SAN FRANCISCO -- President Barack Obama says he won't go after pot users in Colorado and Washington, two states that just legalized the drug for recreational use. But advocates argue the president said the same thing about medical marijuana – and yet U.S. attorneys continue to force the closure of dispensaries across the U.S.

Welcome to the confusing and often conflicting policy on pot in the U.S., where medical marijuana is legal in many states, but it is increasingly difficult to grow, distribute or sell it. And at the federal level, at least officially, it is still an illegal drug everywhere.

Obama's statement Friday provided little clarity in a world where marijuana is inching ever so carefully toward legitimacy.

That conflict is perhaps the greatest in California, where the state's four U.S. Attorneys criminally prosecuted large growers and launched a coordinated crackdown on the state's medical marijuana industry last year by threatening landlords with property forfeiture actions. Hundreds of pot shops went out of business.

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of an Oakland, Calif., dispensary that claims to be the nation's largest, called for a federal policy that treats recreational and medical uses of the drug equally.

"If we're going to recognize the rights of recreational users, then we should certainly protect the rights of medical cannabis patients who legally access the medicine their doctors have recommended," he said.

The government is planning to soon release policies for dealing with marijuana in Colorado and Washington, where federal law still prohibits pot, as elsewhere in the country.

"It would be nice to get something concrete to follow," said William Osterhoudt, a San Francisco criminal defense attorney representing government officials in Mendocino County who recently received a demand from federal investigators for detailed information about a local system for licensing growers of medical marijuana.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said he was frustrated by Obama's comments because the federal government continues to shutter dispensaries in states with medical marijuana laws, including California.

"A good step here would be to stop raiding those legal dispensaries who are doing what they are allowed to do by law," said the San Francisco Democrat. "There's a feeling that the federal government has gone rogue on hundreds of legal, transparent medical marijuana dispensaries, so there's this feeling of them being in limbo. And it puts the patients, the businesses and the advocates in a very untenable place."

Obama, in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, said Friday that federal authorities have "bigger fish to fry" when it comes to targeting recreational pot smokers in Colorado and Washington.

Some advocates said the statement showed the president's willingness to allow residents of states with marijuana laws to use the drug without fear of federal prosecution.

"It's a tremendous step forward," said Joe Elford, general counsel for Americans for Safe Access. "It suggests the feds are taking seriously enough the idea that there should be a carve-out for states with marijuana laws."

Obama's statements on recreational use mirror the federal policy toward states that allow marijuana use for medical purposes.

"We are not focusing on backyard grows with small amounts of marijuana for use by seriously ill people," said Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in Sacramento. "We are targeting money-making commercial growers and distributors who use the trappings of state law as cover, but they are actually abusing state law."

Alison Holcomb, who led the legalization drive in Washington state, said she doesn't expect Obama's comment to prompt the federal government to treat recreational marijuana and medical marijuana differently.

"At this point, what the president is looking at is a response to marijuana in general. The federal government has never recognized the difference between medical and non-medical marijuana," she said. "I don't think this is the time he'd carve out separate policies. I think he's looking for a more comprehensive response."

Washington voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998, and dispensaries have proliferated across the state in recent years.

Last year, Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed legislation that would have created a state system for licensing medical dispensaries over concern that it would require state workers to violate the federal Controlled Substances Act.

For the most part, dispensaries in western Washington have been left alone. But federal authorities did conduct raids earlier this year on dispensaries they said were acting outside the state law, such as selling marijuana to non-patients. Warning letters have been sent to dispensaries that operate too close to schools.

"What we've seen is enforcement of civil laws and warnings, with a handful of arrests of people who were operating outside state law," Holcomb said.

Eastern Washington has seen more raids because the U.S. attorney there is more active, Holcomb added.

Colorado's marijuana measure requires lawmakers to allow commercial pot sales, and a state task force that will begin writing those regulations meets Monday.

State officials have reached out to the Justice Department seeking help on regulating a new legal marijuana industry but haven't heard back.

DeAngelo said Friday that the Justice Department should freeze all pending enforcement actions against legal medical cannabis providers and review its policies to make sure they're consistent with the president's position. He estimated federal officials have shuttered 600 dispensaries in the state and 1,000 nationwide.

DeAngelo's Harborside Health Center is facing eviction after the U.S. attorney in San Francisco pressured his landlord to stop harboring what the government considers an illegal business.

"While it's nice to hear these sorts of positive words from the president, we are facing efforts by the Justice Department to shut us down, so it's hard for me to take them seriously," DeAngelo said.

The dispensary has a hearing Thursday in federal court on the matter.

__

Associated Press writers Terry Collins in San Francisco and Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed to this report.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- On a bitingly cold Friday night 11 days before Christmas, hundreds of people spilled out of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, hours after the staggering murder of 20 children and six adults at an area elementary school.

Many wept as a small group sang "Silent Night," the familiar lyrics turned achingly poignant in the aftermath of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

"These parents lost their hearts today," Monsignor Robert Weiss, who leads the congregation, said after the vigil.

Weiss said that "a number" of families of the victims were members of the congregation, and that the gunman, identified by police as Adam Lanza, 20, had attended the parish school for several months. "The family was known to us," Weiss said.

Mourners leaving the picturesque brick church filed past wreaths tied with red ribbons and under a sign reading "Love One Another." Some held children in their arms no older than the morning's victims, said by authorities to be from 5 to 10 years old.

Rebecca Hill, 56, drove 130 miles from Brattleboro, Vt., to attend the vigil.

"I could not get that image out of my mind, what those classrooms must look like right now," Hill said. "That young man has also been very much on my mind. We should be praying for his soul."

St. Rose was one of many area churches marking the tragedy. Another memorial service was held at Trinity Episcopal Church, where at least one family of parishioners lost a child, according to Bishop Ian T. Douglas, leader of the Connecticut Episcopal diocese. Dozens more candlelight vigils and prayer services across the state are scheduled for the weekend.

The rector at Trinity, the Rev. Kathleen Adams-Shepherd, arrived early at the scene of the shooting and counseled parents as they learned of their childrens' fates, Douglas said.

"Kathy has been in many ways a rock for those families," Douglas said.

Outside St. Rose with a group of friends was Michael Eisele, 15-year-old who was holding up better than his parents.

His 10-year-old sister had hid in a gym locker during the rampage. His sister in kindergarten stayed home sick today. Their close call unleashed emotions he didn't know his parents possessed.

"I've never seen my father cry before," Eisele said. "He's traumatized and my mom is a wreck."

The 26 victims will be officially identified on Saturday, said Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police, according to Patch. Next of kin for all the victims have been contacted, Vance said.

For some, the shooting challenged their long-held views of this New England town about 60 miles northeast of New York City. "As a community we have so much strength," said Dena Daum, a dental hygienist with a middle school daughter and high school son. "Now they're going to compare us to Columbine."

Until Friday, residents said Newtown existed in a warp where time stands still.

"The big joke around here is that nothing ever happens," said a 21-year-old who gave his name as Josh. "And now this."

At the first word of catastrophe, Daum rushed to the middle school to pick up her daughter. But because of the area-wide lockdown, she had to wait at the school's door until her daughter was released, crying hysterically.

