201506.08
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Texas Cop Put on Leave After Video of Arrest Surfaces

A McKinney, Texas, police officer has been put on administrative leave after a video surfaced of him forcing a 14-year-old girl in a bikini to the ground and kneeling on her back and then drawing his gun on others who came to her aid. In the seven-minute clip posted to YouTube, the girl can be…

201505.31
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Open carry handguns will soon be legal in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas lawmakers on Friday approved carrying handguns openly on the streets of the nation’s second most-populous state, sending the bill to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who immediately promised to sign it and reverse a ban dating to the post-Civil War era. Gun owners would still have to get a license to…

201505.09
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Court ruling boosts case for ending collection of U.S. phone records

For months, the debate around the future of the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records was framed as a stark choice between ending the program completely or continuing it exactly as is. Thursday’s landmark ruling by a federal appeals court in New York — which found that the once-secret program was…

Legal Battle Begins Over Obama Bid to Curb Greenhouse Gases
201504.16
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Legal Battle Begins Over Obama Bid to Curb Greenhouse Gases

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s most far-reaching regulation to slow climate change will have its first day in court on Thursday, the beginning of what is expected to be a multiyear legal battle over the policy that Mr. Obama hopes to leave as his signature environmental achievement. In two separate but related cases to be jointly…

Anti-abortion battleground broadens as US states fight on ‘non-medical’ grounds
201504.09
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Anti-abortion battleground broadens as US states fight on ‘non-medical’ grounds

Two arch-conservative states in the American Bible belt have this week formed a new “non-medical” front in the battle over reproductive rights, with laws that sharply restrict a method routinely used to perform second-trimester abortions. Anti-abortion politicians crafting and passing the new restrictions in Kansas and Oklahoma have reactivated a broader state-by-state campaign, mirroring similar…

Indiana law appears to permit discrimination
201504.01
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Indiana law appears to permit discrimination

It didn’t take long. Once Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mike Pence appeared on national television to defend the indefensible, people from Apple CEO Tim Cook to the band Wilco to Wal-Mart executives to NCAA officials joined civil rights groups in condemning what Pence was defending. And within hours, the governor who had done so badly on…