Brownback gauging White House run
After taking the first step in a presidential bid on Monday, Sen. Sam Brownback said he would start a 10-state tour with a stop in Iowa. .
Brownback established an exploratory committee that will allow him to travel the country and raise money while gauging support for his long-shot White House bid.
Brownback, 50, says his deep faith in God guides his well-known opposition to abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem-cell research. He pledged to make “issues of life,” fiscal restraint and tax reform key components of his effort to woo supporters.
NEWARK, N.J.
Parents sue district in button protest
The parents of two students threatened with suspension for donning buttons depicting Hitler youth are suing, claiming the boys’ free speech rights were violated.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Friday, seeks to bar the Bayonne School District from suspending or disciplining seventh-grader Anthony LaRocco and fifth-grader Michael DePinto if they wear the buttons, which were made to protest a mandatory uniform policy for grades K-8 adopted in September.
A lawyer for the parents, Karin R. White Morgen, provided a statement from DePinto’s mother, Laura DePinto.
“I’ve gotten overwhelming support from MANY people that tell me that they absolutely agree with what the image depicted, an ominously homogenous group of blindly cooperative children,” the statement said.
The district, in letters sent to the parents, said the images of the Hitler youth “are considered objectionable and are offensive to many Bayonne citizens and do not constitute free speech according to Mr. Kenneth Hampton, attorney for the Bayonne Board of Education.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Students file suit for poster removal
A group of students sued Rhode Island College on Monday, accusing it of violating their free speech rights by taking down signs that read, “Keep Your Rosaries Off Our Ovaries.”
The college’s Women’s Studies Organization posted the signs near a campus entrance last December amid complaints that some pharmacists had refused to fill prescriptions for contraceptives because of their personal beliefs.
A priest spotted the signs and alerted the president of the college, who ordered them taken down, according to the federal lawsuit.
“The issue is this is a public university, and a public university can’t abridge anyone’s free speech rights – including the students,” said Jennifer Azevedo, an ACLU attorney representing the students.
After the signs were taken down, Rhode Island College president John Nazarian told the students they did not have the required approval to hang them, according to the students.
SACRAMENTO
Two men arraigned in alleged nut theft
Two men suspected of masterminding a $2 million almond theft ring in California’s Central Valley were arraigned Monday on felony charges of receiving stolen property.
Sukhwinder Singh Grewal, 41, and Amrik Singh, 27, could face up to a year in prison if convicted.
Police found workers at a warehouse Nov. 26 loading boxes from various nut processors into a rental truck. Officers recovered more than 123,000 pounds of almonds and 13,000 pounds of walnuts.
Authorities accuse Grewal, the owner of Sona Spice Imports, an importer and wholesaler of goods from India, of selling the nuts in unmarked boxes to small stores throughout California and parts of Canada. Investigators have said there was no indication buyers knew the nuts were stolen.
Authorities have not specified what they allege Singh did.