Undocumented immigrants are generally not eligible for in-state tuition if they attend Colorado state colleges or universities. One state university, however, will permit undocumented immigrants to pay a lower tuition if they meet certain criteria. Starting this semester, undocumented immigrants who qualify will pay $7,157 per year at Metropolitan State University of Denver — $3,000 higher than tuition for in-state students who are citizens or legal residents, but $8,000 lower than the out-of-state rate. To be eligible, undocumented immigrants must have attended high school in Colorado for at least three years and earned a high school diploma or GED. University officials said more than 100 students have qualified so far.

The university’s board of trustees approved the lower rate in June because the legislature failed to pass the tuition bill, according to Stephen Jordan, the university’s president. “I think what our board was saying was, ‘Why wouldn’t we want to provide an affordable tuition rate for these students?” Jordan said. But the move angered state conservatives and has led some to threaten to sue the college:

On June 20, university officials were called before a hearing of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee to defend their plan.

That same week, Colorado’s attorney general, John W. Suthers, issued a nonbinding legal opinion criticizing the policy.

Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman and presidential candidate who now heads the Rocky Mountain Foundation, a conservative research organization, said his group intended to sue the university in the next few months.

The university’s decision helps make higher education more affordable for undocumented immigrants, but it also underscores the broader problem faced by hundreds of thousands of DREAM Act-eligible undocumented immigrants across the U.S. Only 12 states allow them to pay in-state tuition rates, and four states block undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state tuition

The Obama Administration’s deferred action policy, which went into effect last week, will not help eligible young adults pay in-state tuition either even though it gives them temporary legal status. Moreover, governors in Arizona and Nebraska have vowed to prevent DREAM Act-eligible immigrants from receiving public benefits — like driver’s licenses and in-state tuition — if they qualify for work permits under the new policy.

The New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisk initiative may not be getting guns off the street or reducing crime, but it is certainly making an impact on public opinion. A new poll by the New York Times found that a significant majority of New Yorkers think police favor whites over blacks. The sentiment is especially strong within the African American community; 80 percent of the respondents agreed that police favor whites, compared to 48 percent of white New Yorkers. The poll also found that a majority of black New Yorkers think stop-and-frisk has led to the harassment of innocent people.

This perception may come from the fact that the NYPD made more stops of young black men in 2011 than the total number of young black men in the city. Police have been accused of practicing racial profiling through stop-and-frisk, which would explain why attitudes towards the policy fall along racial lines:

Opinions about stop-and-frisk fall are divided by race. Fifty-five percent of whites described the use of the tactic as acceptable; 56 percent of blacks called it excessive. Among Hispanics, 48 percent said it was acceptable and 44 percent said it was excessive. Republicans, independents and residents of Queens generally support the practice; Democrats and Manhattanites generally deem it excessive.

Overall, 64 percent of New Yorkers say the police favors one race over the other, a steep rise from the early years of the Bloomberg administration, when less than half of residents agreed with that sentiment. The perception of police favoritism has not been as widespread since the final years of Mr. Giuliani’s tenure, when race relations were noticeably more tense. (The question has not been asked in a Times poll since 2003.)

These views, in many cases, appear to have been influenced by personal experience. A third of the New Yorkers surveyed, including 37 percent of black people, said police officers had used insulting language toward them. A fifth of the respondents said they had been stopped by a police officer because of their race or ethnicity, and almost all were black or Hispanic, and more likely to be young and male.

Besides damaging their relationship with minority communities, the NYPD has also alienated journalists and activists through the program, prompting several allegations against police officers for beating up, intimidating and arresting anyone who films them.

When the Supreme Court ruled on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070 — invalidating much of the law and limiting the scope of the law’s “show me your papers” provision — its ruling clarified the constitutionality of the harmful state immigration laws also but left many questions unanswered about laws in other states that went even further than Arizona’s.

But in the first ruling on a state immigration law following the Supreme Court’s SB 1070 decision, the 11th Circuit federal appeals court struck down most of Alabama’s HB 56, including the worst provisions like the state’s attack on school children:

– School officials cannot ask about students’ immigration status: Under HB 56, schools were required to determine the immigration status of every newly enrolled student. As a result, students stayed home from school once the provision went into effect in late September out of confusion over the law and fear that they or their parents could be deported. By February, 13 percent of Latino students dropped out by February as families fled Alabama because of the immigration policy.

– Alabama cannot ban contracts between lawful and unlawful residents.: Alabama’s HB 56 included an unprecedented ban against contracting with undocumented immigrants. No other state or nation has such a measure, which, for example, could have made it illegal for a landlord to rent an apartment to someone who is not a legal resident. Politicians readily admitted that the goal of HB 56 was to make Alabama a hostile place for undocumented immigrants, and in blocking the contracts provision, the court recognized that the point of the contracts section was “forcing undocumented individuals out of Alabama.”

Additionally, the 11th Circuit stopped Alabama and Georgia from making it a crime to transport or harbor an undocumented immigrant in those states. Both states included these provisions in their similar anti-immigrant laws approved by state legislators more than a year ago. Arizona’s SB 1070 also makes its a crime to harbor or transport someone who is not a legal resident, but the Supreme Court did not rule on it. Today, a civil rights coalition is asking a federal judge in Arizona to block this section of SB 1070 especially now that it has been struck down in Alabama and Georgia.

But in its ruling about Alabama’s 2011 law, the federal appeals court let a portion of HB 56 stand that makes it a felony for an undocumented immigrant to “attempt to enter into a business transaction with the state or a political subdivision of the state. Originally, this provision was interpreted so broadly that it prevented undocumented immigrants from having running water at their homes, but legislators made changes to the measure last spring so that it only applies to a “public records transaction,” like a driver’s license or business license. The court ruled that the state could prevent undocumented immigrants from applying for these licenses just as it agreed that the state could prevent people who are not legally in the U.S. from attending state universities and community colleges.

The federal court removed most of the worst portions of the state immigration laws, and as the Supreme Court ruled on SB 1070, it left a window open for future legal challenges against Alabama and Georgia’s “show me your papers” provisions requiring law enforcement officers to determine the immigration status of anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the country illegally. In all, the 11th Circuit’s ruling is a victory for immigrant advocates and a significant — if not total — loss for proponents of extreme “self-deportation” immigration policies.

Muslims recently concluded their holy month of Ramadan. However, this year’s Ramadan has been overshadowed by an uptick in Islamophobic attacks against American Muslims in their schools, homes, and places of worship. In the wake of the massacre in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin earlier this month, hate crimes threatening Muslims or members of other faiths who are mistakenly confused with Muslims have been on the rise:

• Mosque’s Welcome Sign Smashed: A North Smithfield, RI mosque was vandalized on August 5, when their welcome sign was smashed with a hammer. After appealing to local police for more protection, the mosque received increased security checks. [Source]
• Mosque Burned To Ground: Federal agents are investigating a suspicious fire that burned a Joplin, MO mosque to the ground on August 6. Just a month earlier, a small fire at the same mosque damaged part of its roof. [Source]
• Pig Legs Thrown Into Mosque Site: On August 7, pig parts were thrown onto the site of a proposed Islamic center in southern California. Since consuming pigs is forbidden under Islam, local advocates are asking federal officials to investigate it as a hate crime. [Source]
• Shots Fired On Mosque: On August 10, David Conrad fired two pellet-gun shots on the outer wall of a Morton Grove, IL mosque while about 500 people were inside observing evening prayers for Ramadan. No one was injured, but worshipers saw one of the bullets just narrowly miss a a security guard’s head. Conrad is now in police custody. [Source]
• Acid Bomb Attack At School: On August 12, an acid bomb was thrown into Muslim school in Lombard, IL, while the school was being used as a facility for evening Ramadan prayers. Worshipers heard a loud bang against the building and realized that someone had hurled a 7-Up bottle filled with acid and other unidentified materials at the school. [Source]
• Windows Smashed At Christian Arab Church: On August 13, a Christian church in Detroit reported that their building had been vandalized. The church’s pastor, Father Rani Abdulmasih, noted that his Middle Eastern congregation has been racially profiled before. [Source]
• Paintball Attack At Mosque: Vandals shot paintballs at the Grand Mosque of Oklahoma City on August 13. The attack was caught on the mosque’s surveillance camera, but the police were unable to identify the suspects. [Source]
• Molotov Cocktail Thrown Into Muslim Home: In the middle of the night on August 15, a firebomb was thrown at a Muslim home in Panama City, FL. The home’s residents believe that the Molotov cocktail was aimed at a bedroom window, but missed its target. The fire was put out with a hose. [Source]
• Hate Graffiti In Cemetery: On August 16, a visitor to a Muslim cemetery in Evergreen Park, IL discovered that several tombstones had been vandalized with hate graffiti, including racial epithets and insults against Mohammad. [Source]

Two weeks ago, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) claimed that radical Muslims are “trying to kill Americans every week” at a town hall just 15 miles away from the Morton Grove mosque. Several of the other recent attacks — the acid bomb in Lombard, IL and the graffiti in Evergreen Park, IL — also took place in Walsh’s district.

Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin (R-MO) does not just have an unusually weak understanding of human biology, he also has a similar inability to understand the Constitution. Akin doubts the constitutionality of Medicare and other federal health care programs, in addition to believing that national school lunch programs violate the Constitution.

Akin is not alone. At least one other major Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate believes that Medicare and other essential federal programs are unconstitutional. At a Tea Party rally last May, Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock questioned the constitutionality of America’s social safety net for seniors:

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — I challenge you in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. where those so-called enumerated powers are listed, I challenge you to find words that talk about “Medicare” or “Medicaid” or, yes, even “Social Security.”

Watch it:

For the record, the very first sentence of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which provides that “[t]he Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” is what allows the United States to create social welfare programs such as Medicare.

If Akin and Mourdock win their bids to become United States Senators, they will not be the only ones who share this belief that the Founding Fathers intended for seniors to be left to the wolves. Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) have also indicated that they think Medicare is unconstitutional.