The One O’Clock Review of the News
Key news articles, opinion pieces, and reports to improve our understanding of the political landscape:
New Jersey Towns, Cities Offer Local ID to Undocumented Immigrants
Carmen Barbosa says she has felt invisible since coming to the United States about eight years ago.
“Everywhere you go you need an ID,” she said on a recent Saturday afternoon in the offices of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Trenton. “I get rejected a lot, even at the hospital. I went in for an emergency and I didn’t have an ID to show.” Click here to continue reading this story.
Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage
WASHINGTON — Dozens of prominent Republicans — including top advisers to former President George W. Bush, four former governors and two members of Congress — have signed a legal brief arguing that gay people have a constitutional right to marry, a position that amounts to a direct challenge to Speaker John A. Boehner and reflects the civil war in the party since the November election.
Pre-K Won’t Help Kids
President Obama ended his State of the Union speech on a warm and fuzzy note by calling for pre-K programs for almost all children. The best thing he could do for pre-kindergarten children is to make sure he doesn’t hang trillions of dollars of debt around their necks, but that isn’t the route he is taking.
Instead, Obama wants to provide government daycare for all preschoolers who live in households where the income is below approximately $47,100. He doesn’t call it daycare or babysitting (which is a more accurate term); he calls it early childhood education.
Early childhood education means programs for kids from birth to age 3 (a massively expanded Early Head Start, home visits by nurses, parental education and health services), more of the existing Head Start (mostly for 3-year-olds), more “high-quality preschool” for 4-year-olds available to every child in America and full-day kindergarten for all. Click here to continue reading this story.
Trusts Offer a Legal Loophole for Buying Restricted Guns
A growing number of shooting enthusiasts are creating legal trusts to acquire machine guns, silencers or other items whose sale is restricted by federal law — a mechanism that bypasses the need to obtain law enforcement approval or even undergo criminal background checks.
The trusts, called gun trusts, are intended to allow the owners of the firearms to share them legally with family members and to pass them down responsibly. They have gained in popularity, gun owners say, in part because they may offer protection from future legislation intended to prohibit the possession or sale of the firearms. Click here to continue reading this story.
I don’t like the idea of the government violating our Constitutional rights to be able to have means to defend ourselves.
We need to elect people like Leigh-Ann Bellew to the NJ State Senate. She believes in preserving and protecting our Constitutional rights and also fixing the government budget.
Leigh-Ann Bellew for NJ State Senate, District 13