"What can I say to my children when they go to school on Monday," Daum said. "If they go to school on Monday?"

DANBURY, Conn. -- It was a call they had often prepared for, but hoped never to take.

Shortly after 10 a.m. Friday, doctors in the emergency room at Danbury Hospital received word of a school shooting in nearby Newtown.

Reports were scattered. No one knew at first whether it was a high school or an elementary school. No one knew how many patients to expect. But within 10 minutes, 80 doctors, nurses and other staff members were ready for anything, prepping trauma teams, four emergency rooms and six operating rooms. One of those on watch: The chairman of the pediatric department.

Just 12 miles down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary School, and charged by the state with handling mass casualty events, the doctors at Danbury knew that if many were hurt, the victims would be coming through their emergency room doors.

At around 10:30 a.m., three patients arrived, one after the other. As a fraction of the medical professionals on hand swung into action, the rest waited tensely.

Overseeing it was Dr. Patrick Broderick, the hospital's chairman of emergency medicine. Around midday, as the unbearable scope of the tragedy was becoming clear to the world, Broderick received another call. There would be no more patients.

"After some passage of time, it became clear that we didn't get a massive number of victims brought here," said Dr. John Murphy, president and CEO of the hospital's parent organization, the Western Connecticut Health Network.

It was "terribly upsetting," he said. "We knew what it meant."

Eighteen children, six adults and the killer were pronounced dead at the school. Their bodies were still there as of Friday evening, the police combing through bullets and pools of blood to reconstruct a crime scene.

At the hospital on Friday evening, there were no throngs of anxious parents checking on their children. Instead, there was a forest of television satellite trucks.

Hospital officials were tight-lipped because of medical privacy rules, but according to reports, two children were pronounced dead within its walls. Connecticut police said there was one solitary wounded survivor, described as a female who worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She was said to be in good condition.

"I've been here 22 or 23 years, and I have never experienced anything like this before," Murphy said.

"I hope to God we never experience anything like this in our life again," said Broderick.

Earlier this year, California enacted a law that defines as "unprofessional conduct" any effort of a "mental health provider" to engage in "sexual orientation change efforts with a patient under 18 years of age."

According to a report of a committee of the California senate, sexual orientation change efforts (known as SOCE) include such practices as "electric shock or nausea inducing drugs administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli" and "psychoanalytic therapy." The legislature found that such practices, when used in an effort to change a minor's sexual orientation, are both harmful to the patient and ineffective. It therefore prohibited their use.

Before the law took effect on January 1, 2013, several mental health providers who practice SOCE filed suit in federal court to enjoin the implementation of the new law on the ground that it violates their rights under First Amendment. In Welch v. Brown, federal district judge William Shubb, in a thoughtful opinion, agreed with the plaintiffs and held the law unconstitutional.

Although Judge Shubb's opinion was thoughtful, it was also, in my view, wrong on the law.

I should say at the outset that I come to this question as one who pretty consistently takes a strong pro-free speech stance. I am a member of the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union, a past Chair of the Board of the American Constitution Society, and a fervent advocate of the view that the First Amendment protects offensive and disturbing speech, including the right of individuals to sell videos of dog-fights, spew hate speech, watch "obscene" movies, and advocate the overthrow of government. Why, then, do I think Judge Shubb was wrong in Welch v. Brown?

Suppose California prohibits mental health providers to apply leeches to treat depression or to use electric-shock treatment to cure teenage acne. If in these situations a mental health provider were to argue that the First Amendment protects her right to use the therapy she thinks best, we would see immediately that in these examples the First Amendment is simply irrelevant. This is so for the obvious reason that no speech is involved in the application of leeches or the use of electro-shock. The First Amendment is about "the freedom of speech." It is not about the freedom of a mental health provider to use her treatment of choice. Such regulations may or may not be good public policy, but they do not implicate the First Amendment. The same is true when electric-shock or nausea-inducing drugs are used to "treat" homosexuality.

In Welch, however, Judge Shubb correctly noted that at least some forms of SOCE involve speech. That is, some forms of SOCE involve talk therapy, in which the therapist speaks with the patient. Thus, he reasoned, even if the California law is constitutional as applied to other forms of SOCE, such as electric-shock and the use of nausea-inducing drugs, it is unconstitutional as applied to talk therapy because talk therapy is, after all, "speech."

But this is too literal an understanding of the constitutional guarantee of "the freedom of speech." Sometimes conduct is speech (think of burning a flag) and sometimes speech is not "speech," as strange as that sounds. In this instance, for example, the speech involved in talk therapy is, for all practical purposes, analogous to electric-shock therapy. It is a method of therapy, and it is the method, not the speech as such, that is being regulated. This is a common phenomenon. The state can regulate bribery, threats, conspiracy, and many other forms of "speech" because, in context, what is being regulated is not the speech as such, but the underlying course of conduct, of which the speech is but a part.

This line is not always easy to draw, but it is easy in Welch. What the state is regulating in the context of SOCE is not the speech of the therapist as such but the use of a method of therapy. Whether that method involves words or pills or electric shock is of no moment. The speech is incidental to the regulation of the method of therapy, and It is no more a regulation of speech for First Amendment purposes for the government to regulate talk therapy than it is for it to regulate drug or electric shock therapy.

California would raise a serious First Amendment question if it prohibited mental health providers from writing about the benefits of SOCE, or recommending that patients consider using SOCE in a state where it is legal, or advocating for repeal of the law because it unwisely interferes with sound methods of therapy. But the California law does none of those things. The challenged law may or may not be good public policy, but it does not violate the First Amendment.

Steve Dulan, a board member for the Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners who is supporting a state bill that would allow concealed weapons in schools and other gun-free zones, said Friday that having armed teachers inside Sandy Hook Elementary School would have, "if not prevented, then perhaps minimized," the tragedy.

"We do know that armed citizens defend themselves all the time, in all kinds of different contexts," Dulan told HuffPost Live host Alyona Minkovski.

Dulan's comments came in response to a mass shooting Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Police reported 27 deaths, including 20 children, six adults and the shooter, according to the Associated Press.

Watch the Full Segment on HuffPost Live.

For the first time since a recession gripped the country in 2008, Maryland is approaching a General Assembly session with good fiscal news: Neither tax increases nor drastic budget cuts are likely to be needed to balance the budget.

The improved forecast is driven by higher-than-expected revenues, led by corporate and individual income tax payments. For the current budget year and the one that begins July 1, the state is expected to take in $161 million more than anticipated.

"It's been a long time since we've had such good news," state Budget Secretary T. Eloise Foster said after the Board of Revenue Estimates adopted the forecast Thursday. "I'm always happy when we are writing revenues up."

State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp added: "We are making significant progress. Maryland is going to see a brighter day, and we are ahead of the rest of the nation."

There is a significant caveat: The ink would turn red if the federal government goes over the so-called fiscal cliff, automatically triggering a combination of spending cuts and tax increases if Congress cannot reach a budget deal by the end of December.

Maryland would stand to lose more than 60,000 jobs and nearly $1 billion in tax revenue, analysts say, leaving the state with a significant budget shortfall that would have to be resolved during the 90-day legislative session that begins Jan. 9.

