U.S. District Court Judge Raner Collins ruled that Rodriguez has a Fourth Amendment right to challenge the shooting, which he said constituted a “seizure” on the part of the Border Patrol. Unreasonable seizures are a violation of the Fourth Amendment. “The Court finds that...the Mexican national may avail himself to the protections of the Fourth Amendment and that the agent may not assert qualified immunity,” Collins wrote. His ruling allows the lawsuit to proceed.   read more

“Efforts to further increase transparency, no matter how well intentioned, must avoid unintended consequences that could undermine the Federal Reserve’s ability to make policy in the long-run best interest of American families and businesses,” Yellen said. One bill would require the Fed to articulate how it sets interest rates and explain why it sometimes deviates from its own rules when doing so. Another plan would establish regular external review of the Fed’s policy-making process.   read more

In Oklahoma, a GOP Facebook post compared food stamp recipients to feeding animals in national parks, where it can result in dependency. The state's Dept. of Human Services responded: “That was an appalling and uniformed comment. Obviously you did not bother to know the majority of the 604,000 people receiving food benefits in Oklahoma are people who are aging...with disabilities...the working poor who are raising children. ...Is that the kind of dependency you are suggesting we discourage?”   read more

The numbers showed that the poverty levels for white, Asian and Hispanic kids declined from 2010 to 2013. But the rate for black youths remained largely the same. Overall, the child poverty rate in the U.S. dipped slightly from 22% to 20% during this span. The Pew study also reported that black and Hispanic children are overrepresented when it comes to poverty. “Children make up 27% of the black population, but 38% of blacks in poverty,” said Pew.   read more

"I think members [of Congress will] realize they are being sold on a bill that doesn’t solve anything consumers are asking for...a mandatory labeling standard," said Colin O'Neil. Critics have called HR 1599 the “Mother of All Monsanto Protection Acts” after the company that opposes GMO labels. OCA's Ronnie Cummins characterized the legislation as “anti-democracy and anti-state’s rights.” Vermont already has a GMO labeling law, and Big Food has been fighting in court to get it overturned.   read more

Undocumented immigrants have until now been able to get birth certificates by providing a foreign ID if they don’t have a Texas driver’s license or a U.S. passport, as allowed under state law. The officials reportedly told the women they would no longer accept either the matricula consular or a foreign passport without a current U.S. visa. “Everyone born in the United States is entitled to the full rights of citizenship," said attorney James Harrington, who represents the families.   read more

Navajos are getting by on seven gallons of water a day while the average Californian in 2011 used 362 gallons a day. Puerto Ricans are enduring one of the worst droughts in their island’s history, forcing the government to ration water for the first time since the 1990s. For about 160,000 residents and businesses there, water is shut off for two days, then turned on for a day, then off again. About 185,000 others have water every other day and 10,000 more are on 12-hour rationing.   read more

Big Water has been pushing lawmakers to stop more parks from banning sales of disposable water. Those involved in its $13-billion public relations and lobbying campaign include “the titans" of the bottled water industry. Finally the lobbyists found a friend in Congress, Rep.Keith Rothfus, who introduced an 11th-hour amendment into the appropriations bill, recently passed by the House, which prohibits the Park Service from using taxpayer money to eliminate disposable plastic bottles in parks.   read more

The chores included cleaning toilets, showers, windows and floors; doing laundry, clerical and landscape work; plus preparing and serving meals for GEO law enforcement events. A lawsuit filed by nine current and former detainees at the 1,500-bed Aurora Detention Facility also says they were told to clean prison cells without receiving any compensation. Those who refused were threatened with being placed in solitary confinement, according to the complaint.   read more

In 2000, the NAACP voted to implement a boycott of the state to raise awareness of the flag still flying above the capitol building. It has insisted on maintaining the boycott until the flag was removed. It was finally brought down on July 10, a day after state Governor Nikki Haley signed a measure ordering its removal. During its annual convention in Philadelphia on Saturday—the day after the flag came down—the NAACP’s board adopted a resolution ending the boycott.   read more

The suit claims that the stores are not forced to be vigilant about sales to minors and to straw purchasers—those who buy guns for others who aren’t allowed to. The stores are immune from lawsuits for the results of their gun sales thanks to a law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, pushed through Congress in October 2005 at the behest of the gun industry. So the plaintiffs are going after the cities where the stores are located.   read more

The investigation showed that the APA ensured that its ethics policy did not conflict with the standards the Defense Department was using to permit torture of terror suspects. “Notably, APA officials made their decisions based on these motives, and in collaboration with DoD officials, without serious regard for the concerns raised that harsh and abusive techniques were occurring, and that they might occur in the future,” according to the report.   read more

Huppenthal ignored the auditor’s findings and told the Tucson district to drop the program or face significant funding cuts. The district dropped the Mexican-American studies program. Huppenthal was later found to have made blog posts equating welfare recipients with “lazy pigs” and that there should be no Spanish-language radio, TV, billboards or newspapers. He ran for re-election in 2014 but lost in the Republican primary.   read more

Cox has helped Caddo become one of the leading users of the death penalty. “From 2010 to 2014, more people were sentenced to death per capita here than in any other county in the United States, among counties with four or more death sentences in that time period,” said the Times. During this span, Cox secured more than a third of Louisiana’s death sentences. The Catholic has come to see executions as a legitimate way to get back at murderers. “Retribution is a valid societal interest,” he said.   read more

PEER's Jeff Ruch accused Engler of “spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor. He is assembling a mercenary force paid to do his only bidding,” CSB has limited discretionary funds to support its mission—preventing chemical accidents and investigating their causes. A large amount of those funds have been diverted to pay for the legal and consulting contracts awarded by Engler. “These...maneuvers have set the Chemical Safety Board on a course to tear itself apart," said Ruch.   read more

The presence of asbestos in the crayons and kits is “scary,” according to EWG, because “a child exposed to asbestos is 3.5 [times] more likely than a 25-year-old to develop mesothelioma, a lung disease, that is only caused by asbestos, because of the long lag time between exposure and diagnosis. In the case of the crime scene kits, people could inhale airborne asbestos fibers” due to the fact the kits use powders that children are instructed to remove by blowing on it.   read more