The Alaska Court of Appeals on Friday put law enforcement agencies on notice that it would not tolerate “implicitly coercive” search requests during traffic stops. The warning came in the form of a ruling on the case of Susan S. Brown, a driver pulled over on November 24, 2004 allegedly because of the light illuminating […]

Randy Sievert did not commit a crime when he snapped a photo of an undercover Manatee County sheriff’s vehicle from the road, a state prosecutor said this week in a case that has drawn national attention.
Deputies confronted Sievert in February and ordered him to erase any photos he took standing at the scene of a […]

The US state of New Jersey has joined the global trend towards ending capital punishment. The state’s governor, Jon Corzine, signed a bill to abolish the death penalty on Monday.
The state’s assembly voted to replace execution with life imprisonment without parole on 14 December. Forty-four voted in favour of the bill, 36 against.
Amnesty International hopes […]

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s guideline revisions shrinking the penalty gap between crack and cocaine powder took effect last week. (Amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines take effect automatically six months after they’re approved by the commission unless they’re overriden by Congress, which in this case took no action.) As a result of the changes, The […]

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the wife of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, will take her husband’s job Dec. 10, after beating her closest rival by a wide margin to become the country’s first elected female president.
Fernandez will be Argentina’s second female president; Isabel Peron, who married Juan Peron after Eva Peron’s death, was his vice-president when […]

A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was defeated today by a joint session of the Legislature by a vote of 45 to 151, eliminating any chance of getting it on the ballot in November 2008. At least 50 votes were needed to advance the measure.
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Because fewer than 50 of the state’s 200 lawmakers supported […]

The group that delivered the anti-gay-marriage initiative, Measure 36, announced Tuesday that it won’t seek a referendum vote on recently passed legislation banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Full Story: Register Guard.
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The Bush administration has conceded that Wiccans are entitled to have the pentacle, the symbol of their faith, inscribed on government-issued memorial markers for deceased veterans, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced today.
The settlement agreement, filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, brings to a successful […]

Sudan on Monday accepted the deployment of U.N. attack helicopters and 3,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, the first time it has allowed a significant injection of U.N. forces to help beleaguered African troops in the war-torn region.
The deal appeared to be a major step forward in painstaking negotiations to bring an effective peacekeeping force to Darfur, […]

The Washington Legislature has approved a domestic partnership bill that extends property and family rights to couples of the same sex. The 63-35 House vote sends the measure to Gov. Gregoire for signing and will make Washington the eighth state in the nation to recognize domestic partnerships.
Full Story: ACLU of Washington.
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