"These estimates assume that our political parties can come together to solve our nation's economic challenges," said state Comptroller Peter Franchot, a Democrat who once worked for a Washington lobbying firm. "Given the consequences, it's a reasonable assumption. But as someone who spent years on Capitol Hill, reason and logic might not be applicable."

Shortly after the board released its revenue forecast, a legislative committee that sets limits for government spending recommended that Gov. Martin O'Malley submit a budget that would narrow the remaining $383 million gap between long-term spending projections and expected revenue -- known as the "structural deficit" -- by at least $200 million.

That would bring the gap, which stood at about $2 billion just three years ago, under $200 million, thanks to a combination of cuts in expected spending growth and tax increases adopted over the past two years. The projected gap is small enough -- in a state budget of more than $35 billion -- that it likely could be closed without further tax increases or spending cuts on the scale of those made in recent years.

Taxes might not be entirely off the table, however. Revenue for transportation, which for the most part is financed separately from the state's operating budget, has been lagging far behind what experts say is needed. Taxes on gasoline -- or other revenue producers for roads and transit -- could become part of O'Malley's agenda.

The indicators for the general fund, which finances most other state programs, are looking healthier than they have since O'Malley took office in January 2007.

State analysts believe tax revenue in 2013 will be higher than thought even a few months ago -- a rare uptick after years of gloomy news. The increase is driven by an expected 38 percent rise in revenue from corporate income taxes amid improved earnings.

Meanwhile, personal income tax payments are expected to be up by 8 percent this year and 3.7 percent next year -- with the strong 2013 numbers driven by an expectation that many wealthy Marylanders will reap capital gains by selling off investments to avert higher taxes in case Congress does not reach a budget deal by the fiscal cliff deadline.

The Maryland Constitution requires that the state budget be in balance, and each year the General Assembly has reached that goal by the end of the session.

But each year since 2007, as the weather turned cold and the session drew near, state fiscal analysts have been offering grim predictions. In December 2010, with the state's economy battered by the recession, they warned lawmakers that the structural deficit was nearing $2 billion.

Lawmakers had hoped to eliminate the gap entirely in next year's budget, but the Spending Affordability Committee voted Thursday to keep open the option of taking an extra year to do so.

Del. John Bohanan, House co-chair of the panel, defended the decision. He said that by doing so, the legislature could fulfill its goals of fully funding such long-standing programs as aid to community colleges and private universities.

Bohanan, a Southern Maryland Democrat, said the recommendation calls for the governor to come within 1 percent of full elimination of the long-term deficit. With the right combination of legislative cuts and good revenue news, the structural gap could be closed in the coming year, he said.

"Essentially, we're saying we've eliminated it for all intents and purposes," Bohanan said.

House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell tried to amend the spending affordability goal to require elimination of the entire $383 million gap now. He was voted down, 17-3, joined by two other Republicans.

As he left, the Calvert County Republican expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome. "I still think we're spending too much money," he said.

But Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller called it "a bit of a miracle" that O'Malley and the legislature will have been able to narrow a $2 billion gap to less than $200 million.

"I just want to congratulate the state of Maryland for coming together and working harmoniously," he said.

Miller, a Calvert County Democrat known for his long memory, complimented O'Malley -- who has generally abided by the legislature's fiscal guidelines -- while taking a dig at governors past.

"We thank the governor for staying within spending affordability limits. There's governors, Republican and Democrat, that have not done that," Miller said.

michael.dresser@baltsun.com

annie.linskey@baltsun.com ___

Michigan's recent battle makes this a good time to explain the union movement's important role in our economy's overall health. We're about to explain why today's war on unions is bad for all of us, no matter what we do for a living, and we'll do it in four steps.

But first a word about language: "Right to work" is a misnomer for laws which let employees enjoy the benefits of union membership - at least for a little while, until they're stripped away - without joining or contributing.

So we'll call them "right to shirk" laws instead. And we'll call the people who back these laws Shirkers.

And while we're at it, let's stop calling the states that have adopted this legislation "right to work." They don't give people any new rights. They take rights away, by making it illegal for employees to organize and negotiate together. They even take away employers' rights - to sign a certain kind of contract.

So let's give the other states a name instead: In a nod to the Jim Crow origin of these laws, let's call the ones which don't have these laws "free states."

Free Ride

Right to Shirk laws allow freeloaders to profit from the efforts of others - without contributing to the effort, and in a way that harms the common good. The billionaires and corporations behind these laws wouldn't deliberately do anything like that, would they? Why, that would be like letting people make billions from the works of government - things like roads, the Internet and publicly-educated customers - without paying their fair share of taxes.

Oh, wait.

Right to Shirk laws are job-killers. Here are four steps to understanding why:

1. Think nationally, not just locally.

Advocates say these laws create jobs. They don't. Their "evidence" is based on studies which show modest job growth in Right to Shirk states when compared to free states.  But all that proves is that places that are politically hostile to organized labor also offer other types of corporate favoritism.

It also suggests that Right to Shirk states can steal jobs from free states -- as long as the jobs last, anyway.

The Shirker movement was started in the late 1940s by a handful of Southern politicians who were in the palm of big textile mills. They were able to draw textile jobs away from free Northern cities like my hometown of Utica, NY - until those jobs left this country altogether.  That's not "creating" jobs -- that's killing good jobs and replacing them with ones that don't pay enough.

The concept of "solidarity" has been tarred with McCarthyite smears. But "solidarity" is just another way of saying "We're all in this together."  The Right to Shirk crowd wants to stop that kind of thinking so it can pit state against state and employee against employee, shredding our social fabric for personal gain.

It's no accident that the Shirker movement was started by the reactionary white politicians of the Jim Crow South. Back then they were still pining for the days when they could offer some folks the "right to work" ... for nothing.

2. We're fighting over a shrinking pie instead of making the pie bigger.

Things are bad. We need millions of jobs - and the jobs we do have don't pay enough.

The graphic which Business Insider likes to call "the scariest chart ever" shows how far we are from creating the number of jobs needed to make this country's economy grow and thrive again.  Job growth like that we've seen recently is always welcome, but it's not nearly enough to get us out of this ditch. How do we get moving again?

To answer that question we need to know what's worked in the past.

3. The real "job creators" are people with jobs - good jobs.

How did this nation finally escape the after-effects of the Great Depression and begin its greatest decades of economic growth? Government spending  - on roads, bridges, schools, and other vitally needed services - played a key part.

Unions were a crucial part of this process, too. By fighting for higher wages and better benefits, unions ensure that working people have the means to purchase consumer items, housing, and other goods and services.  Companies have to hire more people to keep up with demand - and the good jobs keep coming.

That's why the Republican Party platform of 1956 boasted that "unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions" during Dwight D. Eisenhower's first term. Back then Republicans understood that a growing middle class was good for the entire economy.  That party platform also said that "America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper." Their rule: No shirkers.

But then in those days our economy wasn't dominated by Wall Street megabanks - institutions that don't build or sell anything. And politicians weren't completely in bankers' pockets back then, because the public wouldn't have tolerated it.

We shouldn't tolerate it now.

