Blog Posts by Liz Goodwin

AP060623047408Florida's attorney general, gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum, proposed an immigration law Wednesday that would go "one step further" than Arizona's controversial law cracking down on illegal immigration.

The law would require police to verify immigration status while making a lawful stop and would require employers to use the E-Verify system to check citizenship status before hiring. It would also let judges levy harsher penalties on convicts who are illegal immigrants — the provision that would go "one step further" than Arizona.

McCollum's press release says his office "made changes to the draft legislation to strengthen it against potential constitutional challenges." But a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional Arizona's identical requirement that officers verify immigration status. (You can read the Florida draft legislation online as a PDF.)

McCollum is locked in a bitter primary with Republican Rick Scott, who has spent millions of dollars on TV ads saying the attorney general is soft on illegal immigration. Polls show that conservative Republican voters list illegal immigration among their top priorities, according to a local Fox TV affiliate.

AP01113003114The leaders of a mosque in Arlington, Texas, and one in Bridgeport, Conn., have asked local police for beefed-up patrols as Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, starts Wednesday night.

On Friday, a group of protesters from a Texas-based fundamentalist Christian group called Operation Save America yelled at worshipers as they exited a mosque in Bridgeport. The Connecticut Post reported that some in the group yelled, "Jesus hates Muslims" and "Islam is a lie."

Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Connecticut office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the protests led him to ask local police to increase security before Ramadan at the state's mosques.

"We were concerned both ways: We were concerned that these people might take it to the next level, especially because we saw they were very aggressive verbally, but we also don't want members of our community to be dragged into a shouting confrontation," he said.

AP100809017880• The Pentagon will cut thousands of jobs — including 50 posts reserved for generals and admirals and the entire Joint Forces Command based in Virginia — as part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's plan to save $100 billion over 5 years. (The Washington Post)

• Former Mexican President Vicente Fox called on his country to legalize drugs as a way of combating powerful drug cartels. (Bloomberg News)

• A former classmate alleges that Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul kidnapped her while he was part of a secret society at Baylor University in Texas. She said he tried to force her to smoke marijuana and pray to the "aqua Buddha" in a creek in a bizarre late-night prank. Paul's reps won't deny the story but say they are considering taking legal action against the "drive-by journalism." (GQ, Slate)

AP100804032330Almost a week after a federal judge overturned California's Prop. 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, Republicans seem averse to aggressively attacking the decision.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell deftly sidestepped the question of whether gay marriage could be an issue for the midterm elections. "I don't know," he answered at a breakfast with reporters Thursday, then said that government spending and debt are the issues that voters really care about.

Locally, Republicans are also avoiding the issue. California candidates Meg Whitman (running for governor) and Carly Fiorina (running for Senate) have remained relatively silent on the decision, only releasing brief statements after it was handed down. Whitman refused to say whether she would defend Prop. 8 if elected.

It could be that Republicans are backing away from the issue because they don't want to alienate independents, who typically care less about social issues than Democrats and Republicans.

Federal prosecutors are accusing a San Diego-area couple of posing as law enforcement officers while forcing a relative's wife to leave the country.

In January, Gregory Raymond Denny Jr. allegedly posed as a U.S. marshal and forcefully deported his cousin's pregnant wife, Cherriebelle Hibbard, to the Philippines. Police told the Associated Press that Denny — a former bounty hunter — flashed a phony badge and then handcuffed Hibbard. He then forced her husband to buy her a plane ticket back to the Philippines.

AP100714065453Two weeks later, the New York Times and the Associated Press are catching up with The Upshot's reporting on the growing opposition to mosques around the country. Mosques in small communities in Tennessee, California and Wisconsin — far from the emotionally loaded Ground Zero site — are facing protests from community members who contend that the Muslim houses of worship serve as training grounds for jihadists.

Both stories highlight a recent two-year study by Duke University and the University of North Carolina, which found that mosques and other community organizations like Muslim bookstores help prevent radicalization among American Muslims.

Meanwhile, American University professor and former U.K. ambassador to Pakistan Akbar Ahmed told "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart that America's Founding Fathers held deep respect for Islam, and that modern opponents are rewriting history by attacking Islam as a religion of evil.

This is the first in a series of posts that will feature an image of the day.

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Two family members of victims of the 1945 atomic bomb that incinerated Hiroshima grieve and pray at the Peace Memorial Park at a ceremony Friday marking the 65th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack. For the first time since dropping the bombs, the United States sent a delegation to the memorial ceremony.

[Slideshow: Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration]

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Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean officially launched his bid to run Haiti only a day ago, but he's already facing criticism from a fellow celebrity-activist — and he's facing a onetime bandmate's embarrassing endorsement of Jean's chief rival, too.

Actor Sean Penn, whose charity has been running a Haitian survivor camp of 50,000 since the killer earthquake, said on CNN that he's "suspicious" of Jean's bid.

"This is somebody who's going to receive an enormous amount of support from the United States, and I have to say I'm very suspicious of it, simply because he, as an ambassador at large, has been virtually silent. For those of us in Haiti, he has been a nonpresence," he said. You can watch Penn's comments below: