The Michigan chapter of the Koch-backed conservative activist group Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has been campaigning against a new bridge project called the New International Trade Crossing (NITC) that the state is considering. While there may be some merit to some of the arguments against the NITC project, the tactics AFP has just been found to be using in campaigning against it are revolting.

Yesterday, numerous residents in the Delray area of Detroit came back to their homes to find eviction notices. The problem was that these notices were not authorized by any sort of local government authorities. Rather, they were mocked up by AFP to look like actual eviction notices. The “notices” sensationally claimed to homeowners that their property may be seized if the NITC is constructed. Some residents, particularly elderly ones, were physically shaken by the tactic:

Residents and a state legislator lambasted the circulars, saying they were a scare tactic by opponents of the bridge. Dolores Toth, 81, who has heart problems, began to shake after reading the notice, said her son, Steve. “How low can you go?” Steve Toth said. “This isn’t something you do, I don’t care who you are.”

“It was meant to startle people,” said AFP Michigan director Scott Hagerstrom, defending the notices. “We really wanted people to take notice. This is the time that their opinions need to be heard. We wanted people to read it.” The Detroit Free Press put together a video report covering AFP’s scare tactics and the local area’s response. Watch it:

AFP’s tactics are bad enough by themselves, but they are even worse when you consider where the fake eviction notices were delivered. Michigan has the country’s highest foreclosure rate, and Detroit in particular is perhaps the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.

Last September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down two Hazelton, Pennsylvania ordinances targeting undocumented immigrants. The first ordinance strips business licenses from companies that employ workers who are not in the country legally, and the second strips rental licenses from landlords who rent to tenants without papers. Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued what is known as a grant, vacate and remand — or GVR order — telling the Third Circuit to reconsider it’s opinion in light of Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, a recent case upholding an Arizona law imposing similar penalties on business who hire undocumented workers.

Almost immediately, nativist lawmakers from Pennsylvania declared victory. In the words of Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA),

“This is great news for the city of Hazleton and all municipalities and states who are trying to cope with the substantial burden imposed by illegal immigrants,” Barletta, accompanied by Hazleton Mayor Joe Yannuzzi, said at a press conference Monday afternoon. “The Supreme Court was very clear. It rejected the Third Circuit Court opinion. […] We believe it puts our ordinance in a very good position.”

Barletta is simply not telling the truth about the significance of yesterday’s order. Because the Supreme Court is the court of final review, the justices generally do not like to even think about a legal issue until lower courts have had the full opportunity to weigh in. If the Supreme Court jumps in too soon, it may miss an essential argument that would have come up in a lower court, and erroneous Supreme Court decisions are not easily overruled.

For this reason, GVR orders are a routine practice when the Court issues a new decision that could in any way affect the analysis of a pending case. Because the Supreme Court just issued a new decision governing how the preemption doctrine applies to immigration cases, it would be highly unusual if the Court did not GVR every single immigration preemption case on its docket. A GVR is hardly a rejection of a lower court’s opinion, however, and it is not at all unusual for a lower court to simply reinstate its previous opinion with a few new paragraphs explaining why the Supreme Court’s most recent opinion does not change the outcome.

Whiting rested on a provision of federal law forbidding states from regulating the employment of immigrants “other than through licensing and similar laws.” Because this language gives states authority over the licensing of employers, it is reasonably likely that the Third Circuit will step back from its decision striking down Hazelton’s employment sanctions.

No law exists, however, creating a similar free space for state regulation of immigrant housing, and Whiting‘s reasoning focused narrowly on the special rule governing employers. Accordingly, there is little reason to think that Hazelton’s housing law will survive a reexamination in light of the Court’s most recent immigration opinion.

For more than half a century, the tobacco industry engaged in rampant and willful deception about the dangers presented by its product. They denied the negative health effects of second-hand smoke. They falsely marketed certain cigarettes as healthier alternatives to their other products — when in fact they were nothing of the sort — and they even built entire marketing strategies around addicting children to nicotine. As one tobacco representative put it, “cherry Skoal is for somebody who likes the taste of candy, if you know what I’m saying.”

All of this was supposed to change in 2006, however, when Judge Gladys Kessler ordered big tobacco to cease some of its most deceptive practices and to publicly admit many of the dangers presented by tobacco use. Moreover, because of the industry’s long history of contempt for the law, including past failure to comply with a massive multi-state settlement agreement, Judge Kessler held that she would continue to oversee the tobacco industry to make sure that they did not defy her order.