4. When you kill unions, that reduces consumer income - which kills jobs.

The Shirker assault on unions has taken its toll. Only 25 states remain free to unionize, and union membership has fallen dramatically:

 

Their logic would suggest that the plunge in union membership we've seen since 1960 must have led to a rise in good jobs.  Did it? Let's take a look at manufacturing:

That's my freehand drawing (and therefore not exact) of the trend line in union membership, superimposed by the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States.  Manufacturing jobs kept on increasing for more than twenty years, even as union membership increased. These jobs experienced periods of decline and stagnation as union membership fell, even before the devastating impact of NAFTA.

Consumer demand is vital to growth. That demand is tied to consumers' income, and to their belief that life in the future will be as good or better than it is today.  Those are the two things we need to reinforce, and unions are crucial to that effort.

We need to get our economy growing again. Until then most Americans, unionized or not, will continue to struggle with stagnating wages and an ongoing economic drag that can feel a lot like a recession.  As Paul Krugman likes to say (he said it in our radio interview), This isn't rocket science. We know how to do this.

Destroying unions is just another way for the Shirkers to make sure that we never do.

WASHINGTON -- Caitlin Berberich, managing attorney with the Southern Migrant Legal Services, a project of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, said that when paralegals visit migrant camps, they are almost always ordered to leave by the landowners -- sometimes with threats of police calls or worse. "One grower" in Arkansas, she said, chased "after our interns and our paralegals carrying a chainsaw." The blade was not turned on, but the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre"moment left an impression.

"We regularly had employers follow them off, escort them off in their cars," Berberich said of her legal team. "A couple growers we know are notorious for preventing us from having access." One camp, she explained, has a security detail, its main purpose apparently to escort Berberich's paralegals off the property.

Berberich's experiences are not unfamiliar to lawyers, health care workers, and community advocates who have attempted to oversee migrant camps and check in on the tomato pickers, sheep herders, and other migrant workers across the U.S., from eastern Maryland to remote corners of Colorado to whole swaths of the deep South. Often these advocates provide the only ties the migrant workers have to local communities and address vital issues like wage theft and basic health needs like HIV testing.

On Thursday, a coalition of 28 nonprofit legal and social service organizations filed a complaint with the United Nations, alleging that migrant workers have been unlawfully denied access to assistance. The complaint, organized by Maryland Legal Aid with help from the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law, argues that these barriers amount to a violation of human rights law.

The 62-page complaint argues that "the United States is complicit in violating the human rights of this vulnerable population."

"We just come across a lot of camp access problems," explained Nathaniel Norton, supervising attorney for Maryland Legal Aid's Farmworker Program. "Our own outreach workers and nurse practitioners from migrant health clinics have been run off camps."

The filing comes out of a sense of desperation. Lori Johnson, a staff attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina's Farmworker Unit, told HuffPost that access to migrant camps has been an issue during the 15 years she has been engaged with farmworker cases. "We've exhausted the resources that are available to us to defuse the situation to ensure that health care workers and others are not targeted and harassed," Johnson said.

One problem highlighted in the complaint suggests that the U.S. government doesn't have a
"consistent legal framework that mandates camp access." Without consensus, state law enforcement too often comes to the aid of farm owners. Police have threatened advocates with trespassing charges, creating what advocates say is close to a "slave-master relationship," between grower and migrant worker.

In 2007, Jennifer Lee, managing attorney of the Migrant Farm Worker Division of Colorado Legal Services, said one farm owner barred a nun from the property. The police ended up ticketing the nun for trying to take a worker to a doctor's appointment.

Even after North Carolina's attorney general issued a statement in the late-'90s supporting access to migrant tenants, police threatened outreach workers with arrest, recalled Nathan Dollar of Vecinos Inc., whose group provides mobile medical outreach and case management to farmers and their families. In 2011, the police forced them to leave, even after the outreach workers showed police the attorney general's letter. "That night we had to turn away several patients," Dollar said. "Our farm worker patients were frightened. It was an all-around ugly scene."

Workers had lined up by the dozens to receive basic medical checkups and flu shots that night. "We have lots of diabetic patients, hypertensive patients," Dollar explained. The access issue is "extremely important for a number of reasons," he added. "People should have access to health care. My doctor doesn't call my employer asking them if they can see me. That would be absurd. ... It's a patient autonomy issue for us. And then the other issue is most of the farm workers that we serve -- if we don't get out there to them, they won't get any health care."

Allowing the denial of access to continue, Dollar said, "is reflective of and promotes the long held philosophy that farm workers are the property of the grower. This has its roots in slavery."

The complaint argues that those policies are still in place for migrant workers. "Farm workers' poverty and vulnerability are at best unsurprising results and at worst intentional results of federal and state laws governing agriculture and farm labor," the complaint states. "These laws routinely exempt farm workers from some of the most basic labor and safety protections -- protections that other American workers take for granted."

Thousands of small farms are exempt from paying the federal minimum wage, the complaint says. The vast majority of agriculture workers are not covered by overtime wage laws. Nor are these workers protected by national labor organizing laws. Allowing workers to do anything collectively to improve their conditions, the complaint says, is "nearly impossible."

The U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights will review the complaint. Coalition leaders said they hope the U.N. will then work with the U.S government on a solution that is consistent and enforceable.

Until then, the coalition argues, too many migrant workers are left isolated. "They are just in a very vulnerable position," Norton said, "where nobody sees them and they often don't see anybody else other than their employer."

Two Alaska Native legislators were at the peak of power during the last legislative session in Juneau.

Even though they weren't serving as Senate President or House Speaker, they held two of the four Finance Committee co-chair positions. Those are the less visible but perhaps more powerful positions where spending decisions on operating and capital budgets are made. Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, held one of those positions in the Senate, while Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, held a similar spot in the House.

It will be much different in the upcoming session.

Following election defeats and a shift of power to urban legislators, a shrinking Alaska Native delegation will largely be on the outside looking in to when decisions are made.

'Awfully white'

"You have a legislature that's turning awfully white," said Albert Kookesh, co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives. "What you are ending up with is something that's not very diverse in terms of opinion."

Kookesh, also a state senator from Angoon, lost his re-election bid following redistricting. So did Thomas, who narrowly lost to newcomer Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins. That leaves the Legislature with just five Native members, Sens. Hoffman and Donny Olson, D-Golovin, and Reps. Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, Neal Foster, D-Nome and Benjamin Nageak, D-Barrow.

There is one Asian legislator, Japanese-American Rep. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks. Kookesh pointed to the defeat of Sen. Bettye Davis, D-Anchorage, the Legislature's only African-American, as further evidence of the lawmaking body becoming less diverse.

The result: A state that is 67 percent white is governed by a legislature that is 90 percent white.

According to the latest U.S. Census ...

Read the complete story only at Alaska Dispatch.

Steve Benen, MSNBC
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) school voucher scheme has been plagued by a series of problems, culminating in a legal defeat in a state court two weeks ago. But in a Brookings speech yesterday, the Republican governor said he still sees his plan as a national model."I think there is a moral imperative that it's not right that only wealthy parents get to decide where their kids go to school," Jindal told an audience at Washington's Brookings Institution. [...]

