According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the Violence Against Women Act (known as VAWA) “should be swiftly reauthorized to ensure the continuation of these vital, lifesaving programs and laws.” The Network adds that VAWA “creates and supports comprehensive, effective, and cost saving responses to the crimes of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking.” The law is administered by the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.

But a GOP immigration enforcement bill now being considered in the House could limit the federal government’s ability to assist undocumented domestic violence victims.

Michelle Ortiz — the supervising attorney of Lucha, a unit within Americans for Immigrant Justice, formerly the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center — told The Florida Independent that the Hinder the Administration Legalization Temptation Act, an immigration enforcement bill filed by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would undermine existing immigration law by removing prosecutorial discretion and deferred action, two components that protect undocumented domestic victimes.

“Under the Violence Against Women Act, which has existed for 15 years, there have been specific protections for victims of domestic violence,” Michelle Ortiz said, “particularly for people who self-petition, who are victims of domestic violence at the hands of a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.”

Smith’s Hinder the Administration Legalization Temptation Act (better known as the HALT Act) would force immigration authorities to deport victims of domestic violence who reach out for help.

Sarah Van Hofwegen, a staff attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice who visits immigrant detainees, tells the Independent that “HALT would create an even bigger climate of fear for immigrants.”

“People will be less willing to report crimes against them for fear of ending up in custody,” she says. “I think there a lot of immigrant women who are victims of crime and are not getting the service they need and are not reporting the crimes against them.”

“I see high numbers of women who are victims of domestic violence and end up in the immigration system, through a variety of ways, in the Broward Transition Center, the lowest-security facility in South Florida,” Van Hofwegen says. “So it’s people with minor criminal convictions.”

Broward Transition Center is managed by The GEO Group, one of the world’s largest private prison and detention companies.

Van Hofwegen also says she visits women “who have come to the United States, fleeing their abuser in their home country.”

“People can’t be denied legal services,” Van Hofwegen says, “but it is harder to get legal services when they are in detention because the centers are far away, also because there is not as much pro bono services available. Americans for Immigrant Justice is the only organization that is working out of Broward Transition Center, and other detention centers like Glades County detention center have very little pro bono services, so people who can’t afford attorneys and don’t have ways to contact them are getting legal assistance.”

Van Hofwegen adds that the majority of women she represents are Latina and Haitian, but that there are women from other countries, some of whom are married to their abusers.

Legal Momentum, a women’s legal defense and education fund, writes that “immigrant women are more likely to confront poverty, violence and exploitation than any other demographic in America.”

The struggle to get cameras and new media in places where government gathers,  from the state Capitol to county board rooms, is hampered by case law that, in its outlook on technology, is sometimes stuck in the 1970s.

The ACLU-MN is looking at the current ban on online-only media from the floor of the state House of Representatives, the source of a slow-burn dispute that got white-hot this week when new House rules — largely withdrawn, apparently — threatened the working ways of long-established media outlets.

The mediums of video and the Internet are following in the the hard-won footsteps of radio and television in gaining access to government, Nelson said.

The civil liberties group understands the legislature’s problem of limited space on the House floor, Nelson said, but wants to see neutral criteria for the granting of press credentials. Also at issue is a ban on cameras in House committees for all but credentialed journalists.

Case law offers mixed lessons for media access to government meetings, according to Nelson. “The courts draw a line between video- and audio-taping” — a line that she guessed may date to days when video equipment filled a room instead of a iPhones and BlackBerries.

The organization has taken a position on a conflict in St. Louis County, where county commissioners object to videotaping by a watchdog group. In a Feb. 10 letter to the county board (pdf), Nelson wrote:

The [Minnesota Open Meeting Law (OML)] protects access to government meetings for both the general public and the news media. … Implicit in the public’s right to attend government meetings is the right to record those meetings.

In the case of the county board, no official recording is made of its workshop meetings. It’s different at the state Capitol, where the Legislature offers its own video feed.

“If official recordings [are provided] then interests [of those seeking the right to record] are less,” Nelson said. However, the official Capitol feed provides video from only one legislative venue at a time, as reporters reminded a House staffer who called a clear-the-air meeting with media Monday.

The “forum doctrine” recognized by courts interpreting the federal Constitution’s First Amendment defines public forums as spaces like public parks. Under the doctrine, rooms where elected officials make decisions are non-public forums, where greater limits are allowed.

(While the First Amendment says Congress can’t restrict free speech, the Minnesota Constitution specifically guarantees free speech rights to citizens.)

But restrictions at government meeting places must be neutral as to the identity and content, Nelson said. That means, for example, that partisan trackers should have the same rights as citizens and journalists to wield HandyCams at House hearings.

“It’s one thing to have the Legislature preserve decorum inside a hearing room, making sure there are not disruptions and allocating space in an evenhanded way,” Nelson said. Rules that apply only to one kind of media, on the other hand, seem to represent “another way for restricting how material is going to be used.”

Politico has the story (hat tip to City Pages’ Blotter), including the data point that at the worst moment, the sideways geyser was shooting out 15 feet from the wall.

The incident, while disruptive, fits the profile and demographics of Paulsen and his west Metro congressional district: watery, and — considering that Iceland and Yellowstone National Park are among the very few places geysers are found — Scandinavian-American.

