A federal appeals court lifted the ban on political and public- issue ads on public radio and television stations, opening the door for the paid ads to run in time for election season. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals split on the issue in a 2-1 vote Thursday, rejecting the Federal Communications Commission argument that educational programming will suffer.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, conservatives in media have sought to deflect from the racism and racial profiling that precipitated his untimely death by referencing the broader social malaise of supposed "black-on-black violence." The truth? As the largest racial group, whites commit the majority of crimes in America. In particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led blacks again, more than 2-1.

As Mexicans took off from work and school for the long Easter holiday celebrations, the country’s presidential and congressional candidates inundated electronic media with new ads designed to win over the voters. A sampling of spots aired on Ciudad Juarez’s public radio station 106.7 FM over the Easter weekend zoomed in on several themes that are hot points of debate in the weeks before the July 1 election. Standing out in the ads were issues of insecurity, violence and the so-called drug war. Poverty and the environment also made appearances in some of the political appeals.

A new report from NDN highlights how society as a whole, and Hispanics specifically, are increasingly using mobile media to connect to the issues they care about. The report ties the demographic rise of Hispanics with the rise in the community’s increased use of mobile media technologies.

A recent story about the global rise in living solo says while countries like Sweden have the most number of singletons (47 percent), the countries where single person households are growing the fastest are Brazil, China and India. Living solo has usually been regarded as something profoundly abnormal, especially in a culture where a parent’s job is not done until the children are “settled,” ergo married. We like to think we were designed to live communally even if it’s in shared misery. 

As the tragedy of Trayvon Martin's death calls the country to examine the racial inequities of the criminal justice system, it must go beyond our common, and justified, focus on the racist zealots or inept police officers. It has to go where the real power lies – with the prosecutors – the ones who control the levers of the system in counties and states across the country. In Martin’s case, it was prosecutor Norm Wolfinger who allowed his killer to walk free. 

2011 saw a record number of laws restricting abortion in U.S. states. It also saw a record number of state anti-immigrant laws. Coincidence? Maybe not. In 2000, 13 states were considered “hostile” to reproductive rights; by 2011, that number had doubled to 26 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 2011 was also a record year for anti-immigrant legislation. 

There was never much doubt that if the Supreme Court ever got a chance to decide the constitutionality of the health care reform law that it would be in for rough sledding from the court’s five conservatives. The judicial torpedoing of the law will hurt millions of poor, working-class Americans who desperately need health care, but couldn’t get affordable care before the law was passed, and are just as unlikely to get affordable care if it’s struck down. It’s no mystery who among those millions will be hurt the most.

The shooting that killed seven at a private Christian university in Oakland would never have happened in Korea, where owning a firearm is outlawed. That at least is the assessment of community members who point to America’s own thriving gun culture as a causal factor in this and other incidents. The shooting, the Bay Area’s worst mass murder in nearly two decades, occurred Monday morning at Oikos University, in a business park between Interstate 880 and Oakland International Airport. Another three were injured in the slaughter, according to police.

In a darker reality, you would not be reading this. I would not be a writer. Nor would I be a husband to my wife or a father to my new son. Because if the shaky hands of a police officer had deemed otherwise, my brains would have been splattered all over the backseat of a tan Ford Mustang years ago. I don’t purport to know all the facts of the admitted recent killing of unarmed Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. But I can tell you what it’s like to be a young man of color in a world that too often criminalizes us.