Thomas Friedman, New York Times
When you fly along the Mediterranean today, what do you see below? To the north, you look down at a European supranational state system "” the European Union "” that is cracking up. And to the south, you look down at an Arab nation state system that is cracking up. It's an unnerving combination, and it's all the more reason for the U.S. to get its economic house in order and be a rock of global stability, because, I fear, the situation on the Arab side of the Mediterranean is about to get worse. Egypt, the anchor of the whole Arab world, is...

Paul Moreno, National Review
Before the New Deal, nearly every state was a “right to work” state. They assumed that competent parties were free to make employment contracts on any terms that they found mutually advantageous. Employer and employee were perfectly equal before the law — this was called “employment at will.” Either party could terminate the contract for any reason whatsoever; employers could not force employees to work, nor could employees compel employers to retain them. The state would not interfere as individuals bargained over wages, hours, and working...

John Cassidy, The New Yorker
 Over the weekend, at a Christmas party in Brooklyn, I ran into an old acquaintance, a veteran editor and publisher of serious, left-leaning books. For much of the time I’ve known him, he’s been busy bemoaning the state of American politics—the entire works of the Bush Administration and the G.O.P., obviously, but also the prevarications and retreats of Obama’s first term: the capitulation to Wall Street, the drone attacks, the failure to close Gitmo, and so on. On this occasion, I fully expected to hear another litany of complaints, but it...

Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief at The Huffington Post, appeared on the McLaughlin Group last week to discuss the current state of political negotiations over the so-called "fiscal cliff."

While co-panelist Pat Buchanan said he believed negotiations would be resolved by a compromise, and Newsweek's Eleanor Clift believed "reasonableness may descend on Washington," Grim pointed out that the Obama administration seems adamant in its demands -- both for a tax hike on the top 2 percent of earners, and the elimination of congressional approval over increases of the debt ceiling.

Said Grim:

There was another meeting on Thursday, and the White House made it very clear that they're not giving much. The White House feels very burned by the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. They feel like they have the leverage, and they're leaving it up to Boehner to capitulate.

[...]They think they have enough leverage that they can force Republicans to put the debt ceiling into any package that they eventually come up with, and if they don't, he feels like there's some other way he can force them to deal with this issue.

When host John McLaughlin suggested that the administration's debt ceiling proposal was an example of executive overreach, Grim countered in the following exchange:

Grim: [The debt ceiling] has to be raised.

McLaughlin: Now, that's the power of the purse.

Grim: The power of the purse is the power to spend. Congress has already authorized and appropriated all this money. Now it wants to come back in and prevent the government from paying the debts accrued by Congress itself. So there is something absurd in Congress coming in behind and saying 'all this money we appropriate--we don't want to pay for that. We're going to default on our national debt, spark a global crisis.

McLaughlin: If he has the power to raise the debt ceiling -- the de fact power to do it, is that causing a... bad balancing between the executive branch and the legislative branch?

Grim: Not at all, because Congress still has the power of the purse. If they don't want to spend money, then they don't have to spend money. All this does is say that the Congress cannot unilaterally default on the federal debt.

Watch the full segment below:

Monica Davey, NY Times
LANSING, Mich. — With Democratic furor escalating and party leaders warning that Michigan was about to be plunged into lasting political discord, the state’s Republican-led Legislature was on the verge of approving new limits to unions here in the birthplace of the modern labor movement. Follow @NYTNational for breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and EditorsMembers of the Michigan Nurses Association protesting. Republicans said they intended to cast final votes as early as Tuesday on legislation abruptly announced last...

MINNEAPOLIS -- When Jack Baker proposed to Michael McConnell that they join their lives together as a couple, in March 1967, McConnell accepted with a condition that was utterly radical for its time: that someday they would legally marry.

Just a few years later, the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door on the men's Minnesota lawsuit to be the first same-sex couple to legally marry in the U.S. It took another 40 years for the nation's highest court to revisit gay marriage rights, and Baker and McConnell – still together, still living in Minneapolis – are alive to see it.

On Friday, the justices decided to take a potentially historic look at gay marriage by agreeing to hear two cases that challenge official discrimination against gay Americans either by forbidding them from marrying or denying those who can marry legally the right to obtain federal benefits that are available to heterosexual married couples.

"The outcome was never in doubt because the conclusion was intuitively obvious to a first-year law student," Baker wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The couple, who have kept a low profile in the years since they made national headlines with their marriage pursuit, declined an interview request but responded to a few questions via email.

While Baker saw the court's action as an obvious step, marriage between two men was nearly unthinkable to most Americans decades earlier when the couple walked into the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis on May 18, 1970, and tried to get a license.

New York City's Stonewall riots, seen now as the symbolic start to the modern gay rights movement, were less than a year in the past. Sodomy laws made gay sex illegal in nearly every state; most gay men and lesbians were concerned with much more basic rights like keeping their jobs and homes or simply living openly.

"People at the time said these guys were crazy," said Phil Duran, legal counsel to OutFront Minnesota, the state's principal gay rights lobby. "I think today, most people would say, `Holy mackerel, you saw this when no one else did.' History will vindicate them. It already has."

Forty years after they appeared in a "Look" magazine spread and on "The Phil Donahue Show," Baker and McConnell have retreated from public life. The men, both 70, live in a quiet, nondescript south Minneapolis neighborhood. McConnell recently retired after a long career with the Hennepin County library system. Baker, a longtime attorney who ran unsuccessfully for Minneapolis City Council and a judgeship in the years after they pursued a marriage license, is mostly retired as well. Their case is no longer widely recalled in Minnesota, and the couple has mostly withdrawn from open activism, although the two men are working on a book about their lives.

Today, nine states have legalized gay marriage or are about to do so. The state-by-state approach adopted by gay rights groups has gathered steam, while the Supreme Court has yet to revisit its slim holding in Baker v. Nelson or address whether the Constitution extends marriage rights to straight and gay couples alike.

The high court in October 1972 declined to hear arguments in Baker v. Nelson, rejecting it in a one-sentence dismissal "for want of a substantial federal question." Now, in taking up the dispute over the California constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the court may confront the issue of whether the U.S. Constitution forbids states from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

"I am convinced that same-sex marriage will be legalized in the United States," Baker told a group of lawyers on Oct. 21, 1971, quoted then by the St. Paul Pioneer Press (in a story that described him as an "admitted homosexual"). But for years after the high court refused to hear arguments in Baker v. Nelson, its single sentence was cited as precedent by federal courts that ruled against same-sex unions.

According to an unpublished book about their case by Ken Bronson, a Chicago-based amateur historian who extensively interviewed Baker and McConnell, the two met at a Halloween party in Norman, Okla., in 1966. McConnell, at this first meeting, expressed his belief that gay people should not be treated like second-class citizens. Not long after, Baker _a U.S. Air Force veteran with an undergraduate degree in engineering – was fired from a job at Tinker Air Force base for being gay.

Soon the couple relocated to Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota, McConnell to take a job at its library and Baker to study law. He joined a campus group called FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression), an early gay-rights group.

