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Emil Kapaun’s spiritual heroism: Vatican advances Korean War chaplain closer to Sainthood

By Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross At the end of a small cemetery on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross, the Jesuit college where I teach, is the grave of Joseph O’Callahan, former professor of mathematics. O’Callahan is one of the few Catholic military chaplains to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his heroic actions during World War II. Only five Catholic priests have received this highest American military honor. Two of them are in the process of being considered for the highest honor recognized in...

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Jim Crow is alive and well: Calculated attacks on Voting Rights seek to resurrect the Bad Old Days

“Do you know I’ve never voted in my life, never been able to exercise my right as a citizen because of the poll tax? … I can’t pay a poll tax, can’t have a voice in my own government.” – Mr. Trout, a Georgia native (1936) “More than 250 bills to curb or complicate access to polls had been introduced in 43 state legislatures as of February 19, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking the bills — and bills have since been introduced in at least two more states, North Carolina and Wisconsin.” – CNN...

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Investigation finds retailers distributing COVID-19 vaccinations added requirements violating CDC policy

The original justification for proof-of-residency and ID requirements to get a COVID-19 vaccination were supposed to stop so-called “Vaccine Tourists” who sought access in other states that had better public distribution channels. Instead, the most vulnerable residents are being shut out of the lifesaving treatment. The concern about “Vaccine Tourists” never developed into an issue beyond a few isolated headlines. And with the Biden Administration’s expanded distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, there has been no further incentive for the issue to become a real problem. However, the questionable safeguards remain in place and those are causing actual damage. Forward Latino...

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Proposed overhaul of immigration laws would finally reunite families divided by deportation

By Robert McKee Irwin, Deputy Director, Global Migration Center, University of California, Davis Hundreds of thousands of immigrant families have been separated by deportation from the United States, in many cases with a parent on one side of the border and children on the other, according to estimates by the Urban Policy Institute and Migration Policy Institute. Reunification is a priority in President Joe Biden’s proposed immigration overhaul and in bills that both the House and Senate will debate in coming weeks. Both bills have provisions to preserve “family unity.” These include giving immigration judges increased discretion in deportation...

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Expansion of facial surveillance at airports seen as a growing threat to civil liberties

Over the last couple years, it has become increasingly clear that facial recognition technology doesn’t work well, and would be a civil liberties and privacy nightmare even if it did. But that has not stopped the Trump administration from moving forward with its dangerous plans to expand the technology’s use at U.S. airports and other ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has proposed a new rule that would massively expand the use of face surveillance at the border, further entrenching a dystopian surveillance infrastructure that threatens our rights to privacy and anonymity, and disproportionately harms people...

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For the love of the gun: An irrational American ideology that sees White men as cowboys

Ten more people in Boulder, Colorado, died on March 22, shot by a man with a gun, just days after we lost 8 others in Atlanta, Georgia, shot by a man with a gun. In 2017, after the murder of 58 people in Las Vegas, political personality Bill O’Reilly said that such mass casualties were “the price of freedom.” But his is a very recent interpretation of guns and their meaning in America. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of...

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