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From Los Angeles Times

Circumcision decisions

Attempts to ban the procedure intrude on parents' ability to decide what's best for children.

May 27, 2011

Despite the overwrought claims made by its opponents, male circumcision is not remotely tantamount to mutilation. Complications are rare and generally minor and short term. And circumcision has been linked to various health benefits.

Nevertheless, a measure to ban male circumcision in children has obtained the required 12,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot in San Francisco — and an anti-circumcision group is now targeting Santa Monica for a similar ballot proposal. These are attempts to intrude on parents' ability to make private medical decisions for their children. And by that, we don't just mean for Jewish and many Muslim parents for whom circumcision is part of religious tradition, but for any family.

Religion is not the main reason to reject this movement. Female genital mutilation is part of the cultural or faith traditions of some groups, yet it is rightly illegal because it is a form of child abuse. According to the World Health Organization, it bestows no health benefits and carries terrible long-term consequences, among them higher rates of maternal and newborn mortality, repeated pelvic and urinary tract infections, fistulas and difficulty urinating. Our society accords religious traditions strong legal protection, but it rarely allows the personal beliefs of parents to take precedence over serious health and safety concerns.

Male circumcision is different, and the experts say the decision should be left with parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for instance, notes that "scientific evidence demonstrates potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision" but that the evidence is not robust enough at this point for a recommendation for routine circumcision. Those potential benefits, according to the Mayo Clinic, include lower risk of urinary tract infection and penile cancer, reduced rates of cervical cancer in the female partners of circumcised men, and possibly lower risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. But families who choose circumcision don't need to prove any health benefits because, in the absence of any evidence that they are harming their sons, they have the right to make medical decisions for them.

If the ballot measure coming up in San Francisco proves anything, it is not that the city by the bay is too weird for prime time (unless the ban actually passes) or that opponents of circumcision have a legitimate point. It's that the initiative process gives many a lunatic idea a chance to flourish.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-circumcision-20110527,0,7295445,print.story

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Immigration reform: Secure Communities and California's push to limit its impact

California has moved a step closer to passing a bill that would roll back the state's participation in Secure Communities, a controversial program aimed at deporting dangerous immigrants. Under the program, all arrestees' fingerprints are shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Thursday, the Assembly passed the TRUST Act by a 43-22 vote. The measure would require that only the fingerprints of convicted felons be run through federal databases. The bill, sponsored by Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would essentially reset the rules for how California counties participate in Secure Communities.

Secure Communities was touted as a way to help identify and deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes. But over the past year, the program has come under fire from those who say it has failed to track down or deport dangerous immigrants. Department of Homeland Securities' statistics indicate that many of those deported under the program had never been convicted of a crime or were guilty of only minor crimes.

Critics also accuse federal officials of misleading state and county officials who questioned whether participation in the program was option. Homeland Security officials appear to have initially told some local officials they could opt out but have since said no such provision exists.

California is among a growing number of states saying they want to modify or opt out of Secure Communities. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn recently ended his state's agreement, though it's unclear if Homeland Security will honor that decision.

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/05/immigration-reform-secure-communities-and-californias-push-to-limit-its-impact.html

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From Google News

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Illegal Workers: Court Upholds Faulting Hirers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that imposes harsh penalties on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

The 5-to-3 decision appeared to endorse vigorous state efforts to punish employers who intentionally hire illegal workers. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts on behalf of the court's five more conservative members, said that Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia had recently enacted laws similar to the one at issue in the case.

The decision did not directly address a more recent Arizona law that gives the police greater authority to check the immigration status of people they stop.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked enforcement of that law in April, and the case may reach the Supreme Court soon.

The challenge to the Arizona law that was the subject of Thursday's decision was brought by a coalition of business and civil liberties groups, with support from the Obama administration.

They said the law in question, the Legal Arizona Workers Act, conflicted with federal immigration policy.

The act was signed into law in 2007 by Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who was then the state's governor. Ms. Napolitano is now secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

The decision on Thursday turned mostly on the meaning of a provision of a 1986 federal law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which said that it overrode “any state or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who” recruit or hire “unauthorized aliens.”

The question was whether Arizona was entitled to supplement the penalties in the 1986 federal law with much tougher ones of its own. The state argued that the phrase in parentheses — “other than through licensing and similar laws” — allowed it to suspend or revoke the business licenses of repeat offenders. Critics called that provision of the state law a “business death penalty.”