"The fear then wasn't that you'd be discriminated against, that was a given," said Jean Tretter, a member of FREE who went on to decades of gay activism in Minnesota. "You were a lot more afraid that someone might come after you with a shotgun."

Baker and McConnell – educated, clean-cut and handsome – contrasted with the typically scruffy counterculture activists of the era. But the Hennepin County attorney blocked their bid for a marriage license, a decision upheld by a district judge and affirmed by the state Supreme Court with reasoning that echoes in today's arguments against gay marriage: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the Book of Genesis."

Asked via email why they pursued the case, Baker wrote, "The love of my life insisted on it."

It was a stormy time for the couple. Soon after McConnell relocated to Minnesota, the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents yanked his job offer because he was openly gay; the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his separate lawsuit to get it back. In April 1971, amid both legal dramas, Baker was elected and then a year later re-elected as president of the university's student government.

Two decades after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Baker v. Nelson, the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that homosexuals had a constitutional right to marry. It started the ball rolling on a movement that has seen many victories and setbacks since.

"Jack was the politician – outgoing and effective, manipulating the material world," said Roger Lynn, a retired Methodist pastor who performed a marriage ceremony for the men in 1971, and who remains in touch with them occasionally. "Michael was the librarian, detail-oriented, more introverted. They were a good match, and they're still making it work."

In a strange twist to their story, Baker wrote via email that he and McConnell would be personally unaffected if Minnesota legalizes gay marriage. In 1971, about 18 months after Hennepin County rejected their application, the couple traveled to southern Minnesota's Blue Earth County, where they obtained a marriage license on which Baker was listed with an altered, gender-neutral name.

That license was later challenged in court but was never explicitly invalidated by a judge. While Baker recently predicted on his blog that gay marriage would be legalized in Minnesota soon, he emailed that he and McConnell don't see a need to make it official in Hennepin County.

"We are legally married," Baker wrote.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- A Northern California sheriff has vowed that his department won't use an aerial drone to spy on ordinary people, but civil liberties groups say there still needs to be some guidelines to ensure privacy.

Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern said Tuesday that a drone his department is pursuing would be used for search and rescue missions, responding to wildfires and to capture fugitives, not for surveillance and intelligence gathering on civilians.

"This device is used for mission-specific incidents," Ahern told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We strive to gain the public's trust in everything we do, and I would never do anything of this nature that would destroy the public's trust beyond repair."

Ahern's comments came after privacy advocates raised concerns Tuesday to the county's Board of Supervisors prior its vote on whether to approve a $31,646 state grant to purchase the drone. Several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, accused have accused the Sheriff's Office for months of trying to get the device approved without full public discussion.

ACLU staff attorney Linda Lye said the surveillance and intelligence gathering amount to "spying."

"Public policy should not be made by stealth attack. Drones are subject to enormous abuses," Lye said. "They can be used for warrantless mass surveillance. There needs to be an open and transparent process for debating the important question of whether a drone is even appropriate in our community and, if so, what safeguards should be in place before we buy a drone."

The Oakland Tribune reports that funding for the drone was part of a larger $1.2 million grant dispersed through the California Emergency Management Agency.

The newspaper said that the agenda item was modified Monday afternoon after supervisors and the sheriff became aware of the controversy building over it. Initially, the wording was changed to allow the sheriff to still accept the $31,646 grant, providing no obstacle to using the money for a drone.

County Undersheriff Richard Lucia told supervisors during Tuesday's meeting that Sheriff's officials said adding it to the supervisors' agenda was an oversight by staff. He reiterated that the office will not buy a drone until it has been fully vetted publicly.

The Sheriff's Office has consistently downplayed concern, insisting that the department has yet to receive authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration. About a dozen U.S. law enforcement agencies already have or are using a drone, including the Seattle Police Department. The figurre number is likely to grow considerably because the federal government has given explicit support to use drones for law enforcement purposes.

Ahern said his office has made no secret about wanting a drone, citing his invitation to the media and citizens for a public demonstration in October.

But a memo that one of Ahern's captains prepared over the summer, obtained by the Freedom of Information Act website MuckRock, says the drone would be equipped with a long-distance camera, live video downlink and infrared sensors that could be used for monitoring bomb threats, fires, unruly crowds, search and rescue operations, and marijuana grows.

Trevor Timm, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which obtained the July internal memo, said he was concerned with what he described as a "mission creep," whereas the drone could be used for purposes other than what Ahern promised.

"These drones have the unprecedented ability to infringe on our privacy and civil liberties," said Timm, who added he is not against drones entirely.

Lucia said if the board votes against buying the drone, the money would go back to the state or be used for something else if the grant rules permit it.

"We stand by our word," Lucia said.

The supervisors eventually decided not to vote on the grant as the matter will be taken up by a public protection committee early next year.

Michael Klarman, Los Angeles Times
On Nov. 6, for the first time in American history, a majority of voters in a state — indeed, in three states — approved same-sex marriage. On Friday, the Supreme Court decided to weigh in on the issue, granting review in cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and in a case contesting the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriage.DOMA is likely to prove the easier issue for the court, assuming the justices rule on the merits of either or both cases (there are procedural issues that, depending on how...

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Same-sex couples in Washington state began reciting wedding vows early Sunday morning, just minutes into the first day they could marry after the state's gay marriage law took effect.

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples picked up their marriage licenses as early as 12:01 a.m. Thursday, but because of the state's three-day waiting period, the earliest weddings could take place was just after midnight, early Sunday morning.

Some courthouses, including in King and Thurston Counties, opened right at midnight, and started marrying couples. Seattle City Hall will open for several hours on Sunday starting at 10 a.m., and several local judges are donating their time to marry couples there.

At the Thurston County Courthouse five couples were married, including Jonathon Bashford, 31, and Matthew Wiltse, 29, both of Olympia.

The couple, together for 10 years, just had a large commitment ceremony in September when they registered as domestic partners, but said they wanted to be among the first to legally marry.

"We weren't going to wait one second longer," Wiltse said.

Last month, Washington, Maine and Maryland became the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote. They joined six other states – New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont – and the District of Columbia that had already enacted laws or issued court rulings permitting same-sex marriage.

Couples in Maryland also started picking up marriage licenses Thursday, though their licenses won't take effect until Jan. 1. Maine's law takes effect on Dec. 29. There's no waiting period in Maine, and people can start marrying just after midnight.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and Secretary of State Sam Reed certified the election results of Referendum 74 on Wednesday afternoon, and the law took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Same-sex couples who previously were married in another state that allows gay marriage, like Massachusetts, will not have to get remarried in Washington state. Their marriages became valid here as soon as the law took effect.

The referendum had asked voters to either approve or reject the state law legalizing same-sex marriage that legislators passed earlier this year. That law was signed by Gregoire in February but was put on hold pending the outcome of the election. Nearly 54 percent of voters approved the measure.

The law doesn't require religious organizations or churches to perform marriages, and it doesn't subject churches to penalties if they don't marry gay or lesbian couples.

Married same-sex couples will still be denied access to federal pensions, health insurance and other government benefits available to heterosexual couples because the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, bars federal recognition of gay unions.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it will take up gay marriage sometime during the current term. Several pending cases challenge the federal benefit provision of DOMA, and a separate appeal asks the justices to decide whether federal courts were correct in striking down California's Proposition 8, the amendment that outlawed gay marriage after it had been approved by courts in the nation's largest state.

