Clinton Pushes Civil Rights Agenda, Wants Election Day to be a Federal Holiday

[Karmadillo]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIUP6PRFPosRg_kpOAwUtKJuadZA

Clinton Pushes Civil Rights Agenda
By BRUCE SMITH – 1 hour ago

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, unveiling her agenda to promote civil rights, told an NAACP banquet Saturday that the "scales of justice are seriously out of balance" for black Americans.

"We have had an attorney general who doesn't respect the rule of law or enforce the civil rights laws on the books," she told about 900 people at the annual Freedom Fund Banquet of the Charleston National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

She applauded the Friday decision by an appeals court in Louisiana tossing out the aggravated battery conviction that could have sent a black teenager to prison for 15 years in last year's beating of a white classmate in the racially tense town of Jena.

The teenager, 16 at the time of the December beating of a white youth, should not have been tried as an adult, the appeals court ruled. He is one of six black students charged in the attack and one of five originally charged as adults with attempted second-degree murder.

The charges have brought criticism that blacks are treated more harshly than whites after racial confrontations.

"There is no excuse for the way the legal system treated those young people," she said.

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[journalist3072]

1. Posted this under LBN last night...here's the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2992679&mesg_id=2992679

[ananda]

2. hmm

Well, I suppose election day could be made a federal holiday..
or else just change it to Saturday.

Sue

[MonkeyFunk]

3. ideally

I'd like to see it extended to a 48 hour period over the weekend. Midnight Friday to Midnight sunday. But barring that, a federal holiday's a good idea - it will also allow more people to become poll-workers, which are often in very short supply.

[Captain Hilts]

4. GREAT idea, but that leaves service industry folks still working. Do it like Canada does labor day.

EVERYTHING is closed.