Human Rights First has begun a five day campaign to alert people to the dangers of the Rep. Sensenbrenner's Real ID Act which has passed the House and now moves on to the Senate.

This bill puts refugees at risk. It will:

• Make it much harder for refugees to prove that they qualify for asylum; and

• Bar a U.S. federal court from prohibiting a refugee’s deportation to the country where she fears harm while her asylum case is pending before that court.

The bill (H.R. 418) was passed with a 261-161 vote margin by the House of Representatives on February 10, 2005. Human Rights First, together with a diverse group of faith-based, human rights, and refugee assistance organizations, opposes this bill because it would harm refugees and undermine this country’s commitment to protecting those who flee from persecution.

The death toll for U.S. soldiers in Iraq has reached 1,500.

Freeway Blogger should be on the move soon. Background here.

The Bush Administration scored a victory for faith-based discrimination yesterday. In a party-line vote Wednesday, the House approved changes to the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, a law that "provides funds for training and vocational rehabilitation programs for adults and dislocated workers, as well as activities for low-income youth."

Under current law, religious groups that receive federal money for job-training programs must obey civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring or firing.

This requirement is removed under the proposed amendment.

The House on Wednesday approved a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a person's religious beliefs in making employment decisions.

This ought to make women uncomfortable. Kansas law enforcement officials apparently obtained a court order to obtain tissue samples taken for a pap smear from the accused BTK killer's daughter and used the samples for comparison with DNA the BTK perpetrator left at the scene of some of the crimes. Without her knowledge, of course.

The agents' strategy was to use a DNA sample from the daughter to see whether it would link her father to DNA left at BTK's crime scenes. The agents went to prosecutors in the Sedgwick County district attorney's office, and a judge in Sedgwick County issued a subpoena for the 26-year-old daughter's medical records in Kansas, a source said. It wasn't clear where in Kansas the records and the tissue sample had been held. DNA was extracted from the daughter's tissue sample, and it was processed within the week before Rader's arrest, the source said.

Federal privacy law restricts access to medical records. Among the exceptions is when law enforcement needs medical records for investigations, Wichita lawyer Chuck Millsap said. The principle is that the need to conduct an investigation outweighs a need for privacy, he said.

What kind of tissue tied to a woman's medical records could be kept on file at a lab?

There are 11 juvenile offenders on death row in Harris County, Texas (Houston.) The Houston Chronicle interviewed several about their feelings on the Supreme Court decision barring their execution. Bottom line: They are relieved, but not celebrating.

Related: The Akron Beacon-Journal criticizes Scalia's dissent.

Raw Story reports:

House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.

The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.

The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.

New York Times: White Supremacist's Relatives Are Questioned in Killings

According to a report in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times, the authorities are also pursuing telephone calls made to Judge Lefkow's home Sunday night from a correctional facility. Prison and police officials refused to discuss the matter, but one of the judge's daughters confirmed that her mother picked up the phone to find an unknown prisoner on the other end the night before she found her husband, Michael F. Lefkow, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, dead of gunshot wounds in their basement. "Somebody called and you have to accept the charges, and my mom did because, I don't know, she's my mom and she's so trusting," Maria Lefkow, 27, said Wednesday morning.

Chicago Sun Times: Judge fears murders tied to her job. There's now a composite sketch of the second suspect:

Someone should drop a dime on this guy.

If he's not involved, the police need to know so they will keep looking for the murderer(s) of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's husband and mother. If he is involved, he needs to be charged and tried.

I'm not a big fan of composite sketches, particularly those created by software programs and Identi-kits. Eyewitness guru and Professor Gary Wells has a new manuscript which discusses multiple past research studies that have found that participating in the creation of a sketch can impair the witnesses' memory of the perpetrator. Wells recently conducted two new studies and reaches the same conclusion.

The programs currently in use by law enforcement utilize a "particularized" approach...the witness picks out individual facial features which are then combined into a face. This is counterintuitive to the memory process, which operates on a more holistic level.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is being criticized by a few school officials, who sound like MADD-types. We're with Oscar on this one.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman told a group of fourth graders on Monday that if he was marooned on a desert island the one thing he would want to have with him is a bottle of gin. And when a student quizzed Goodman about his hobbies he replied that "drinking" was one of them, said Mackey Elementary School Principal Kamala Washington, who was present for the mayor's visit.

Goodman was unapologetic for his comments that came during his visit to the elementary school in North Las Vegas. "I'm the George Washington of mayors. I can't tell a lie. If they didn't want the answer the kid shouldn't have asked the question," Goodman said. "It's me, what can I do?"

If you read through the article, it was no big deal to the kids, only to the school administrators. Oscar is a devotee of gin martinis. In 2002, he was a spokesman for his favorite, Bombay Sapphire.

We happen to know Oscar has a favorite candy, too. Tootsie Rolls. I bet if Tootsie Roll Industries asked, he might make them the official candy of Las Vegas.

Oscar for Governor.

SURVEY....BlogAds is conducting its 2005 reader survey and I hope you'll take about 3 minutes to participate here:

For question #16, the name of this blog is "TalkLeft." Thanks for your time.

A high-level commision has been appointed to study U.S. prison conditions. This is welcome news.

A high-level commission yesterday began a year-long examination of violence, sexual abuse, overcrowding and inhumane treatment in U.S. prisons, in an investigation provoked in part by reports of misconduct by U.S. corrections officers assigned to serve in military detention centers overseas.

The privately organized commission, which has attracted interest in its work from the Justice Department and key lawmakers, is headed by former attorney general Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and John J. Gibbons, a former federal appeals court judge. Its aim is to recommend prison reforms from local to federal levels after holding at least four public hearings around the country.

Why is it needed? Check out these stats:

• More than 34,000 assaults were committed by prisoners against other inmates in a 12-month period covering parts of 1999 and 2000;
• The number of prisoner assaults against staff in that period was 27 percent higher than the previous 12 months.
• More than a million people were sexually assaulted in prisons over the past two decades.
• Eleven inmates died in restraint chairs in the 1990s.
• Corrections officers have reduced life expectancies and higher rates of alcoholism than other law enforcement officers.

There's a lot of good reading on yesterday's Supreme Court decision to ban the death penalty for juvenile offenders. In addition to the editorials in our newsfeed on the left, there are these interesting reads:

• Major Victory for Minors...Chicago Tribune
• Less Fodder for Death Row....Los Angeles Times
• Sparing the Young....Houston Chronicle
• Justice Used Science to arrive at decision....Miami Herald

[hat tip to Rev. Mr.George W. Brooks, J.D.,Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House, Chicago]