Author: Syndicated

Hong Kong’s High Court ruled before the end of 2019 that a government ban on protesters wearing face masks was unconstitutional. The mask ban has become a flashpoint in the movement to defend democracy there, and is part of a growing battle between high-tech surveillance and evasion of such surveillance. Demonstrators have not only worn masks but also used umbrellas to shield themselves from surveillance cameras, destroyed CCTV cameras and “smart lamp posts,” and used lasers to neutralize them. What many people do not realize is that a number of American states and cities also ban the wearing of...

More states plan to count state prisoners as residents of their home communities, rather than residents of the places where they are incarcerated — a change that would shift political power away from conservative rural areas to more liberal cities during legislative redistricting. The momentum comes as Governor Tony Evers set in motion redistricting plan for Wisconsin’s overly gerrymandered political maps. Many inmates hail from neighborhoods in or near cities, but most are incarcerated in small towns and rural areas. Counting prisoners as residents of their hometowns would, for the most part, boost the legislative representation of Democratic-leaning urban...

During his State of the Union address on February 4, President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was given a special invitation to the speech in the wake of his recently announced diagnosis of lung cancer. In doing so, Trump conferred one of the nation’s great civilian honors upon a man who has trafficked in hate and is responsible for some of the most vile degradations of the nation’s political discourse. Limbaugh’s history makes it all the more ironic that the medal and ribbon were conferred upon him on the spot...

Over the past two months, the ACLU of Wisconsin traveled across the state sounding the alarm about Wisconsin’s broken criminal justice system and the devastating impact of crimeless revocations. Crimeless revocation is when someone is sent back to prison for violating a technical rule of probation rather than for committing a new crime, and the consensus is clear on the need to abolish this harmful and counterproductive practice. The tour stopped in Eau Claire, Racine, Brown Deer, Oshkosh, Wauwatosa, and Green Bay – and on every stop, people whose lives have been destroyed by crimeless revocations shared their stories....

Republicans decided on January 7 to place only President Donald Trump’s name on Wisconsin’s primary ballot this spring, making it a challenge for any long-shot GOP candidates to run against him in the state. A committee made up of Republicans and Democrats met with state election officials in the state Capitol to decide which candidates will be listed on the April 7 primary ballot. The Republican committee members submitted only Trump’s name, and he was approved on a unanimous voice vote. The Democratic committee members submitted 14 candidates, including Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth...

Photo by Gage Skidmore and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 On 27 December 2017, Republicans in Congress passed a sweeping tax cut. It was supposed to be a gift-wrapped present to taxpayers and the economy. But with two years of hindsight, it looks more like a costly lump of coal. Passed on a party-line vote, the tax cut is the signature legislative accomplishment of President Trump’s first term. He had campaigned hard for the measure, promising it would boost paychecks for working people. “Our focus is on helping the folks who work in the mailrooms and the machine shops...