotic symbols and iconography, the same national myths, but only the shell remains. America, the country of my birth, the country that formed and shaped me, the country of my father, my father’s father and his father’s father, stretching back to the generations of my family that were here for the country’s founding, is so diminished as to be nearly unrecognizable. I do not know if this America will return, even as I pray and work and strive for its return. The “consent of the governed” has become an empty phrase. Our textbooks on political science are obsolete. Our state, our nation, has been hijacked by oligarchs, corporations and a narrow, selfish political elite, a small and privileged group which governs on behalf of moneyed interests. We are undergoing, as John Ralston Saul wrote, “a coup d’etat in slow motion.” We are being impoverished — legally, economically, spiritually and politically. And unless we soon reverse this tide, unless we wrest the state away from corporate hands, we will be sucked into the dark and turbulent world of globalization where there are only masters and serfs, where the American dream will be no more than that — a dream, where those who work hard for a living can no longer earn a decent wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the decaying rust belt of Ohio, where democratic dissent is condemned as treason and ruthlessly silenced.

I single out no party. The Democratic Party has been as guilty as the Republicans. It was Bill Clinton who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough. Clinton argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers, he insisted, would vote Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better, he argued, to take corporate money. By the 1990s, the Democratic Party, under Clinton’s leadership, had virtual fundraising parity with the Republicans. Today the Democrats get more. In political terms, it was a success. In moral terms, it was a betrayal.

http://www.alternet.org/story/86973/

NEWS BRIEFS: Global Privacy, Free Speech Issues

Study secretly tracks cell phone users outside US (AP)

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/04/national/a100140D77.DTL

Water Crisis to be Biggest World Risk (London Telegraph)

A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs “Top Five Risks” conference.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/05/ccwater105.xml

American Blogger Released on Bail in Singapore

A US-based blogger who allegedly accused a Singapore judge of “prostituting herself” was released on bail Thursday and had his passport confiscated.A judge ordered Gopalan Nair, a former Singapore lawyer who is now a US citizen, to be released on 5,000 dollars bail (3,676 US) after more than four days in custody.

A prosecutor told the court there was no need for him to be detained while further investigations were carried out.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080605082122.yhz5ise8&show_article=1

McCain Says He Would Put Conservatives on Supreme Court (Washington Post)

When you cast your vote in November, you’re not only voting for the President and the administration, you are voting for his or her nominations for Supreme Court justices who could impact constitutional interpretation for decades to come.  Thanks to Greg Hamilton of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association for alerting us to this news story.  Admin

 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008; Page A09