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the word “licensing” should be read broadly to allow states to supplement federal efforts to prevent the hiring of illegal workers. His decision was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and, for the most part, Clarence Thomas.

Peter J. Spiro, who teaches immigration law at Temple University, said the majority's broad reading would be consequential. “In some ways, this becomes an exception through which states can drive a truck,” he said. “It's definitely going to embolden anti-immigration constituencies to work through state capitals.”

There is reason to think that those constituencies will meet with some success, judging from the fact that 13 states filed a brief supporting Arizona.

But Robin S. Conrad, a lawyer with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's litigation unit, said in a statement that “the decision does not give states or local governments a blank check to pass any and every immigration law” and that only state laws consistent with the federal one were permissible. The Chamber of Commerce was a plaintiff in the suit.

Ms. Conrad added that “businesses from Main Street to Wall Street are overwhelmed by a cacophony of conflicting state and local immigration legislation” and that Congress should bring order to the area.

Cecillia D. Wang, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, also urged a cautious reading of the decision, saying that it was narrowly tied to the Arizona law. The A.C.L.U. was part of the odd-bedfellows coalition that had challenged the law.

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer with the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm that filed a brief urging the court to uphold the law, said the ruling was “a victory for Arizona and other states” that “provides a realistic roadmap” for enacting legislation that does not run afoul of the federal law.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a dissent joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the word “licensing” in the federal law should be read narrowly to mean “employment-related licensing systems” and not all licenses. “Why not an auto licensing law?” he asked of the majority's interpretation. “Why not a dog licensing law?”

Chief Justice Roberts responded that Congress could easily have limited the phrase had it wanted to. “If we are asking questions,” he added, “a more telling one may be why, if Congress had intended such limited exceptions to its prohibition on state sanctions, it did not simply say so, instead of excepting ‘licensing and similar laws' generally?”

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Arizona law was a measured response to real problems and that “licensing sanctions are imposed only when an employer's conduct fully justifies them.”

He added that there was no reason to fear that the state law would lead to discrimination against Hispanics who were in the United States lawfully.

“The most rational path for employers,” the chief justice wrote, “is to obey the law — both the law barring the employment of unauthorized aliens and the law prohibiting discrimination — and there is no reason to suppose that Arizona employers will choose not to do so.”

But Justice Breyer said the state law disrupted a carefully calculated balance between competing Congressional goals and that it “seriously threatens the federal act's antidiscrimination objectives.” The state law increased penalties for hiring illegal workers, he said, but it left “the other side of the punishment balance — the antidiscrimination side — unchanged.”

The decision, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, No. 09-115, also upheld a second aspect of the Arizona law, this one making mandatory an otherwise voluntary federal program, E-Verify, that allows employers to validate whether potential employees are authorized to work.

In his dissent, Justice Breyer said it was a mistake to require use of a “pilot program” that was “prone to error.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the case because she had worked on it as United States solicitor general.

“I cannot believe,” she wrote, “that Congress intended for the 50 states and countless localities to implement their own distinct enforcement and adjudication procedures for deciding whether employers have employed unauthorized aliens.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27scotus.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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The History of Memorial Day

by Justin Reynolds and Anthony Karge

Traditionally, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer and a weekend full of parades, hamburgers and long road trips. Most importantly, it's a day to remember those who have died in defense of this country, although the holiday had a rocky start in this regard.

Despite its status as a national holiday, the origins of what was once known as “Decoration Day” are shrouded in incomplete historical records and the division between the North and the South caused by the Civil War.

According to USMemorialDay.org, the original name for the holiday was inspired when women adorned Confederate soldiers' gravestones after the Civil War ended. But tensions between the two regions caused the holiday to be stuck in limbo as a national celebration for more than 50 years.

Memorial Day was first proclaimed in 1868 when the graves of soldiers buried at Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. were decorated. By 1890, all the northern states adopted the holiday, but the South refused and celebrated the dead in their own ways. That changed in the early 20 th century, when the holiday was changed to also honor the people who died in World War I.

In 1971, the U.S. Congress officially made Memorial Day a federal holiday.

http://weston-ct.patch.com/articles/the-history-of-memorial-day-4

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