WASHINGTON - January 21 - On the heels of the presidential inauguration, more than 2,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates will converge on Denver next week to strategize on how to advance LGBT equality in 2009. A key focus will be on how to achieve gains at the state and local level. The National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is the nation's largest convening of LGBT rights activists.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - January 19 - The American Civil Liberties Union is at Guantánamo this week monitoring the unconstitutional military commission hearings in the case of Omar Khadr, the 22-year-old Canadian national slated to be tried for war crimes allegedly committed when he was 15. If Khadr's trial goes forward as scheduled on January 26, the U.S. will be the first western nation in recent years to hold a war crimes trial for crimes allegedly committed by a juvenile. The ACLU and other rights groups sent a letter to President-elect Obama on January 12 asking him to suspend Khadr's trial.

WASHINGTON - January 14 - Today, in advance of a Senate vote taking place as soon as tomorrow, the American Civil Liberties Union sent senators a letter urging passage of a bill that clarifies the legal time limits for employees to fight pay discrimination.

NEW YORK - January 12 - After President-elect Obama stated Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he may delay the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, the American Civil Liberties Union urged him to waste no time making good on his campaign promise to shut down the prison and the military commissions. Obama implied that it might not be feasible to close the prison during the first 100 days of his presidency; the ACLU disagrees and urges him to take action immediately upon being sworn in.

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, the Executive Director of the ACLU:

NEW YORK - January 8 - In a radical departure from years of legal precedent, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has ended the practice of allowing immigrants to reopen immigration cases that they lost because of their lawyers' mistakes or incompetence. Mukasey's order, which is effective immediately, may lead to the deportation of innumerable immigrants who have lost their cases due to attorney error.

NEW YORK - January 5 - In a victory for constitutional rights, two Transportation Security Authority (TSA) officials and JetBlue Airways have paid Raed Jarrar $240,000 to settle charges that they illegally discriminated against the U.S. resident based on his ethnicity and the Arabic writing on his t-shirt. TSA and JetBlue officials prevented Jarrar from boarding his August 2006 flight at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his shirt, which read "We Will Not Be Silent" in English and Arabic, and then forced him to sit at the back of the plane.

WASHINGTON - December 22 - A privacy impact assessment issued by the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office today officially validates concerns the ACLU raised last year about the dangers a network of intelligence "fusion centers" pose to privacy and civil liberties.