A Tea Party group in Tampa will offer a summer camp to indoctrinate children into a strange mix of Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ:

The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include “America is good,” “I believe in God,” and “I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.” [...]

Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the “banker” will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value. [...]

Still another example: Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other’s bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.

If their summer camp is successful, the tea party group will try to teach the same curriculum to public schools during Constitution Week. Because in the Tea Party’s addled mind, silly gold standard games and lessons about selfishness actually have something to do with the Constitution.

At this week’s GOP presidential debate, former pizza executive Herman Cain did not simply double down on his unconstitutional plan to require Muslim federal workers to swear a loyalty oath, he also engaged in a reality-challenged diatribe about Muslims trying to replace American law with Sharia:

Yes, I do not believe in Sharia law in American courts. I believe in American laws in American courts, period. There have been instances in New Jersey. There was an instance in Oklahoma where Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia law. I was simply saying very emphatically, American laws in American courts.

Watch it:

First of all, Cain’s claim that someone “tr[ied] to influence court decisions” is hardly a serious threat — people present ridiculous legal arguments to courts all the time. One guy sued Anheuser-Busch because Bud Light does not magically cause beautiful women to appear when you drink it. Another sued “Satan and his staff” for causing his “downfall.” Some GOP government officials have even presented courts with the absurd legal argument that the Affordable Care Act violates the Constitution. Any claim that U.S. law should be replaced with Sharia law should be given exactly the same dismissive treatment that all of these utterly meritless legal claims deserve.

Second, there is absolutely no evidence that any court has accepted the bizarre claim that Sharia law displaces American law. A Lexis search of Oklahoma court decisions did not reveal a single court decision referencing Sharia or Islamic law, and the only New Jersey Supreme Court case to mention Sharia, a 1996 case called Ivaldi v. Ivaldi, said that courts should refuse to recognize a Sharia family court’s decision that departed drastically from American law.

It is true that some people have signed contracts or similar agreements agreeing to resolve their disputes under Sharia law, and American law generally requires these agreements to be honored, but that is simply due to the fact that American law typically allows people to be bound by their own word. American contract law would also allow people to agree to be bound by the laws of ancient Rome or by the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition rules.

In other words, Herman Cain is about as likely to be attacked by a chaotic evil, half-orc paladin as he is to be forced to follow Sharia law.

In 2000, the City of Los Angeles launched a program to train reformed gang members and other members of high-crime communities to prevent gang violence. L.A. city council member and Democratic congressional candidate Janice Hahn supported this program, and is now the subject of an impossibly vulgar web ad by conservative SuperPAC Turn Right USA. The majority of the 90 second ad consists of stylized African-American gang members waiving guns around while a woman shakes her butt at the camera and the following refrain repeats:

Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the street. Give me your cash, bitch, so we can buy some more heat. Give me your cash, ho, so we can get out the bin. Give me your cash, ho, because we’re back in again.

Watch it:

Turn Right USA’s ad is not simply offensive, it is also horribly misguided. The “gang intervention specialist” program that Hahn supported is part of a wildly successful decade-long effort to reduce crime in Los Angeles. Indeed, L.A.’s violent crime rate was nearly cut in half after its most recent peak in 2000. And the city’s crime rate is currently at a 50 year low, despite the pressures of a massive economic downturn.

Hahn’s Republican opponent, to his credit, denounced the ad as “inappropriate” and “highly offensive.”

Several constitutional amendments refer to rights that belong to “the people.” The Second Amendment refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” According to a sharply divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, this choice of words means that undocumented immigrants have no Second Amendment rights and may also not be able to invoke the Fourth Amendment’s shield against illegal searches and arrests:

[T]he Court’s language does provide some guidance as to the meaning of the term “the people” as it is used in the Second Amendment. The Court held the Second Amendment “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Furthermore, the Court noted that “in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention ‘the people,’ the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.” [...] Illegal aliens are not “law-abiding citizens” or “members of the political community,” and aliens who enter or remain in this country illegally and without authorization are not Americans as that word is commonly understood.

Prior to its decision in Heller, the Supreme Court interpreted the meaning of the phrase “the people” in the context of the Fourth Amendment and indicated that the same analysis would extend to the text of the Second Amendment…but neither this court nor the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment extends to a native and citizen of another nation who entered and remained in the United States illegally.

The court’s suggestion that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to undocumented immigrants is obviously wrong. Even if such immigrants don’t count as part of “the people,” the Supreme Court held in Mapp v. Ohio that the Constitution’s guarantee that no “person” may be denied liberty without due process of law includes the right to be free from illegal searches and seizures. And, in light of the Supreme Court’s bizarre conclusion that corporations count as “persons,” it would be quite a stretch to claim that actual human beings who happen to have entered the United States illegally are somehow not persons.

It’s also worth noting that at least one of the Fifth Circuit judges who decided this case is an unusually radical member of an unusually radical court. Judge Emilio Garza, who was briefly floated as a possible George W. Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, is best known for being one of five Fifth Circuit judges who held that a death row defendant whose lawyer slept through much of his trial was not denied his constitutional right to counsel.

While Garza’s view was ultimately deemed too radical by a majority of his colleagues, such restraint is rare in the Fifth Circuit. Last year, the Fifth Circuit sanctioned a former high school cheerleader because she brought a lawsuit claiming that she shouldn’t be required to cheer for her alleged rapist. More recently, the House GOP attempted to shift several key oil drilling cases to the Fifth Circuit after the court’s judges made it clear that they would give the oil industry favorable treatment.

Two Fifth Circuit judges, Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, even ruled in favor of the oil industry in a major drilling moratorium case despite the fact that they both attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry funded organization. A third Fifth Circuit judge, Edith Clement, serves on the board of this organization, despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that Clement violates her ethical obligations by remaining on this board.