Courts consistently allow flagrant discrimination against LGBT jurors

“I believe that people who are either transsexuals or transvestites — I don’t know what the proper term is — traditionally are more liberal-minded thinking people, tend to associate more with the defendants because, obviously, they have been either ridiculed before or are feeling in a position of being in a microscope all the time and are outcasts which lends themselves to associating more with the defendant.”

Watch for the wave: Amazon to pay sales tax in California

Struggling with an ongoing recession-era budget crisis that has seen hundreds of millions of dollars slashed from public education alone, Colorado lawmakers tried and failed to get mega-online retailer Amazon to pay state sales taxes last year. Amazon successfully dodged similar efforts in other states, but the tax man came calling in cash-strapped California last spring and, after dumping $5 million on a ballot initiative to oppose the new online tax law, Amazon announced on Wednesday it had made a deal with state lawmakers. It will charge sales tax in the Golden State next year. That gives Amazon and other online retailers just months to press federal lawmakers to pass a national law that thins their obligations in the states.

Coloradans cast eyes on Amazon battle waging in California

Colorado lawmakers staring down an historic recession budget deficit last year passed legislation requiring Amazon.com to finally begin collecting sales taxes in the state. It didn’t go so well. Amazon is still doing business here tax free. A similar battle is waging now in California, only on a greater scale, drawing the eyes of politics and business watchers in Colorado and around the nation. The California case likely won’t go as well for Amazon as the Colorado case did. Amazon does huge online business in California and it also has a physical presence in the state, for example in the Silicon Valley warehouse where it develops its Kindle readers. Indeed, the tide seems generally to be turning against the online retailer, which has grown massive over the past two decades, spreading its roots in the fertile ground of a tax-free internet fairyland.

Calif. Supreme Court rules for illegal immigrants in tuition case

The California Supreme Court Monday unanimously upheld a state law granting in-state tuition rates to undocumented residents who attended high school for at least three years in California.

The Los Angeles Times reported last night that this was the first…

Catholic groups have spent millions to fund anti-gay marriage Initiatives nationally

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society founded in New Haven in 1881, does a lot of good work detailed in a lengthy report on its charitable giving in 2009. Add to that list a donation of a whopping $1.4 million in 2009 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a nonprofit group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage.

The long march of gay marriage

Gay marriage advocates may have lost a number of battles at the ballot box this past year, but it appears they’re winning the war. Nate Silver reports that American opinion on the matter is equally divided and has trended…

As states slash public sector, Washington reluctant to act

For tens of thousands of the nation’s teachers, it is the start of an endless summer. In the past month, the Los Angeles Unified School District has sent pink slips to 693 employees. The Detroit school system has laid off 1,983 teachers, including Michigan’s 2007 teacher of the year. And Greensboro, N.C., has received national attention for firing or reassigning more than 500 teachers in a district serving just 71,000 students.

Tea party guru Weigel outlines birther Taitz victory in California

Dave Weigel, who tracked the tea party and fringe right intensely for the last year-plus at the Washington Independent, writes at the Washington Post today on “birther queen” Orly Taitz‘s run for California secretary of state. In typical…

Dumpster diving students get the 411 on Palin speaking deal

The latest in the endless stream of Sarah Palin news rocketing around the web is that California state dumpster diving college kids did what Open Records requests couldn’t do: they found the speaking contract Palin signed with the university…

Schwarzenegger calls out GOP stimulus hypocrisy

Here’s a profound idea from California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went after congressional Republicans yesterday for criticizing the Democrats’ stimulus bill one moment, then taking credit for the money the legislation is providing their districts the next.