Flash forward three years, and President Obama signs a law allowing the FDA to regulate tobacco. Almost immediately, the tobacco industry told Kessler that she must stop monitoring their compliance with the law because the FDA regulations alone would suffice to keep them in line. Last week, Kessler informed them that she is not fooled:

Defendants’ contention that no reasonable likelihood of future RICO violations exists due to the FDA’s regulation is particularly unconvincing when Defendants are simultaneously and vigorously challenging, both in a separate law suit and in administrative proceedings, many of the provisions of the Tobacco Control Act–including provisions which they claim render them unlikely to commit future violations of RICO. In Commonwealth Brands, Inc. v. United States, tobacco companies, including some of the Defendants in this case, argued “that various provisions of [the Act] . . . violate their free speech rights under the First Amendment; their rights to Due Process under the Fifth Amendment; and effect an unconstitutional Taking under the Fifth Amendment.” Although the district court in that case upheld the majority of the statute, both sides have appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. It is difficult to understand how Defendants can argue that the Tobacco Control Act will produce their future compliance with RICO when they do not believe that a great portion of the Act should apply to them at all. And, if in fact Defendants should prevail in their challenges to the Tobacco Control Act, it will be all the more necessary for them to be restrained by this Court from any future violations of RICO.

In essence, the tobacco companies are telling Judge Kessler that her oversight is no longer needed because the FDA will provide the industry with adult supervision, while simultaneously telling another court to strike down the FDA’s oversight because it violates the Constitution. And while Judge Kessler wanted no part of big tobacco’s chutzpah defense, the industry has appealed her decision to one of the most conservative courts in the country.

Poor Phillip Morris. Having slain its mother and father, it now has no choice but to demand leniency because it is an orphan.

Today, the U.S. Sentencing Commission released statistics which show that Latinos now comprise nearly half of all people sentenced for federal felony crimes. Immigration hawks have been trying to argue for years that immigrants (particularly from Latin America) commit violent crimes at a higher rate than U.S. citizens. That claim has largely been debunked and it turns out that it’s the immigration policies that hardliners advocate for that have put so many Latinos behind bars. The Associated Press reports:

Expedited court hearings along the border are a major force driving a seismic demographic shift in who is being sent to federal prison. Statistics released this week revealed that Hispanics now comprise nearly half of all people sentenced for federal felony crimes, a number swollen by immigration offenses. In comparison, Hispanics last year made up 16 percent of the total U.S. population.

Sentences for felony immigration crimes, which include illegal crossing as well as other crimes such as alien smuggling, accounted for about 87 percent of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the past decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

These figures echo the findings of a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center which pointed out that in 1991, three times as many Latinos were sentenced in federal courts for drug crimes (60 percent) as for immigration crimes (20 percent). Yet, this all changed in 2007 when the pattern “reversed” and 48 percent were sentenced for an immigration offense and 37 percent for a drug offense.

The reason for this massive shift is an increase in expedited en masse hearings at the border which “speed” undocumented immigrants “through accelerated legal proceedings, where most guilty pleas come in Spanish and thousands of Mexican citizens end up locked up each year for entering the country without papers.” Critics — who include the late Judge John Roll — say that the process violates constitutional rights, overburdens the court system, and distract from the prosecution of major crimes.

The bloated immigration court system has created a bureaucratic mess. “When you take so many things …. inadequate resources, hostile judges, overly aggressive government lawyers, laws that don’t make sense, an immigration bar that generally is not the caliber of civil litigators, language barriers, poor translation,” explained a former immigration government lawyer, “you’ve got a system with so many broken parts, it’s a wonder it functions at all.” Some people say it doesn’t. The American Bar Association has proclaimed that “our immigration system is in crisis, overburdened and under-resourced.”

Meanwhile, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced a bill that would expand the program in Arizona courts and potentially in other regions located on the Southwest border. “Everybody knows where the bulk of the illegal immigrants are coming from, and if you’re going to deal with the deterrent effect of putting some of those people who cross in prison for a while…then naturally you’re going to have a majority of those people be Hispanic,” Kyl said in defense of his position. “Let’s just stop illegal immigration and we won’t have that problem.”