G.W. Carver. Photo: NPS

When Peanut Corp. of America CEO Stewart Parnell took the Fifth this week instead of telling the House Committee on Energy and Commerce why he let salmonella-tainted peanut butter kill eight people (so far) and sicken thousands, the setting was ironic.

It was before another House committee (Ways and Means) in 1921 that the peanut’s greatest promoter, George Washington Carver, sprung onto the national scene with willing, winning, inventive testimony that helped propelled the lowly product of the South to prominence and many uses in the food industry. 

It was a different story on Wednesday: Parnell cemented his status as a pariah to the food industry and beyond with his repeated refusal to answer the committee’s questions about what he knew of his plants’ poisoned peanuts and the suffering his company has caused:

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your question based on the protection afforded me under the United States Constitution.

Parnell’s appearance took place in a committee hearing room in Washington, D.C. So did Carver’s, 88 years earlier. But in every other way the scene this week couldn’t have been farther from Carver’s triumphant Jan. 21, 1921, debut on the national stage on behalf of the peanut.

One striking note: After demonstrating dozens of uses for the peanut, Carver made this now-portentous-sounding claim:

I do not know of a single case — that is, I mean [a] normal [person] — that complains because peanuts hurt them.

A transcript of his testimony appears in a 1991 book called “George Washington Carver: In His Own Words,” and all but two of 12 pages can be read online. Here are a few excerpts from his charming remarks (even in the face of racist digs):

Mr. CARVER: Mr. Chairman, I have been asked by the United Peanut Growers’ Association to tell you something about the possibility of the peanut … [T]he peanut comes in, I think, for one of the most remarkable crops … [I]t has possibilities that we are just beginning to find out.

This is the crushed cake … which may be used in all sorts of combinations — for flours and meals and breakfast foods and a great many things that I have not time to touch upon just now…. This is another confection. It is peanuts covered with chocolate. As I passed through Greensboro, S.C, I noticed in one of the stores that this was displayed on the market, and, as it is understood better, more of it is going to be made up into this form. Here is a breakfast food. I am very sorry that you can not taste this, so I will taste it for you. [Laughter] Now this is a combination and, by the way, one of the finest breakfast foods that you or anyone else has ever seen. It is a combination of the sweet potato and the peanut, and if you will pardon a little digression here I will state that the peanut and the sweet potato are twin brothers and cannot and should not be separated. They are two of the greatest products that God has ever given us.

Mr. [John Q.] TILSON [R-Conn.]: Do you want a watermelon to go along with that? …

Mr. CARVER: Here is the original salted peanut, for which there is an increasing demand, and here is a very fine peanut bar. The peanut bar is coming into prominence in a way that very few of us recognize, and the manufacturers of this peanut bar have learned that it is a very difficult matter to get a binder for it, something to stick it together. That is found in the sweet potato syrup. …

Now there is an entirely new thing in the way of combinations. It is a new thing for making ice cream … a very new product that is going to have considerable value. …

I wish to say here in all sincerity that America produces better peanuts than any other part of the world, as far as I have been able to test them out. …

Here is a bottle of milk that is extracted from peanuts. Now, it is absolutely impossible to tell that milk from cow’s milk in looks and general appearance. This is normal milk. …

Now here is a very attractive product — an instant coffee. … Here is a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. … Now here is a very highly flavored sauce that imitates the Chinese sauce that enters into chop suey and the various Chinese confections that they are so very fond of. …

[T]he curds can be taken out and made into the various fancy cheeses the Neufchatel and Edam …

Mr. CAREW: Did you make all of these products yourself?

Mr. CARVER: Yes, sir. They are made there in the research laboratory. That is what the research laboratory is for. …

The sweet potato products now number 107 up to date. … The peanut products are going to beat the sweet-potato products by far. I have just begun with the peanut. So what is going to come of it why we do not know.

This is the very last thing. Now this is a pomade. That is, it is a face cream and will be attractive to the ladies …

Mr. GARNER: I understood you to say that the properties of the peanut combined with the properties of the sweet potato was a balanced ration, and that you could destroy all other vegetable life and continue to sustain the human race?

Mr. CARVER: Yes, sir. Because you can make up the necessary food elements there. … Then again if we think of how the peanut is used, it is the only thing that is universally used among civilized and uncivilized people, and all sorts of animals like it, and I do not know of a single case — that is, I mean normal — that complains because peanuts hurt them.

Born to slavery in Missouri near the end of the Civil War, George Washington Carver graduated from high school in Minneapolis — Minneapolis, Kan., that is.

He spent the better part of the 1890s studying at Iowa State University before accepting Booker T. Washington’s offer to head the agriculture department at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute.

One place to read more about his life, research, inventions and other pursuits is the Web site of the National Park Service’s George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Mo.

Lantos, who was born in Budapest, Hungary, is the only survivor of the Holocaust elected to Congress.  He was first elected to Congress in 1980. 

Lantos was a supporter of the Iraq war initially, but has been increasingly critical of the war.  He has been known as a strong supporter of same-sex marriage and a champion of the environment.

Lantos represents parts of San Francisco and San Mateo County.