By Rebecca Beitsch . . . Mike Anderson was an 18-year-old freshman at Texas State University when he was busted with less than a gram of weed. Police arrested him, took his mugshot, and he spent the night in jail. The legal consequences for being caught with such a small amount of marijuana — just enough for a joint or…
Read MoreTag: marking
NARSOL gears up to challenge Int’l Megan’s Law
By NARSOL . . . Congress’s enactment of legislation permitting the State Department to mark the passports of registered citizens and notify nations about their pending travel is reprehensible. It is beneath the dignity of the United States to brand its own citizens with a mark of derision and shame, a mark that will very likely close a great many…
Read MoreTenth Circuit COA upholds Oklahoma driver’s license requirement
By Robin . . . Unpersuaded by the court-appointed counsel’s encouragement to read a prison inmate’s pro se lawsuit liberally enough to include a First Amendment complaint, the Tenth Circuit has affirmed a lower Court’s judgment dismissing a challenge to Oklahoma’s requirement that citizens convicted of an “aggravated sex offense” must have their driver’s licenses (and state-issued identification cards) stamped…
Read MoreThe power of labels, letters, and marks
On October 5, 1938, the Third Reich directs its Ministry of Interior to invalidate all passports held by Jews until the letter “J” was affixed to them. Less than 80 years later, and on February 8, 2016, the American Congress directs the Department of State to invalidate all passports held by sexual offenders until a “unique identifier” is affixed to…
Read MoreSO passports to be tagged like Jewish IDs under Hitler
By David Post . . . When I was growing up, in a Jewish family in Brooklyn in the 1950s, Hitler and the Holocaust were common subjects of conversation in my household. Though at the time it all seemed like ancient history — along with the Civil War, the Black Death, the fall of Rome, and everything else that had…
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