After Democrats in the Senate staged a filibuster in support of gun control measures, their colleagues in the House have begun a “sit-in” aimed at embarrassing Republicans into allowing a vote on a measure that would restrict the ability of suspected terrorists to legally buy guns. The move is fantastic political theater. It’s also a tremendous waste of popular support and activist energy in support of a measure that isn’t just ineffective but also actively offensive.

After a legal battle spanning more than five decades, a federal judge ruled on Friday that Cleveland, Mississippi must completely desegregate their schools, The New York Times reports.

A federal judge in North Carolina handed a major victory to local Republicans Monday, upholding a swathe of changes to election rules in the swing state. Activists say the changes disproportionately affect people of color, denying tens or even hundreds of thousands of people their right to vote.

Young bad boy and soon-to-be savior to bros across the country, Bernie Sanders, was once arrested. Decades before the Age Of Social Media, it was caught on tape.

Federal prosecutors have convened a grand jury to hear evidence in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, the New York Daily News and New York Times are reporting. The U.S. Department of Justice began investigating Garner’s death after a New York grand jury declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who placed him in the chokehold that killed him.

Scott Johansen, the idiot Utah family court judge who removed a baby from her foster parents because they’re lesbians, has recused himself from the case, reports the Washington Post.

A Utah family court judge has ordered that a one-year-old child must be taken away from the foster parents who’ve been raising her because the foster parents are lesbians, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Residents of a largely black St. Louis suburb have filed a federal lawsuit alleging their town relentlessly issues egregious code-violation tickets as a means of raising municipal funds, reports the Associated Press. The details of this are beyond bonkers.

The Departments of Education and Justice have firmly come down on the side of a transgender teen who is suing for the right to use the restroom that corresponds with his gender identity, reports the Associated Press.

Ferguson, Missouri’s newly appointed municipal judge announced sweeping changes to the city’s court system on Monday, including the withdrawal of every arrest warrant issued in Ferguson prior to December 31, 2014, Reuters reports.

In 1996, C.J. Phillips met Charlie Rainwater and fell in love, as young self-identified “doggy dudes” do. Now, they’d like to have a polite, civil conversation—about their right to love each other, and anything else that’s vexing you. Which is why they parked a lovely website on the domain jebbushforpresident.com.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department agreed to a $725,000 settlement with the Justice Department, the result of a two-year investigation that found systematic civil rights abuses against minorities living in Antelope Valley, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

On Monday, the Supreme Court of Missouri announced that all of Ferguson's current municipal cases will be transferred to a state appeals judge in order to "help restore public trust and confidence," the Associated Press reports.

According to the forthcoming report on the Justice Department's investigation into the Ferguson, Mo. police department for alleged civil rights violations, the department has demonstrated a history of racial profiling that has intensified race relations in the St. Louis suburb.

Pope Francis, the chill pontiff celebrated for his interest in helping the poor and not fucking up the Earth, put the "Pope" back in "Cool Pope" on Wednesday, endorsing a referendum in Slovakia that would ban same-sex couples from marrying or adopting children.

At a September townhall meeting in Harlem, Carl Dix, a longtime Uptown fixture and mouthpiece, stood before the microphone in the auditorium of the Schomburg Center and called for mass rebellion. "It's going to take a revolution," he said, "nothing less, to end this and the horrors of the system once and for all."

In the fall of 1964, the New York Herald Tribune ran a story with the headline, "FBI Chief Calls Martin Luther King 'The Most Notorious Liar in Country.'" J. Edgar Hoover, then the director of the FBI, had found himself on the defense after King, perhaps the most prominent civil rights activist of the 1950s and 60s, accused the bureau of not enforcing civil rights law and using Jim Crow-era tactics to suppress blacks. Hoover's real reasoning for labeling King a "notorious liar," however, was based on information he and few others were privy to: the details of King's sex life.

The ACLU has released data showing that between 2004-2012, a black person in Minneapolis was 11.5 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana and nine times more likely to be arrested for disorderly conduct than a white person.

One nice thing about America is that even if you are poor, you cannot legally be railroaded for any old criminal accusation; you are guaranteed justice and fair representation. A new report details just how much of a farce that promise is.

Late last week, reporters discovered a video of racist anti-government rantings by a St. Louis County police officer working the streets of Ferguson. Media scrutiny quickly focused on the officer's incendiary language and policing methods, but few paused to scrutinize the group to whom he was addressing his comments.