VoteKansas.org

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas on Wednesday asked a federal panel weighing its photo-ID requirement for voters to let the state challenge directly the constitutionality of a part of the Voting Rights Act that has required mostly Southern jurisdictions to get Washington to sign off on election changes.

In a filing ...

U.S. and U.K. universities still sit at the head of the class in world higher education, but emerging schools in Asia and elsewhere threaten to shift the global balance of academic power, a major study shows.

In its annual World Reputation Rankings, the London-based Times Higher Education magazine gives American ...

Loriann and Justin Earp thought they were sending their daughter, Ashley Long, to the usual neighborhood sleepover when a popular party prank took her life. Ashley inhaled helium - something any 14-year-old girl might do to make her voice sound like a cartoon character - and died when the gas ...

CHICAGO — Some air travelers over the age of 75 will soon get a break at airport security checkpoints under a test program announced Wednesday that could allow them to keep their shoes and light jackets on and skip pat-downs.

The new guidelines from the Transportation Security Administration, which take ...

BEAUMONT — A man opened fire Wednesday outside a Texas courthouse where he was on trial in a family dispute, killing an elderly woman and wounding three other people, including a daughter he ran over with a pickup truck as he tried to escape, authorities said.

Bartholomew Granger, 41, was ...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit from conservation groups that want to block wolf hunts that have killed more than 500 of the predators across the Northern Rockies in recent months.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of ...

The Obama administration has once again blocked a state from passing reasonable voter identification laws, infringing on Texas' right to help ensure fair elections. The new law would simply require that a voter must show a valid identification in order to cast a ballot.

The lack of a reasonable voting requirement measures leaves the door open for all sorts of fraud, including ballots to be cast by non-citizens, or high turnout of recently deceased voters. According to the voter application website for Texas, I can get a voter I.D. without providing any proof of residency, a drivers license, or even a social security number. There's seems to be little or nothing that would stop a group of individuals for registering many times over, casting multiple early votes, requesting absentee ballots or voting at multiple locations. It's open season for voting in Texas, in other words.

The Obama administration instead argues that such a law is "unfair" and it is unreasonable to expect that someone could be able to obtain a government-issued identification, even if it were free. Yet the government does not feel this way about showing identification for entering a federal building or nightclub, applying for a passport, applying for a job, or purchasing alcohol, tobacco, airline tickets, train tickets, guns, cars, and homes. If anything, it's almost unreasonable to assume that a US citizen would not have some form of valid photo identification.

Previously: Over the past several election cycles there have been many alleged instances of voting fraud found to have occurred during the voting process. There have been instances of votes being cast in the names of the recently deceased, allegations of double registrations, and absentee voter fraud. In many states you can simply show up to vote with any registered name and be allowed to vote, without proof. A number of states have sought to make it a requirement to show a government issued ID to vote, which has proven both logical and popular idea among voters. One such state is South Carolina, which passed legislation that would have required voters to present an official government-issued photo ID. The law doesn't seem too unreasonable given that there are laws requiring ID's for all sorts of things including driving, purchasing alcohol or tobacco, and flying on an airplane. But once again, the DOJ interfered and prevented South Carolina from enacting the law.

Obama Fights Rational Voter I.D. Laws originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 at 21:24:38.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Friendly arguments aren't hard to find in a barbershop, but try cutting in on a hallowed symbol - that red, white and blue pole - and it may be time to hide the scissors.

Steeped in history and symbolism, those iconic cylinders spinning on storefronts across ...

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety.

The 74-22 vote stepped up pressure for quick action by House because the government's power to collect about $110 million a day in federal gasoline ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man stabbed four people at a downtown office building Wednesday afternoon and was shot by a police officer at whom he lunged with his weapon, authorities and a witness said.

Three of the victims are in critical condition, and a fourth received minor injuries, Sgt. ...

Hollywood actor George Clooney on Wednesday accused the Sudanese government of committing war crimes in a mountainous border region, which he and U.S. officials said was teetering dangerously on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Clooney, who returned this week from a trip to Sudan, told the Senate Foreign ...

BEAUMONT, Texas — A man at court with family members opened fire outside a Southeast Texas courthouse Wednesday, killing one person and wounding at least three others, police said.

The gunman also was injured in the incident outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in Beaumont, about 80 miles east of Houston, ...

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Virtual Curtilage: A Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy in Public. SSRN Abstract:

This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment privacy in public that builds off the legal construct of curtilage around private homes. Curtilage involves a publicly observable area defined as a protected space outside the home in which intimate activity associated with the sanctity of the home and the privacies of life are conducted. Arising from principles of property law and privacy conceptions that pre-date the Fourth Amendment, the idea is a well-grounded legal fiction that protects individuals beyond the four walls of the home.

This article takes the principle of curtilage applied to property, and applies it to the rest of the Fourth Amendment protections covering “persons,” “papers,” and “effects.” The “virtual curtilage” theory has been developed in response to growing surveillance techniques in public spaces, as well as difficulties in protecting thoughts and writings in the digital realm. The theory looks at the development of an historic legal concept that expanded privacy protections based on fundamental principles of property and privacy – a concept based not on what could be searched, but what should be searched consistent with societal rules. That limiting principle of protecting a zone outside the literal four walls of a home has renewed urgency as surveillance technologies increase on our streets and in our digital lives. In addition, building off the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones and other cases that have refocused interest on the property based-nature of the Fourth Amendment, the idea of curtilage remerges as a central organizing principle for redefining a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — A jury found Virginia Tech negligent on Wednesday for waiting to warn students about a gunman during a 2007 campus massacre that left 33 dead.

Jurors deliberated for 3 ½ hours before siding with the parents of two students who were killed on April 16, 2007, in ...