___

John Steele Gordon, Commentary
Bills that would make Michigan the 24th state to adopt a right-to-work law have passed the Michigan Senate and House, both in Republican hands. If the bills are reconciled, as seems likely, the legislation will be signed by the Republican governor.This is a remarkable event. Michigan is the fifth-most unionized state in the country, with 19.2 percent of the workforce. The United Auto Workers, born in Michigan, has been a major player in state politics for decades.But the Michigan economy is doing very poorly, relative to the country as a whole, with unemployment at 9.1 percent. Only five...

On Thursday, Washington became the first state to officially legalize marijuana, soon to be followed by Colorado as their new laws legalizing the drug for recreational use go into effect. A survey out Friday shows what Americans want the federal government to do about the states whose drug laws clash with national laws: Leave them alone.

Fifty-one percent of Americans in the new HuffPost/YouGov poll said that in the two states that have legalized marijuana use for adults, the federal government should exempt any adults following state laws from federal drug law enforcement. Only 30 percent said the federal government should enforce its drug laws in those states in the same way it does in any other state.

A New York Times report has cast doubt on whether the two states will be able to put their new laws into effect unencumbered by the federal government, suggesting the Obama administration may pursue legal action to block the two states' laws, which contradict federal laws that make marijuana use illegal. The new HuffPost/YouGov poll suggests this would be an unpopular move by the federal government, although the survey asked about enforcement of drug laws against individuals, rather than action to block the state laws.

Exemptions for users and dispensaries in the states that permit medical marijuana were even more popular than the idea of states permitting recreational use. Fifty-eight percent of respondents favored exemptions from federal drug laws in those cases, and only 23 percent said they were opposed. Medical marijuana exemptions were popular even among some groups that did not favor exemptions for the two recreational marijuana states. For example, 40 percent of Americans age 65 and up opposed exemptions for adults using marijuana in the two states where it is legal compared to 35 percent who supported the exemptions. But of that same age group, 49 percent favored exempting medical marijuana patients and dispensaries, compared to 30 percent who opposed it. Republicans in the survey rejected exemptions for either recreational or medical marijuana, but were more split on an exemption for medical use: By only a 43 percent to 39 percent margin, they said the federal government should enforce its laws in medical marijuana states the same as it would in other states.

Recent polls have shown support for legalizing marijuana nationwide is growing: A CBS News poll released Wednesday found a majority of Americans supporting pot legalization, while a previous HuffPost/YouGov poll found even higher support for legalization if given the option to say marijuana should be "taxed and regulated like alcohol."

The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Dec. 5-6 among 1,000 U.S. adults. It has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, though that inherent variation does not take into account other potential sources of error, including statistical bias in the sample. The poll used a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church.

Following the Michigan House's lead, the state Senate passed a right-to-work measure on Thursday evening -- just hours after Gov. Rick Snyder and top GOP Republicans announced the bills.

Despite impassioned debate from Senate Democrats, the measure passed with a 22-16 vote. According to the Associated Press, four Republican state Senators joined all 12 of their Democratic counterparts in opposition to the right-to-work bill. It passed the Michigan House by a vote of 58-52 earlier in the evening. During the House vote, Democrats walked off the floor in protest after at least eight protesters were arrested, crowds were pepper-sprayed and the Capitol building locked down.

The House and Senate bills are two of three separate right-to-work bills currently up for vote that will eventually be consolidated into two bills, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both the bills passed by the House and Senate pertain to private-sector employees.

Union activists who denounced the bill's hasty progress through the Michigan legislature booed GOP lawmakers and cheered on Democrats who took to the floor to rail against what they called an anti-union agenda. Sen. Bert Johnson D-Detroit occupied the Senate floor for over an hour in protest.

"Look at the people you've locked out," Johnson said. "They are not here today for the lack of something to do. ... They are here because you, Mr. President, are attacking their ability to earn a living."

On Thursday, Snyder reversed his earlier stance of discouraging Republicans from pushing for right-to-work laws and said he would support the bills.

According to the Associated Press, the legislation will likely be enacted next week.

The story continues below with more from the AP.

From the Associated Press:

Because of rules requiring a five-day delay between votes in the two chambers on the same legislation, final enactment appears unlikely until next week. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who previously had said repeatedly that right-to-work was "not on my agenda," told reporters Thursday he would sign the measures.

A victory in Michigan would give the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt region, where organized labor already has suffered several body blows. Republicans in Indiana and Wisconsin recently pushed through legislation curbing union rights, sparking massive protests.

Even before the Michigan bills surfaced, protesters streamed inside the Capitol preparing for what appeared inevitable after Snyder, House Speaker Jase Bolger and Senate Minority Leader Randy Richardville announced at a news conference they were putting the issue on a fast track.

"This is all about taking care of the hard-working workers in Michigan, being pro-worker and giving them freedom to make choices," Snyder said.

"The goal isn't to divide Michigan, it is to bring Michigan together," Snyder said.
But Democrats said the legislation – and Republicans' tactics – would poison the state's political atmosphere.

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley repeatedly gaveled for order during the Senate debate as Democrats attacked the legislation to applause from protesters in the galley. At one point, a man shouted, "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! That's what you people are." He was quickly escorted out. Another later yelled, "We will remember in November."

Eight people were arrested for resisting and obstructing when they tried to push past two troopers guarding the Senate door, state police Inspector Gene Adamczyk said.

Protesters waved placards and chanted slogans such as "Union buster" and "Right-to-work has got to go." Adamczyk said the troopers used pepper spray after the people refused to obey orders to stop.

The Capitol, which was temporarily closed because of safety concerns, reopened Thursday afternoon, sending hundreds of protesters streaming back inside with chants of, "Whose house? Our house!" Adamczyk said a judge ordered the building reopened.

The decision to push forward in the waning days of the Legislature's lame-duck session infuriated outnumbered Democrats, who resorted to parliamentary maneuvers to slow action but were powerless to block the bills.

House Democrats did walk out briefly Thursday in protest of the Capitol being closed.

Adamczyk estimated that about 2,500 visitors were inside the Capitol, where their shouts reverberated off stone halls and frequently could be heard inside the ornate chambers.

After repeatedly insisting during his first two years in office that right-to-work was not on his agenda, Snyder reversed course Thursday, a month after voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have barred such measures under the state constitution.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Snyder said he had kept the issue at arm's length while pursuing other programs to bolster the state economy. But he said circumstances had pushed the matter to the forefront.

"It is a divisive issue," he acknowledged. "But it was already being divisive over the past few weeks, so let's get this resolved. Let's reach a conclusion that's in the best interests of all."

Also influencing his decision, he said, were reports that some 90 companies had decided to locate in Indiana since that state adopted right-to-work legislation. "That's thousands of jobs, and we want to have that kind of success in Michigan," he said.

Snyder and the GOP leaders insisted the legislation was not meant to weaken unions or collective bargaining, saying it would make unions more responsive to their members.

Senate Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer said she was "livid."

