Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising:

* Politicians Use Botched NY Botched Bomb Attempt to Attack Constitution
* Immigration in Arizona and Beyond: A Panel Discussion
* Black Agenda Report on Blacks, Jobs, and Nuclear Power
* Senate Momentum Builds to Audit the Fed

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Politicians Use Botched NY Botched Bomb Attempt to Attack Constitution

Following New York’s near-miss of a bombing in Time’s Square on Tuesday, US legislators are calling for major reforms in dealings with terror suspects. Independent Senator Joe Lieberman has suggested an amendment to a current law that strips American citizens fighting for foreign armies (excepting that of Israel) of their citizenship. Lieberman’s amendment would revoke the citizenship of any American who “is found to be involved in a foreign terrorist organization.” The Senator has both bipartisan and bicameral support, with Democratic Representative Jason Altimore of Pennsylvania and Republican Rep. Charlie Dent backing legislation in the House. However, opponents, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, point to the flimsy constitutional foundation for the legislation. “If they’re a U.S. citizen, until they’re convicted of some crime, I don’t know how you would attempt to take their citizenship away.” Furthermore, it is unclear how real terrorists would be differentiated from suspects. In addition to being constitutionally questionable, most experts find that racial profiling and terror surveillance are inefficient—in fact, they are counterproductive. Meanwhile, Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Peter King (R-NY) have introduced legislation in the House and Senate that would prevent known or suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms and other weapons. The legislation has a wide coalition of support, including that of New York’s Mayor Bloomberg. Dissenters include Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and NRA leaders.

GUEST: Shahid Buttar, Executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Immigration in Arizona and Beyond: A Panel Discussion

On Tuesday in Arizona, the City Councils of Tuscon and Flagstaff voted to file suit against the statewide anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, set to take effect this July. The actions follow a statement by Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix who publicly opposes the law. Nationwide momentum is building up against the law, even as new polls suggest that a slight majority of Americans support it. A Rocky mountain poll released on Tuesday found that in Arizona 52% support the bill while 39% oppose it. That mirrors a nationwide Gallup poll which found that of the 78 percent of Americans who have heard about SB 1070, 51 percent approve of it and 39 percent disapprove. However, the media watchdog group Media Matters for America take issue with the conduct of the poll asserting that the extent of knowledge of Arizona’s law was not made clear to those being surveyed. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of American cities on Saturday May 1st to protest SB 1070 and demand full rights for immigrants. Pressure on the federal government to take action on comprehensive immigration reform is building fast even as legislators in 10 different states are considering their own state laws mirroring Arizona’s SB 1070. Before we turn to the panel of experts we’ve lined up, I want to share some of the sounds of the May Day march that took place in Los Angeles calling for full rights for all immigrants. While hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities across the nation, LA attracted the largest number, with some estimating a quarter of a million people. Special thanks to Uprising correspondent Chris Bennett for this audio.

GUEST: Marcelo Ballve, contributing editor at New America Media, former AP reporter, Andrea Nill, Immigration Researcher and Blogger for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Laura Vasquez, Legislative Analyst, Immigration Policy Project at the National Council of La Raza

For more information, visit www.nclr.org.

Read Andrea Nill’s blog at http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/author/anill/

Read Marcelo Ballve’s article at New America Media: http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d8f9be46a8b86c61a61ce5f00acde741

Black Agenda Report on Blacks, Jobs, and Nuclear Power

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Blacks, Jobs, and Nuclear Power.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Time to Audit the Fed?

Ahead of an expected vote, Federal Reserve officials lobbied lawmakers against an amendment to financial regulations proposed by Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders calling for an audit of the central bank. The Huffington Post news website recently obtained the documents that were distributed to Senators from an anonymous source within the Fed. The disclosure reveals a central bank strategy of lobbying for the competing Corker-Merkley provision in Senator Chris Dodd’s Financial Reform bill over the Sanders amendment. Vehemently opposed by the Fed, the outlined changes in the Sanders version would allow for the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit of how much assistance financial firms received from the two trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money loaned out during the financial crisis. The lobbying effort by the central bank argues that giving the GAO such authority casts an undue political influence over independent monetary policy. The Fed is also trying to make its case for continued secrecy on the basis that naming the firms in public would create a stigma that would make financial institutions reluctant to borrow from the bank in the future. While Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Obama administration had both come out in public against the audit, on Thursday the White House withdrew its opposition to the effort after being convinced that the Fed’s authority to set monetary policy would remain untouched.

GUEST: Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” — Galileo Galilei