More than 12 million people were arrested in America in 2011. Most of them were charged with a crime and many were poor, qualifying for a public defender. The American Council of Chief Defenders suggests that each public defender handle no more than 400 misdemeanors or 150 felonies per year; many carry caseloads two to three times those guidelines, and some much more than that. There are simply far, far more poor people needing lawyers than there are public lawyers to represent them. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright, adequate counsel for poor Americans is far from guaranteed.

When Texas' Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott gloated on Twitter just hours after the Supreme Court hobbled the Voting Rights Act that "Eric Holder can no longer deny Voter ID in Texas," he had to know that the Obama administration would respond. Attorney General Holder delivered the counterpunch on Thursday, targeting Texas, the political poster child for voter suppression, in a new strategy to protect minorities under the remaining parts of the landmark law. 

Vietnam specializes in irony. Its president, Truong Tan Sang, visited the White House this Thursday, where he was expected to request a lifting of the U.S. ban on lethal weapons sales to his country, while also seeking support for a bid to join the UN Human Rights Council. The irony? Besides trying to buy weapons from the United States, a country it defeated four decades ago, Hanoi also continues to trample on human rights.

Opponents of the new downtown development argue that funding a private stadium for the Detroit Red Wings with public money that would otherwise go to the public school system is ludicrous, especially when local schools are so far below national averages across all metrics for educational systems. Dan Rather, in a special documentary report from last year called the Detroit Public School system “a disgrace,” and went further by saying that the district is plagued by “below average graduation rates, historically low standardized test scores, rapidly declining enrollment and a deficit that has grown from $200 million to $327 million since the state took over the district two years ago.”

California prisoners in over a dozen prisons are entering their third week on hunger strike, which began on July 8th with 30,000 prisoners across the state participating. This is the third hunger strike since June 2011 that California prisoners in the Security Housing Units (SHU) have participated in, demanding the same five core demands, with an emphasis on ending California's practice of long-term segregation of inmates suspected of prison gang affiliation. 

During his surprise remarks about the George Zimmerman verdict Friday, President Obama talked at length not only about race, but also about his experience as a black man in America. Obama’s comments remain as conflicted as they were sometimes brave—evidenced by some of the suspicion and vitriol lodged against him in mainstream, independent and social media following the press conference. The short speech stands out as one of the few times that the president has talked explicitly about race and the problem of racism. 

Take the highly contested Food Security Bill, championed by Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling party and majority alliance in India’s parliament. The proposed landmark bill guarantees subsidized food to two-thirds of 1.2 the billion people who live in India, making it the largest experiment in food security worldwide. It obligates the Indian government to procure and distribute subsidized grains to approximately 800 million people, including 50 percent of urban-dwelling Indians and 75 percent of those living in rural areas. 

For Tang Hui, who was once put behind bars under the controversial re-education through labor system, the ruling by a Hunan court on Monday is a case of justice done. But some lawyers and legal experts believe the decision signals that the controversial penalty system, in place since 1957 and commonly known as laojiao, which can confine people for up to four years without an open trial, is coming to an end.

They were all trying to get home -- Oscar Grant in Oakland, Trayvon Martin in Florida, or the woman who was raped in a bus in New Delhi and christened Nirbhaya or the fearless one by the media, or the woman gangraped on her way back from college in Kamdhuni near Kolkata. They didn't want to spark off great protests. They didn't want to become symbols, placards or posters. They didn't want docudramas made about their lives.

When Shuanghui, China’s largest pork producer, made an offer to buy Smithfield, it should have been a straightforward business transaction. Smithfield is America’s largest pork producer. By acquiring Smithfield, Shuanghui would be positioned to fill China’s rising demand for more pork. What should have been a simple win-win deal is becoming a lot more complicated thanks to Congressional review. As presented at the hearing, the humble bacon has suddenly risen to become an ominous threat capable of imperiling the security of the United States.