"These guys have lied to us all along the way," she said. "They are pushing through the most divisive legislation they could come up with in the dark of night, at the end of a lame-duck session and then they're going to hightail it out of town. It's cowardly."

Republicans have commanding majorities in both chambers – 64-46 in the House and 26-12 in the Senate. Under their rules, only a simple majority of members elected and serving must be present to have a quorum and conduct business. For that reason, Democrats acknowledged that boycotting sessions and going into hiding, as some lawmakers in neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin have done in recent years to stall legislation unpopular with unions, would be futile in Michigan.

Throngs of protesters spent weeks outside capitol buildings in those states, clashing over union rights.

"We will not have another Wisconsin in Michigan," Adamczyk said. "People are allowed to protest, but they need to do in a peaceful manner."

CORRECTION: An earlier headline for this story said right-to-work legislation would head to Governor Rick Snyder. First, the House must approve the Senate legislation and vice-versa.

Political affiliation in the United States has historically been a Republican sandwich of sorts -- blue along the coasts and red throughout the middle. However, in the recent presidential election, there was a splash of blue smack dab in the sea of red. Colorado, a state that was once historically Republican, voted for Barack Obama for president not only in 2008, when every state witnessed an upsurge in Democratic turnout, but in 2012 as well.

There is a reason why Colorado, a state that epitomizes the American West ideology of expansionism and independence, a state heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry, with a strong evangelical community, voted for Barack Obama -- a candidate, purported by the right-wing pundits to be a leftist/ socialist/ terrorist.

The Republicans had the Super PACs in their favor. They had Citizens United in their favor. They even had the weak economy in their favor. But the reason the Republicans ultimately lost in November, and the Democrats won, is largely due to a man named Marshall Ganz and the neighborhood model of organizing.

Back in February of this year, I participated in the class "Leadership, Organizing and Action: Leading Change", taught by Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ganz, a former student at Harvard, dropped out in 1964 to join the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, then headed out to California to organize with the United Farm Workers, finally returning to Harvard decades later to complete his undergraduate degree. Shortly after, he became a Harvard professor and worked as a political consultant. In 2008, Ganz was hired by the Obama Campaign and devised the "neighborhood model" used by "Organizing for America" in 2008, and again in 2012.

In the class, Ganz teaches budding organizers from around the world how to organize the resources in their communities, to mobilize power, to create change. The concept is simple and elegant: Identify your "community," clarify the problem that exists, and then work within that community to build resources, to create power, and ultimately affect change.

"Organizing for America" -- the Obama campaign's grassroots arm, provided the ultimate example of the neighborhood model in action as it wove together the work of neighborhoods across the United States and maintained a local feel, on a national scale.

Following are some tricks of the trade of community organizing taught by Ganz, which I witnesses in working for Organizing for America:

Tell your story

One integral component to organizing a community -- according to the Ganz style of organizing -- brings us back to the most basic forms of communication: storytelling. Ganz teaches an entire class on the art of the personal narrative, comprised of three key ingredients -- the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now. This is a winning combination that any good leader will use to inspire and motivate others to action.

The first thing on the agenda at an Obama campaign house party is introductions. Everyone gathers together in someone's living room with crumb cake and hot coffee and tells their story following the same prompt: who are you, why are you here, and why are you supporting Obama.

Storytelling is an integral component of the campaign and through this process, an interesting shift takes place. In discussing one's personal story, linked with the challenges our country faces, perfect strangers with nothing more in common than standing in the same cramped living room, become connected and a bond forms. The practice is inspiring and motivating and often emotional -- leaving many in tears. It not only reaffirms one's commitment to Obama, but forms and strengthens the connection within the group and ultimately, in the community.

Relationships are the foundation of community organizing

According to Ganz, "Movements aren't built by individual people, they are build on relationships" and therefore, relationships are the crux of organizing a community of people.

The beauty of community organizing lies in the neighborhood model. It is working neighbor-to-neighbor and community by community, to create change, from the bottom up. Leaders are identified and resources developed. The Obama campaign strategically decided to focus on the power of one's inner circle to communicate a message, while the Romney campaign tried to rely on the power of paid media, focusing on advertising to get their message across.

The Obama campaign was able to win a state like Colorado because of the power of organizing. In 2008, there were 30 Obama offices in Colorado. In 2012, there were 60. While the Romney campaign was focused on volunteers waving signs at passing vehicles, the Obama campaign had volunteers knocking on doors in rural Colorado. There were "Women for Obama" events, house parties, workshops and potlucks, all designed to include people and empower a community.

I spent an afternoon canvassing with a woman named Jan, in Salida, Colo. While examining our walk packet, Jan found her neighbor Lynn listed. Jan knew she wasn't going to find Lynn at home on this particular afternoon. Instead of going to Lynn's house, we went by the law-office where she works to make sure she had received her mail-in-ballot and to remind her to send it in.

On a typical night at a phone bank in Glenwood Springs, the room would be abuzz with people making calls on their cheap plastic flip phones. The volunteers greeted their familiar names listed in their call list and conversations such as the following would ensue: "Hey Joe, it's Frank, how are you tonight? Great, and how's your wife? Wonderful, well I'm calling you tonight from Obama headquarters in Glenwood and I just wanted to make sure that you knew where you could go in to vote early. It's at the Courthouse. You need a ride? Not a problem! I can pick you up tomorrow and we can go together."

Empower individuals

Whatever Organizing for America office I traveled to, I experienced the same phenomenon with the volunteers. Whenever a volunteer would return from a shift they would automatically want to debrief you on the events that occurred during their shift. They will go through their walk packet house by house to tell you about the barking dog, the Romney sign, and the friendly and unfriendly neighbors. They felt obligated to go through their packets because they felt personally responsible for their work. They wanted to debrief the number of new voters they registered, the number of doors they knocked on, and the conversations they had because they were proud of the work they had done and experienced a sense of accomplishment.

Regardless of the dozens of focus groups and hundreds of appearances made by candidates and surrogates, it is clear that the most effective tool in a campaign are the volunteers -- the people in the community who know their community best.

This election served as an important lesson in politics. Even though more money was spent in this election than any other election in history, it proved that Super PACs couldn't buy the election -- or at least entirely. In the United States of America, the president is still decided by the people. This election was an incredible demonstration of the power of community, in a time when people have become more and more distant, and less and less connected to one another.

The Republicans banked on the idea that ads, taxes and the mantra of "it's the economy, stupid" would win the day. They were wrong. What won was the Obama campaign's organizing model -- the ground game of millions of volunteers, staff, and offices that worked in every state in the country day in and day out, around the clock, to make sure swing states like Colorado would go blue. In the end, not only Obama won but Americans won too -- our communities are left stronger and individuals, empowered.

Steve Erickson, American Prospect
Barry Goldwater was my first political hero. The most antiauthoritarian figure in mainstream American politics, who said what he thought without giving a damn, he looked and sounded as Western as Arizona, the state he represented in the Senate. Goldwater and John Kennedy hatched plans in the White House—for what they assumed would be their upcoming presidential campaign against each other in 1964—to travel the country in the Arizonan’s small plane that he flew himself, stopping off at airports in the middle of nowhere to debate one issue or another before taking...