Category: Sovereignty Rights

Explaining her plan to improve foster care if elected mayor, Kathryn Garcia said she would begin with “rooting out systemic racism.” She’s hardly alone: It’s hard to throw a rock without hitting an official who thinks racism is one of the biggest problems plaguing the system. Yet the data suggest something else accounts for the disproportionate number of black kids in foster care.

Even pros get it wrong: Earlier this year, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services commissioner, David Hansell, explained: “We are now taking more aggressive and comprehensive action than ever before . . . to combat systemic racism in the child-welfare system ” because, he says, “black and brown families [are] overrepresented.”

This issue can be viewed as a contest between rival goods: the good of free speech for political discourse and democratic government, and the good of avoiding what, in the phrases of the CCIA suit, is “harmful, offensive, or unlawful.” And the unfortunate thing is that the parties to the conflict have little or no agreement as to exactly what these rival goods are.

Sharia is often portrayed as barbaric and particularly regressive in terms of women’s rights. Citing Sharia, lawmakers in some Muslim-majority countries have punished theft with amputation, and sex outside of marriage with stoning. Women have been also forced to stay in abusive marriages and flogged for defying Sharia because they were wearing trousers.

Commonly translated as Islamic law, Sharia is a broad set of ethical principles found in the Quran, Islam’s holy book, and in the teachings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. It is not a strict legal code, leaving it open to varying interpretations by governments and religious leaders.Sharia is often portrayed as barbaric and particularly regressive in terms of women’s rights. Citing Sharia, lawmakers in some Muslim-majority countries have punished theft with amputation, and sex outside of marriage with stoning. Women have been also forced to stay in abusive marriages and flogged for defying Sharia because they were wearing trousers.

The U.N.’s Economic and Social Council voted to elect Iran and China to the Commission on the Status of Women, which is “exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.” Iran received 43 votes and China 48 votes out of a total of 53 votes. The countries’ four-year terms on the commission will begin next year.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in the Oval Office, pleading with President Biden.

In the meeting, on March 3, Mr. Blinken implored the president to end Trump-era restrictions on immigration and to allow tens of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing war, poverty and natural disasters into the United States, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

President Oaks said the Constitution was imperfect but listed five principles he specifically said are divinely inspired: The people are the source of government. The division of delegated power between the nation and its subsidiary states. The separation of powers. The guarantees of individual rights and specific limits on government authority in the Bill of Rights. The rule of law and not individuals.