The ACLU of Virginia accused Gov. Bob McDonnell of reinstating a "literacy test" in Virginia when he decided to add another step for nonviolent felons to have their voting rights restored.

"For persons with a limited education, the governor's requirement that they write an essay explaining their past and present actions and the rationale for why their rights should be restored is a nearly insurmountable obstacle,'' said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis on Monday.

We reported this weekend that McDonnell (R) will require the offenders to submit a letter to the governor outlining their contributions to society since their release, turning a nearly automatic process into a more subjective one that some say might prevent poor, less-educated or minority residents from being allowed to vote.

Update, 12:35: The Democratic Party of Virginia called on McDonnell to remove the requirement.

"Governor McDonnell should immediately remove this costly and burdensome barrier for nonviolent offenders to renew their voting and 2nd Amendment rights,'' said Dave Mills, the party's executive director. "It's mind-boggling that Governor McDonnell would choose to bury the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office in unnecessary paperwork during a time of belt-tightening and budget cuts. Surely the secretary's valuable time could be used in more productive ways than grading essays for Governor McDonnell."

Update, 3:30 p.m. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Ken Plum and House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong issued a statement about the new requirement.

"By requiring nonviolent offenders to submit an essay, Governor McDonnell is returning to a 'blank sheet' voter registration system that in the past disenfranchised many African American voters," Plum said. "By creating an additional, unnecessary and egregious hurdle, McDonnell has violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Federal Voting Rights Act."

Update, 6:30 p.m.The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus issued a statement: "Governor McDonnell's decision to use the executive power granted to him to transform the restoration of voting rights from an objective process to a subjective one that is contingent on an original essay for non-violent offenders is taking a horrific step back towards the era of Jim Crow. Make no mistake, the new essay requirement is an obstruction that will lead to judging applicants on the basis of political beliefs and ideological considerations."

McDonnell's administration said the requirement is designed to put a human face on each applicant and to help staff members better understand each person's situation.

Officials are revamping the entire system for felons to have their rights restored as McDonnell works to make good on a campaign pledge to process every application within 90 days, considerably faster than any other administration in recent history.

Del. Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria) sent a letter to McDonnell asking him to rescind him the requirement, saying it was highly discriminatory against the poor and under-educated and violates the separation of powers.

"The essay requirement violates the separation of powers of the court and the Governor's office which was designed to prevent this very scenario -- making the restoration of rights a political process," Herring said.

In 1986, there was no World Wide Web, nobody carried a cell phone, and the president was a man born in 1911. That was the year that the statute that protects the privacy of your electronic life—email, search terms, cloud computing, cell phone location records, postings to Facebook—was passed into law. Even then, Congress recognized that computerized record-keeping would pose privacy issues as information that had formally resided in the home (and been protected by the Fourth Amendment) moved to the hands of businesses.

Today, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which should safeguard electronic communications records (like your email or chat logs) and the information you share with companies (like Google documents or social networking posts), is in serious need of an update.

Fortunately, the ACLU isn't alone in that opinion. Other civil liberties groups and major corporations like Google, Microsoft and AT&T agree. That's why we've all joined together to ask Congress to reform ECPA. We all believe that law enforcement should have to go to a judge and get a warrant that says it has probable cause to believe you've committed a crime before it can read your email, browse through your social networking account, or track your location.

This is precisely what the Framers of the Constitution intended. The Fourth Amendment recognized that citizens of a democracy need privacy for their "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Two hundred years ago, those papers would have been in our homes and firmly protected by the Constitution. The fact that they are now held on the servers of private companies doesn't change the principle governing our privacy rights.

Modernizing ECPA is the first step in a long process of reforming digital rights. The ACLU believes the law should extend probable cause protection to other types of records (like who you call, text and email). We believe that illegally-obtained digital information shouldn't be used in court and that there should be strict record-keeping of all law enforcement requests.

Some folks in our coalition agree with this, others wouldn't go this far. But we do agree on the fundamentals: without criminal suspicion, the government shouldn't be reading our personal correspondence online or tracking our movement offline.

>> Take action: Tell Congress that it's time our privacy laws got an upgrade.

Fresh off a landmark victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, the conservative advocacy group Citizens United is trying to get around one part of the ruling it didn't like.

The federal government promised last month to pay more than $1 billion by the end of March to tens of thousands of black farmers who had filed decades-old discrimination complaints against the U.S. Agriculture Department.

The following statement was released today by leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org. Their signatures appear below.

As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House's passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.

Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers' defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

The hype surrounding the new health bill is belied by the facts:

• About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out. That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.
• Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.
• Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.
• The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.
• People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan's limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. Many, even most, will eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.
• Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates.
• The much-vaunted insurance regulations - e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions - are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.
• Women's reproductive rights will be further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and for all other medical services.
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