Morning NewsTaco
Friday July 20, 1012
In Arizona, “America’s toughest” sheriff on trial over discrimination claims (Reuters): Arizona’s controversial Joe Arpaio, who calls himself America’s toughest sheriff, went on trial Thursday in a class-action lawsuit alleging he discriminates against Latinos and legal immigrants in a zeal to crack down on illegal immigration.
Texas demands feds fork over immigration database to check for illegal voters (Houston Chronicle): Texas elections officials have joined a growing number of states seeking access to a massive immigration database to check voter rolls for possible noncitizens, officials confirmed Wednesday. Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade sent a letter to Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitanorequesting access to the federal database, which contains more than 100 million immigration records.
‘Espanglish’ Accepted By Spain’s Dictionary Of The Royal Academy Of The Spanish Language, DRAE (Huffington Post): ‘Espanglish’ is now a word? Yup. According to Spain’s Dictionary Of The Royal Academy Of The Spanish Language (or DRAE), the new palabra will appear in the next edition as “an example of the contributions of Spanish-speakers in the United States to the Spanish language,” as reported by the Latin American Herald Tribune on Tuesday.
Marco Rubio on How Republicans Can Win Hispanic Voters (U. S. News & World Report): Rubio recently spoke with U.S. News about his family, immigration reform, and what the GOP needs to do to attract Latino voters.
Legal Battles Erupt Over Tough Voter ID Laws (The New York Times): Whether true or not, the focus on what Democrats call “voter suppression” is accelerating as the Nov. 6 election looms. Last week, Texas took the Obama administration to federal court because it blocked a voter identification law there on racial discrimination grounds. In Florida, officials successfully sued for access to a federal database of noncitizens in hopes of purging them from voter rolls, a move several other states plan to emulate.
Judge Blocks Wisconsin Voter ID Law (FDL): That Brennan Center report on the difficulties eligible voters may have securing voter ID based its statistics on the 10 states with voter ID laws on the books. But not all of them may get to use them in 2012. South Carolina and Texas have had their laws blocked by the Justice Department under Voting Rights Act pre-clearance requirements. Both are fighting that in court. Another court battle at the state level has blocked for now the voter ID law in Wisconsin.
Foreclosure crisis hits older Hispanics, African Americans hard (Voxxi): More than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says.
Rick Perry Says Eric Holder ‘Poll Tax’ Comments Aimed To ‘Incite Racial Tension,’ Asks For Obama Apology (Huffington Post): Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that Attorney General Eric Holder’s remarks last week calling his state’s voter ID laws “poll taxes” were an attempt to incite racial tension and called on President Barack Obama to repudiate them.
Unreported elder abuse rife among Latino seniors, study finds (Los Angeles Times): Elderly, low-income Latinos suffer high rates of abuse but their mistreatment goes largely unreported, a new study has found. More than 40% of the Spanish-speaking elders sampled had been abused or neglected in the last year, yet fewer than 2% reported abuse to authorities, according to the study by researchers at USC’s Davis School of Gerontology.
States opting out of Medicaid expansion: How does it affect Hispanics? (Voxxi): The Afforble Care Act (ACA) was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court last June, the law did not actually come out completely unscathed. Under the original plan, states opting out of the ACA’s expanded Medicaid services would have all Medicaid benefits revoked — even while residents were still being taxed for the service.
LA’s forgotten Hispanic politician says he’s part of Latino vote (Voxxi): City Councilman Eric Garcetti often finds himself the forgotten Hispanic politician in Los Angeles. Despite the Italian name, the 41-year-old Garcetti is a fourth-generation Angeleno
Latin Chamber takes CSN to task for lack of Hispanic staff (Las Vegas Sun): The Latin Chamber of Commerce says the College of Southern Nevada is not doing enough to ensure staff and faculty diversity and has expressed frustration that similar complaints dating seven years have not led to progress.
