The LA Times is covering this story, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else except from bloggers.

I find it very disturbing that other major newspapers seem to be ignoring it, or burying it away from the front page.

Hundreds Are Detained After Visits to INS

Hundreds of men and boys from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear at INS offices for a special registration program.

The arrests drew thousands of people to demonstrate Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesmen refused Wednesday to say how many people the agency had detained, what the specific charges were or how many were still being held. But officials speaking anonymously said they would not dispute estimates by lawyers for detainees that the number across Southern California was 500 to 700. In Los Angeles, up to one-fourth of those who showed up to register were jailed, lawyers said.

The number of people arrested in this region appears to have been considerably larger than elsewhere in the country, perhaps because of the size of the Southland’s Iranian population. Monday’s registration deadline applied to males 16 and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Men from 13 other nations, mostly in the Mideast and North Africa, are required to register next month.

Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely.

“These are the people who’ve voluntarily gone” to the INS, said Mike S. Manesh of the Iranian American Lawyers Assn. “If they had anything to do with terrorism, they wouldn’t have gone.”

…

I’ve only seen an AP story from the NY Times.

From 2000: McCain and Bush flirted with neo-Confederate movement.

FBI warns corporations to look out for violence from anti-war protesters.

50 Trent Lott Facts. My favorites:

41. As youngest member of the House Judiciary Committee, he voted against impeachment of Richard Nixon in 1974. Twenty-five years later, he voted for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

46. Once declared he feels closer to Jefferson Davis “than any other man in America.”

47. In mid-‘90s, organized the Dark Ages Weekend, a mid-winter outing for ultra right-wingers at Miami’s posh Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami.

49.In 1981, helped Jackson, Miss., annex white suburbs to dilute political strength of black voters.

"There’s only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I’ve got an additional responsibility to hug and that’s me and I know what it’s like." — Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002.

One word: ick.

Go wish James a happy birthday. I won’t be posting much today — off to get my hair cut and then lunch at Esca.

Lisa at Ruminate This writes about TomPaine.com’s offer of $10,000 for information about who inserted the provision into the Homeland Security Bill protecting Eli Lilly from lawsuits:

In November, as Congress finalized the legislation authorizing a new Department of Homeland Security, two paragraphs suddenly appeared in the bill giving drug maker Eli Lilly & Company something it desired: a shield from lawsuits by parents who claim the company’s vaccines caused their children’s autism.

The provision diverts those suits from state courts to a federal ‘vaccine court’ where damages are capped at $250,000 – small compensation for a child’s lifetime of medical care. And because any damages awarded by the vaccine court are paid by U.S. taxpayers, manufacturers are relieved of liability.

We have a very broken democracy when provisions like this become law and no person has to take credit or blame for it. Bills don’t write themselves.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in Star Trek Land — scroll down a bit to find the story.

New report out from People For the American Way:

Bush, Lott, and Ashcroft: Shared Agendas Threaten Civil Rights Gains

After 31 years, the NY State Senate allowed a vote on SONDA and it passed.

I’m sad to see this betrayal of the transgender community, who need protection as much as anyone. After watching the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA) coddle Republicans like Pataki and Giuliani, I can say that I am even more disappointed in them than ever. I once really respected Matt Foreman, the executive director. I have marched with him, while he was head of the Anti-Violence Project, in some scary neighborhoods of this city. This statement is very depressing:

Foreman estimated that 75 percent of transgender people in the state live in New York City — where a city law already protects them against discrimination.

“It’s totally unfair for all these downstate people to be saying, ’All you upstate gays can wait”’ for an anti-gay discrimination bill, said Foreman.

He said establishment of protection against discrimination for homosexuals was a historic step for gays and lesbians rights advocates, who plan to propose a sweeping change of the state’s human rights laws next year.

“You really can’t be advancing things like domestic partnership rights when, if you go to your employer and say, ‘I have a domestic partner,’ they can fire you because you’re gay,” Foreman said.

Now that it has passed, I know ESPA isn’t going to use any of its budget or political capital to have them added. They will work on things like domestic partner benefits and other things that mostly benefit middle class (and up) gays, while the queens — the kind of people who started the Stonewall uprising — can flee to NYC if they’re unlucky enough to live anywhere else.

I always hoped the queer community could be better than this, but we’re as likely to jettison the weakest — and least “mainstream” — people as anyone.

I don’t know anything about them, but I like the album cover:

Look at the graphic CNN is using for the story of Bush “moving ahead” on missile defense:

They choose not to link to their own story about the latest test failure — $100 million down the drain. The Washington Post story is better anyway.

I don’t think he explained how this system will protect us from hijackers with box cutters or bombs on boats in the NY harbor, but I’m sure we’ll all feel safer.

… or as pandagon says, this is like putting a big sign up that says “Nuke us before 2004!”