Archive for the ‘Original’ Category
Reporting: Arizona immigration law has echoes across U.S.
Arizona officers on Thursday began enforcing the state’s new immigration law — what’s left of it, anyway. In the small town of Fremont, Neb., they’re not even bothering.
Arizona and Fremont are at the forefront of the movement by state and local governments to get tough with illegal immigrants, rather than rely on the federal government’s efforts to address the problem. But they are learning that simply passing a law is far from enough.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
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Reporting: Utah close to determining whether state resources used in immigrant list
Utah officials said they were close to identifying the possible source of a mysterious list purporting to identify 1,300 illegal immigrants, acknowledging that a state employment database compiles all the information cited in the document — a database available to more than a thousand state employees.
UPDATE 8 p.m. ET: Utah officials now say they have found evidence the state Workforce Services Department database was breached and will turn the evidence over to the attorney general’s office.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com with KSL-TV)
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Original reporting: He did the right thing; now he faces deportation
It’s called Section 287(g), and it means local police can enforce federal immigration laws. That’s why an illegal immigrant from Mexico faces deportation after he did the right thing and called 911 to report a dirty cop.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
Reporting: U.S. split over Arizona immigration law
Arizona’s tough new immigration law has brought calls for boycotts of the state, but similar measures are in the works in at least 12 other states.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
• Interactive: Reaction around the world
Reporting: In adult films, condom question twists plot
California’s efforts to mandate the use of condoms in adult videos shot in the state has divided the pornography industry and made allies of seemingly strange bedfellows — a leading AIDS organization that says it doesn’t care about the morality of porn and a former adult actress who has made it her mission to shut down the industry.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
Reporting: New ways of counting leave U.S. Census behind
Reporting: Schools in ‘category 5’ budget crisis
While the recession has put a squeeze on all types of government programs, none has felt its impact more than education — the largest item in most states’ budgets.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
“CSI”? Get Real: Already Under Fire, Crime Labs Cut to the Bone
There are serious questions about the credibility of nearly every kind of crime lab analysis, the conclusions of which often rest on unproven science filtered through the subjective judgment of technicians whose training and certification vary wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
And with crime labs struggling under backlogs that already reach back years in many cities and states, budget cuts driven by the recession are threatening to make credible crime scene analysis a lost art, law enforcement officials and forensic specialists say.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
If you have beachfront property in Florida …
… keep an eye out for an envelope from State Farm:
State Farm cancels thousands in Fla.
The largest homeowners insurer in Florida is canceling the policies of 125,000 of its most vulnerable customers beginning Aug. 1, halfway through the 2010 hurricane season.
By Alex Johnson of msnbc.com with NBC stations WESH of Orlando, Fla., and WTLV of Jacksonville, Fla., and reports from Telemundo Orlando and Telemundo Tampa Bay.
Schools rethinking bans on cell phones
As ever more powerful cell phones come closer to mimicking the laptop computers many pupils carry each day, teachers and administrators are wrestling with whether their utility as a teaching tool outweighs the disruptions they can pose in the classroom.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
Alex Johnson - Journalist at Large 