Yesterday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman and NRA sweetheart Darrell Issa (R-CA) held a hearing aimed at pushing the ongoing GOP-led congressional investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) deadly “gunrunner” scandal. Yet, when asked about what allowed the ill-fated project to be implemented, Issa’s own witness — ATF agent Peter Forcelli — ended up pointing to the structural deficiencies that the NRA-backed GOP has fought to keep in place.

In one instance, Forcelli argued in favor of tougher gun laws:

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D): District court judges view these [straw purchase] prosecutions as mere paper violations. Have you heard this criticism before?

FORCELLI: I have and I agree with it. I think that perhaps a mandatory minimum one year sentence might deter an individual from buying a gun. Some people view this as no more consequential than doing 65 in a 55.

In another, Forcelli admitted that his agency simply doesn’t have the resources it needs to be effective:

REP. GERALD CONNELLY (D-VA): Do you really have the resources you need to do your job?

FORCELLI: It’s amazing, sir, that you ask me that… [...] I have less than 100 agents assigned to the entire State of Arizona, that’s 114,006 square miles. So do we have the resources, no we don’t. We desperately need them.

Watch it:

Issa jumped in to remind Forcelli that his assessment fell “outside the scope” of the hearing and “would not be considered valid testimony.”

Issa’s hearings on the gunrunner operation come just a few months after the NRA requested “expedited” hearings on the issue, in hopes that the it would reportedly “help kill a request from federal regulators for more authority to track gun purchases in the southern border states.” This past May, at the NRA’s annual convention, the powerful gun lobby group called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder over the ATF operation.

Ironically, the NRA lobby itself has been blamed for weakening the ATF and rendering it leaderless since 2006. “The gun lobby has consistently outmaneuvered and hemmed in ATF, using political muscle to intimidate lawmakers and erect barriers to tougher gun laws,” reported the Washington Post. “Over nearly four decades, the NRA has wielded remarkable influence over Congress, persuading lawmakers to curb ATF’s budget and mission and to call agency officials to account at oversight hearings.”

Rather than further debilitating the agency, Democrats have promoted the strengthening of “toothless” U.S. gun laws in conjunction with a probe into the ATF’s gunrunner activities.

Last month, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a draconian law intended to keep undocumented immigrations from working in that state. As a result, Georgia is now facing a farm labor shortage of close to 11,000 jobs — and Gov. Deal is proposing a unique solution to the labor shortage:

I asked Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens and Commissioner Black to  review the current situation and offer possible options.  Commissioner Owens has indicated that there are 100,000 probationers statewide, 8,000 of which are in the Southwest region of the state and 25 percent of which are unemployed.  Commissioner Owens is working with Commissioner Black and other state agencies to connect unemployed probationers–especially those in the Southwest part of the state–and others who are preparing to reenter the workforce to employers who are seeking labor.

Advocates of harsh anti-immigrant laws frequently claim that such laws are necessary to prevent undocumented workers from taking Americans’ jobs. Indeed, this is the driving value behind the House Reclaim American Jobs Caucus, a coalition of right-wing lawmakers formed to combat “the direct link between unemployment and illegal immigration.” Watch:

Georgia’s experience, however, gives the lie to their claim. Unemployment among former inmates is both a serious problem and a leading cause of recidivism, but the fact that Georgia farms can’t find anyone to pick their crops shows that U.S. citizens have little interest in backbreaking migrant farm labor. 11,000 workers left Georgia, and the state now has to beg convicts to take these jobs.

Moreover, if Georgia can’t find a way to clean up the mess Gov. Deal’s law has made quick, the state could lose even more jobs. The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Grower Association reports that around $300 million worth of crops could rot on the vine if no one can be hired to pick them. As of last month growers only found 30 percent to 50 percent of the workers needed.

In other words, after all that Republicans and advocates of immigration reform have said about illegal immigrants taking American jobs, Georgia’s assault on undocumented workers has only succeeded in proving that the opposite is true.

–Sarah Bufkin

California’s employee pension plans are among the largest investors in the country. Put together, the California Public Employees Retirement System’s (“CalPERS”) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (“CalSTRS”) have nearly $400 billion in assets — and that adds up to hundred of billions of dollars worth of stock that can be wielded in shareholder votes to require corporations to disclose their secret corporate campaign donations. Earlier this month, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer instructed the pension plans to do just that:

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer today asked CalPERS and CalSTRS to develop formal policies supporting shareholder initiatives to require full disclosure of corporations’ political spending and oversight of such spending by companies’ boards of directors. As Treasurer, Lockyer serves on the governing boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS. CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund, with $233.6 billion in total assets. CalSTRS is the nation’s largest teacher’ pension fund, with $155.4 billion in total assets.

“Studies have shown a negative link between a company’s political spending and the resulting value of the firm,” said Lockyer. “As fiduciaries, it’s our duty to ensure investors have the information they need to accurately evaluate a firm’s profitability and long-term sustainability. And shareholders should be able to count on a company’s board of directors to diligently oversee campaign spending policies and practices to make sure they serve the best interests of the company and investors.”

Shareholder initiatives intended to change a corporation’s policies are notoriously difficult to enact. Many shareholders are checked out from the process, and the amount of control shareholders can actually exert over a corporation is rather limited. Additionally, the largest investors in a corporation are often major Wall Street investment funds that could have little interest in decreasing corporations’ ability to secretly buy elections.

Nevertheless, the sheer size of California’s pension plans makes them an 800 pound gorilla — and could give them enough voting power to tip a shareholder election in favor of disclosure.

Justice Tom Parker (center) poses with the leaders of two local hate groups

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has looked upon these laws with a somewhat skeptical eye, several states have enacted “grandparent visitation” laws that permit some children’s grandparents to spend time with them even against the wishes of their parents. In an Alabama Supreme Court case considering that state’s grandparent visitation law, Justice Tom Parker offered a particularly odd reason to strike the law down:

The main opinion in this case references Troxel v. Granville, for the principle that parents have a fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their children. This right does not originate with Troxel, however; it has existed for millennia, an integral part of the institution of the family. . . .

One man and one woman came together in covenant before God, and they, with the children God gave them, became the first human social structure. As William Blackstone wrote, “single families … formed the first natural society,” becoming “the first though imperfect rudiments of civil or political society.” There was no state: no one person had been given civil authority over another, to punish evil and to prevent oppression. Nor was there a church to provide structure and order in the worship of the Creator. Both of these necessary institutions would come later — indeed, they were prefigured in the discipline and worship of the family — but the “sacred” relationships, within the family came first.

This is, to say the least, a strange way for a judge to behave. The Bible is pretty clear that people who claim to understand God’s justice are wrong. And the Constitution is even more clear that law flows from the will of the people, not from one man’s reading of a religious text.

Moreover, this kind of judicial speculation about the will of God has a sordid place in American history. When a Virginia judge was asked to consider whether an interracial couple may legally marry, he too claimed the power to read God’s mind.

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix

Thankfully, the Supreme Court’s justices did not believe themselves to be prophets, and they unanimously reversed the would-be seer in the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision.

Sadly, there is reason to believe that Parker would have come down the wrong way in that decision as well. Parker is not simply a disciple of disgraced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, he also has a long history of bigoted and hateful associations. The picture above depicts Parker with two local hate group leaders.  One is Leonard Wilson, a segregationist and national board member of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens that has described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity.”  The other is Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South. Parker also exposed his personal animus towards gay Americans when he recently compared a judge who struck down the unconstitutional Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to Al-Qaeda.

Tucked into a summary of a GOP-sponsored House appropriations bill is an unexpected line about restricting presidential power:

In addition, the bill eliminates the “Youth Media Campaign,” prohibits funds for the [Executive Office of the President] to prepare “signing statements,” which has been used in the past to undermine or circumvent laws passed by Congress, and requires reports on the costs and regulatory burdens caused by the flawed Dodd-Frank financial legislation.

The GOP is, of course, right that signing statements have been used to circumvent laws passed by Congress. President George W. Bush used signing statements to claim the power to flout a legal ban on permanent military based in Iraq, to undermine congressional attempts to fight genocide, and to thumb his nose at his legal obligation to hire competent people at FEMA.

Now that a Democrat is in the White House, however, the GOP suddenly sees the wisdom of preventing the very kind of imperial authority President Bush took for granted.