The News

cnn.com — Despite the drop in President Obama's approval ratings, Republican policies are still not as popular as Democratic policies, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates the GOP has gained some ground in polls in recent months, but Democrats still hold the advantage on key issues such as the economy and health care. Fifty-two percent of people questioned say the president's policies will move the country in the right direction. An equal percentage feel the same way about the policies of the Democrats in Congress.

Read Full Article »

msnbc.msn.com — Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census. As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

Read Full Article »

nytimes.com — Flanked by his counterparts from Mexico and Canada, President Obama reiterated his commitment to pursuing comprehensive immigration reform, despite his packed political agenda and the staunch opposition such an initiative is likely to face. But in the most detailed outline yet of his timetable, the president said that he expected Congress, after completing work on health care, energy and financial regulation, to draft immigration bills this year. He said he would begin work on getting the measures passed in 2010.

Read Full Article »

latimes.com — Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees. The reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses about 33,000 detainees a day and that has been sharply criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.

Read Full Article »

news.bbc.co.uk — A key Senate panel has voted in favor of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The majority-Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to back 55-year-old Ms. Sotomayor. Her nomination will now go to the full Senate, where she is expected to be confirmed as the court's first Hispanic justice in a historic vote next week. Her nomination has been vocally opposed by a chorus of Republicans who believe she is too liberal. But correspondents say Ms Sotomayor is unlikely to alter the ideological balance on the court as she is set to replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal.

Read Full Article »

hosted.ap.org — For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future. Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to a new poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.

Read Full Article »