From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Dozens of immigrant students, many wearing caps and gowns, held a mock commencement on Capitol Hill last week in support of pending federal legislation that could help them earn real college diplomas. The high-school students, all undocumented immigrants, came from as far away as Texas and California. For two hours, they turned the Capitol’s west lawn into a multicultural echo chamber. A hip-hop song boomed from a loudspeaker, followed by “Pomp and Circumstance” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Korean-American students played drums. One student read aloud “A Dream Deferred,” by Langston Hughes.

The gathering was both a celebration and a call for help by some of an estimated 65,000 undocumented immigrants who will graduate from high schools this spring. Many of the ceremony’s participants said they could not afford college, or perhaps even remain in the United States, unless Congress passes S1545, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the Dream Act.

From Wired:

Birny Birnbaum of the Center for Economic Justice tried to persuade the audience that insurance companies use credit report data and data-mining algorithms to single out the poor for higher insurance rates. Birnbaum called the practice 21st-century redlining, referring to a now-outlawed banking practice that discriminated against minorities by refusing to issue mortgages to people buying homes in poorer neighborhoods.

…Across the country, homeless shelters and other service providers are scrambling to implement an electronic homeless-management system by an October 2004 deadline set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Those systems, according to HUD draft standards, will include information on homeless individuals’ incomes, mental health histories, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. The databases would keep the information for seven years. The impetus for the homeless-management system came from Congress, which told HUD to come up with a better way to count the number of homeless people. Cindy Southworth, technology director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told conference goers that the mandated databases would endanger the lives of women fleeing a violent partner. She argued that there are simpler, cheaper and less-invasive ways to achieve the goal of a homeless census.

No shame:

The executive director of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, whose closed-door meetings with industry executives enraged environmentalists and prompted a Supreme Court showdown this week, became an energy lobbyist just months after leaving the White House, records show. Andrew Lundquist, a native Alaskan who worked on Capitol Hill for both his state’s senators, shepherded the development of the administration’s energy policy as executive director of the National Energy Policy Development Group, a Cabinet-level task force chosen by President Bush and headed by Cheney. When the task force completed its work, Lundquist stayed on at the White House as Cheney’s energy policy director, leading the vice president’s effort to turn the task force’s work into law. Then, a day after leaving government service, he opened a consulting business. Nine months later, Lundquist was a registered lobbyist for companies that stood to benefit from the energy policy he helped craft, according to 2003 lobby disclosure records reviewed by the Globe.

Voter turn-out in Pennsylvania is apparently unusually low, which seems likely to help Toomey’s band of idelogical hard-right supporters and suggests that Toomey’s late surge may not have shaken Specter’s silent supporters out of complacency in the way it was expected to.

This would be a good to hear more about from the junior Senator for Massachusetts:

On-the-job deaths increased sharply last year as the number of Massachusetts workers killed in the workplace rose by 65 percent to 81 people, up from 49 in 2002. It was the biggest increase in worker deaths in four years, according to a report released yesterday by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO that was compiled using data gathered by the state Department of Public Health and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO attributed the increase in fatalities to inadequate safety precautions, poor training, and staff reductions at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency whose inspectors try to prevent workplace hazards at job sites around the country…

Union leaders and workplace safety advocates said yesterday that they are backing legislation proposed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would strengthen OSHA protections nationwide. Also, any violation of the law resulting in the death of a worker would be considered a felony, making it a criminal offense. Nationally, 55,000 workers die each year on the job and 4.7 million are injured, according to the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.

Pennsylvania’s Republicans vote today in a choice between one of their party’s most liberal Senators and one of its most conservative Congressmen:

For months, it appeared that Specter would win the nomination easily. But Toomey, boosted by millions in contributions from conservative donors, narrowed the gap dramatically this month. Specter and Toomey had spent more than $15 million as of this month’s filings, not including money spent on their behalf by independent groups…Behind the scenes, Toomey volunteers were making phone calls and canvassing neighborhoods, while Specter’s campaign was relying on the state Republican Party – which endorsed him – to rally voters. The Specter team was also calling voters with recorded messages…

An independent poll released yesterday showed Specter halting Toomey’s strong recent gains. With 10 percent of those surveyed still undecided, Specter led Toomey by 6 percentage points in the poll from Quinnipiac University, a Connecticut school that tracks elections in the Northeast. That is virtually unchanged from last week.

Sam Smith:

Martha Stewart Should Have Checked With Dubya First…He Knew How to Do It

Must just be those “phantoms of lost liberty” again:

Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam. Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial…As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide ‘expert guidance or assistance’ to groups deemed terrorist.”

The Register reports on yesterday’s powerful rally here on Beinecke Plaza, calling for a University whose policies are shaped by those whom they affect and on whom they depend:

The university, citing a budget deficit, has laid off some 80 workers split between management and unionized clerical and technical workers. Graduate students also complained about cuts in nontenure track faculty, teaching stipends not tied to experience and class load, visa problems for international students and the lack of day care.

The students claimed a victory when the university announced Monday it would
keep open Marigolds, a restaurant at the School of Medicine that it had
considered closing to save money. Andrea Cole, of the Center for a New Economy, a grass-roots group affiliated with the unions on the Yale campus, said the university has not lived up to its promise to establish a new relationship with its workers. “We have not seen any indication that they are willing to work with us as allies,” she said. Katy Porte, a graduate student studying painting, said more assistance is needed to keep her colleagues in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from “drowning in debt.” She said her tab when she leaves in May will be more than $60,000 in loans.

Matt Bivens highlights a General Accounting Office report that should give pause to those convinced that a National Missile Defense System will make Americans safer.

Will Tacy calls George Bush on more hypocrisy and spin on the environment – this time in Jeb’s state – you know, the one that Ralph Reed is supposed to put in the Republicans’ win column in November without the help of the Supreme Court.

Well, I agree this is certainly a problem:

Federal investigators have found widespread problems in child welfare programs intended to protect children from abuse and neglect, and no state has received passing grades from the Bush administration in reviews conducted over the last three years.

But here – as with, inter alia, education – I’d have to say sucking money out where there are problems is a poor solution:

As a result, states face tens of millions of dollars in penalties. State officials said the penalties could make it more difficult for them to pay for the needed improvements.