Adriel Arocha, a 5 year old boy who attends school in the Needville (TX) Independent School District, wears his hair in two long braids. He and his parents argue that the hairstyle promotes his Native American heritage and religious beliefs. The school district argued that it was "not really open to letting 5-year-olds make their own rules” and told him to comply with the school's dress code which requires boys (but not girls) to keep their hair short and unbraided.

After "Adriel’s parents attempted to convince district officials to grant their son a religious exemption," the school board voted to let Adriel "wear his hair in a tightly woven single braid down his back with the hair behind his ears, out of his eyes and the braid tucked into the collar of his shirt." The school superintendent expressed pride in Needville's "structure and discipline." The school district apparently takes less pride in the Constitution's guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

Fortunately, after Adriel was suspended for rejecting the school board's "compromise" and returning to school with twin braids worn outside his shirt, the ACLU stepped in. [more ...]

Campus police at the Fort Wayne (TX) Independent School District are miffed that school administrators would not let them search a teacher's SUV after a high school parking attendant claimed to smell "the odor of marijuana" coming from the SUV, and after the police, responding to that information, had two drug dogs sniff around the SUV, resulting in "alerts" from both dogs. The police claim this gave them probable cause to search the SUV, but school district administrators ordered them not to search it because "there was no evidence of workplace misconduct."

The police have a point. They apparently search students' cars routinely when drug dogs alert, even in the absence of "school misconduct" by the students. Why should a different policy apply to teachers?

Unsurprisingly, however, the larger question has eluded the police, the school district administration, and the reporter who covered this story. [more ...]

Much to the chagrin of the Beltway Torture enablers and those who attempt to mainstream Bush/Cheneyism, President Barack Obama is acting forcefully on the civil liberties questions that have concerned many Americans. I have written about the developments here. One that escaped my notice was President Obama's Executive Order establishing a task force to review detention policy options. The task force is no small thing in that it includes the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Task Force will be charged with:

Hillary Clinton went to her new office today and met with State Department employees. She received a warm welcome.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a rousing welcome this morning when she arrived at Foggy Bottom for the first time, as cheering foreign service and civil service employee packed every inch of the C Street lobby, including the balcony overlooking the flags of foreign nations.

TPM's video here shows the throngs who assembled to greet her. President Obama and VP Biden will visit there this afternoon. [More...]

Via Glenn Greenwald, WaPo must have been shocked that their slanted poll question on torture did not produce a pro-torture result:

Q. Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects?

By a wide margin -- 58-40% -- Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances. Let's repeat that: "no matter the circumstance."

"Center Right" America has spoken, Newsweek and WaPO -- time to end your Extreme Right Wing campaign to continue the despicable Bush/Cheney torture policies.

Speaking for me only

I did not see it, but this AP article makes Admiral Dennis Blair, President Obama's designee for the post of Director of National Intelligence, seem very Shermaneque in his clarity:

The man tapped to oversee U.S. intelligence promised Congress on Thursday there would be no torture and no warrantless wiretapping on his watch. . . . Blair said one of his main responsibilities will be rebuilding the American people's trust in the nation's intelligence agencies. Eight years of a secretive Bush administration authorized harsh interrogations, the secret kidnapping and transferring of suspected terrorists, and a domestic surveillance program that operated without the knowledge of a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee just such activities.

"The intelligence agencies of the United States must respect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people, and they must adhere to the rule of law," Blair said. Blair said he believes strongly that "torture is not moral, legal or effective." . . . "I will work to rebuild a relationship of trust with the American people," he said.

This is, I must say, a terrific start.

Speaking for me only

Here they are. J will almost certainly have more thoughts on them. I have no thoughts on them.

This is an Open Thread.

If it sticks, Huzzah for President Obama:

[T]he [executive] orders . . . will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

Here is my concern:

The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.

(Emphasis supplied.) If Greg Craig said that, then this is all a charade. If Obama is saying that, then this is a big lie. Which, in some ways, makes it worse. More . . .

The flub apparently made people nervous. Chief Justice Roberts re-administered the oath of office to President Obama tonight, out of an abundance of caution.

Don't worry, the White House says: Obama has still been president since noon on Inauguration Day.

Nevertheless, Obama and Roberts went through the drill again out of what White House counsel Greg Craig called "an abundance of caution."

Shorter version: It was unnecessary but made everybody feel better.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has named Tom Stickland, former U.S. Senate Candidate and U.S. Attorney for Colorado as his chief of staff.

Strickland is not a career prosecutor. He was U.S. Attorney under Clinton for two years, from 1999 to 2001. He took office the day after the Columbine shootings. His primary focus was prosecution of serious gun law violators. Previously, he lost the 1996 Senate election to Wayne Allard. He lost to Allard again in 2002. (Allard decided not to seek re-election this year and was replaced in November by Rep. Mark Udall.)

I'm a bigger fan of Strickland's than Salazar's. He's one of the very few politicians I asked TalkLeft readers to contribute money to. [More..]

Update: It's official. Caroline Kennedy released a statement just after midnight saying she withdrew her name.

Update: Commenters below are saying David Gregory reported on Maddow tonight that the media got it wrong and she has not withdrawn her name.

****With Hillary Clinton confirmed as Secretary of State, it will only be a matter of days before New York Governor David Paterson names her replacement.

It won't be Caroline Kennedy who withdrew her name from consideration this afternoon for personal reasons, specifically, the health of her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy.

Who's left? [More...]

The Supreme Court's Kimbrough decision should have put an end to the argument that federal judges must impose sentences that treat crack cocaine as 100 times worse than powder cocaine by regarding a gram of crack as the equivalent of 100 grams of powder. Kimbrough held that judges are entitled to disagree with that Congressional policy -- a policy that most reasonable people regard as unwise and that even the Sentencing Commission rejects.

Some federal courts have nonetheless stubbornly clung to their own precedent, refusing to give effect to Kimbrough's holding. In a particularly egregious example, the Eighth Circuit vacated a sentence because it believed the judge had no power to substitute a 20:1 crack-to-powder ratio for the 100:1 ratio. After the Supreme Court ordered the Eighth Circuit to reconsider its decision in light of Kimbrough, it reached the same decision.

Today the Supreme Court delivered a smack down to the Eighth Circuit. [more ...]