News & Commentary

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has announced that he is setting up a committee to review whether to continue using private prisons for immigration detention. But it doesn’t take a study to figure out that the system Secretary Johnson runs is costly and causes needless human suffering. We should stop filling for-profit prison beds with asylum-seekers, children, and thousands of others who never got a fair day in court. If Secretary Johnson wants to understand the stakes, he should ask the family of

Last December, I slipped on water on my bathroom floor and fell hard onto the tile. Later that night, I felt cramping in my back and abdomen. The next morning I was bleeding. After doing some online research, I feared my intrauterine device (IUD) was dislodged. I knew I needed to see a doctor. I did what anyone would do — I called an OB-GYN in my insurance network and made the soonest appointment I could. The do

New Hampshire is often viewed, including by those who live here, as a white, homogenous state. But this is no longer true. New Hampshire’s demographics, like those of much of the country, are rapidly changing and becoming more diverse. For example, in Manchester and Nashua — New Hampshire’s two la

Last week we commemorated Women’s Equality Day, a celebration of the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Most people remember that the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. However, many people forget the Amendment's original intent: to make women fully equal citizens to men in all respects under the Constitution.  On August 26, 1920, the United States adopted the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Throughout the 

WHEN A KENTUCKY SHERIFF'S DEPUTY was caught on camera handcuffing an 8-year-old boy with disabilities, it made national headlines. But the problem runs deeper than one overzealous officer, say ACLU attorneys who sued the deputy and the Kenton County sheriff’s office in federal court under the Fourth and 14th Amendments and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This article originally appeared in USA Today.  Earlier this month, a too familiar tragedy unfolded in East Los Angeles 

Note: This piece was originally published in The Advocate.  Every year at about this time, my office gets calls from anxious parents concerned about whether their kids

The New York Police Department repeatedly violated important court-imposed safeguards when it secretly investigated American Muslims for years, according to a new report released this week by the police’s own watchdog.  The report, issued by the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD, examined the department’s compliance with the 

Earlier this week, Illinois’ Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and leaders from the Democratic-controlled legislature took a break from campaigning and gathered together at a ceremony in Chicago to smile for cameras and extol the spirit of compromise as the governor signed legislation aimed at reforming the state’s broken criminal justice system. To an observer outside Illinois politics, the significance of this show of bipartisanship might not be readil