Leid Stories - 06/18/14

Faceoff with Florida Clemency Board Over Ex-Felons’ Voting Rights

Yesterday Is Today: The Iraq Crisis In Political and Historical Context

Faith leaders from all over Florida are converging on Tallahassee today for a faceoff with the state’s Board of Executive Clemency seeking to restore the voting rights of an estimated 1.5 million ex-felons barred permanently from voting because of their criminal past. Florida has the largest population—about 25 percent—of the nation’s 6 million citizens who have lost their voting rights because of felony convictions, but is one of only three states (besides South Carolina and Tennessee) that permanently revoke such rights.

Leid Stories talks to representatives of People Improving Communities for Organizing (PICO), an interfaith organization staging its second legislative intervention on the issue, demanding Gov. Rick Scott reverse the policy.

British Pakistani scholar-journalist Tariq Ali with surgical precision places the current crisis in Iraq in political and historical context in a prescient speech he delivered at Binghamton University 10 years ago.

Tariq’s talk was based on his new book at the time, “Bush In Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq.”