By now, many people have probably read about Amazon's lawsuit against the NC Department of Revenue in response to the NCDOR's "Informational Request" about on-line purchases made by North Carolinians through Amazon.com. Of course, the news reports about the request immediately raised privacy and First Amendment concerns for the ACLU-NC.

Today is Equal Pay Day, recognizing how far into 2010 women on average have to work in order to have earned as much as men earned in 2009. That's right, it's 2010 and yet, on average, a woman still only earns $0.77 for every $1.00 a man earns. The numbers are even worse for African American and Latina women.

Many people may not even be aware that corporal punishment is still allowed in North Carolina, but it is. In fact, a recent public records request by Action for Children revealed that during the 2008-09 school year there were 1,400 incidents of corporal punishment in North Carolina schools. However, this is a local control issue, meaning that local school districts are allowed to decide whether or not to allow it.

In February, the Wake County Manager David Cook removed abortion from Wake County employee health insurance coverage. He was following the lead of the Apex Town Council which, in January, voted to remove the coverage from their town employee health insurance. On February 15th, the Wake County Commission took a vote to ratify the County Manager's move but the vote tied 3-3. Today, the Commission revisited the issue and took up a Resolution presented by Commissioner Stan Norwalk to direct the County Manager to reinstate health insurance coverage for abortion.

As recently as last month, Attorney General Eric Holder was in the news defending prosecuting terror suspects in federal criminal courts rather than using military commissions. Military commissions have been criticized since their inception as not abiding by constitutional requirements or regular criminal procedure. During his election campaign Barack Obama promised to change all that and last month it looked like he was going to keep to his word. Pressure from opponents might change all that though.

Last week, the Apex town council again discussed the issue of health insurance that offers town employees complete reproductive health care, including abortion. Town council member Bill Jensen asked that the issue be on the calendar so that he could ask more questions and so that the public could comment on the decision to remove coverage for abortion made last month by the town. During the conversation between Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly and Council Member Jensen, the Mayor stated that the decision to remove coverage was not a legal one.

The Wake County Commissioners had their monthly meeting today. On the agenda for ratification was the county manager's decision to stop providing complete health insurance that covers abortion procedures. The discussion was heated and, in the end, the vote to approve the change was tied. The County attorney, Scott Warren assured the Commission that they did not actually need to vote to approve the measure - the county manager has the authority to change it himself.

The Historic Thousands on Jones Street march scheduled for February 13th has been postponed until Feb. 27th due to inclement weather. Hope to see you on the 27th!

While choice advocates were busy focused on the amendments flying around at the national level to prohibit abortion coverage in health insurance, a similar anti-choice discussion had begun right here in Wake County. On January 19th, the town council of Apex unanimously approved a change to the health insurance policies of its employees that would remove coverage for elective abortion procedures from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage their employees receive from the town. The new policy took effect on February 1st.

On Tuesday, the ACLU-NC participated in a press conference announcing the release of NC Stop Torture Now's Scorecard ranking the work of the Obama Administration addressing torture and extraordinary rendition. While the press conference was unfortunately not widely covered, the issues addressed and the scorecard itself should still weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of civil libertarians and all Americans. The prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S.