Kari Lydersen (a Chicago friend and intrepid activist/journalist) has a new book out, the product of journeys into Mexico and parts further south:

Out of the Sea and Into the Fire: Latin American-U.S. Immigration in the Global Age
(Common Courage).

Kari writes regularly for Lip, ITT, the Reader, etc.

<>She also strings for the Post. She put this squib in the other day:

KKK Allowed to Adopt a Highway

Not many people go to court for the right to pick up trash along the highway.

But the Ku Klux Klan in Missouri has spent years doing just that. And last week, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Klan to participate in the state's Adopt-a-Highway program.

State officials had said they were worried about public perception and possible attacks on highway workers if they were mistakenly perceived as Klan members.

A similar Supreme Court decision in 2001 upheld the Klan's right to adopt a stretch of Interstate 55 near St. Louis; however, local officials there said Klan members never cleaned the highway, as required.

The Klan's attorney, Bob Herman, called it "strictly a First Amendment issue." But Melanie Elliott, president of the Chamber of Commerce in Potosi, thinks the decision will mean more trash on the highway leading into her small town in southeast Missouri.

"If you have the KKK there, that makes people angry, so they'll end up cluttering it more," she said. "It's sad for us, because that's the first thing people will see heading into the county."