Free Republic

It started out as a who's who of Twin Cities law firms joining forces to lure minority attorneys to Minnesota. But the Twin Cities Diversity in Practice group set off a tempest when it excluded a firm that handled a pair of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action. The group's leaders said letting the Minneapolis law firm of Maslon, Edelman, Borman & Brand join the effort would hamper its mission: to make the bar more racially diverse. "Would this law firm participating in our effort help or hinder us to do what we are trying to do?" said...

As part of a broad push from corporate America to diversify the profession, law firms are stepping up outreach to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) attorneys, a group the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) dubs "the invisible bar." Among the 20 law firms with the highest percentage of openly gay and lesbian attorneys in 2005, these lawyers averaged just 3.2 percent of firm staff, according to The National Law Journal's (NLJ) annual survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms. Only five of the nation's 20 largest firms reported numbers of openly gay and lesbian attorneys. Within those firms,...

It was a shocking—yet not unexpected—decision by the Supreme Court. Speaking for the 5-4 majority, Justice Kennedy wrote that laws barring same-sex “marriage” infer “that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected.” Thus—by the stroke of a pen—the Court struck down state laws banning gay “marriage.” Okay, it hasn’t happened—yet. But if the words sound familiar, it’s because they come from Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Romer v. Evans. That’s the ruling in which the Court overturned a democratically enacted Colorado law barring special civil rights protections based on sexual orientation. While the Supremes...

Civil liberties and homosexual rights advocates have renewed their push for community programs to bolster support in schools for homosexual youths, just weeks after voters repudiated same-sex unions in 11 state referendums.     But in northeastern Kentucky, parents and students have defied the Ashland-Boyd County school district's "mandatory anti-harassment workshops," part of an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union to allow the Gay-Straight Alliances student group to meet in school buildings. Hundreds of students opted out of the tolerance training video, and another 324 students did not show up for school the day it was shown. The ACLU has...

Astronaut's Son Held on Sex Charges SAN FRANCISCO (Nov. 8) - The son of Mercury astronaut Walter Schirra has been arrested on child sex tourism charges, federal authorities said Monday. Walter Schirra, 54, was arrested at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning just before he was to board a flight to Thailand where he allegedly intended to solicit sex from underage boys, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a search, federal officials said they found 15 to 20 images of child pornography on Schirra's home computer. Schirra, a property manager, was charged under the PROTECT Act, legislation...