Last month, Republican lawmakers successfully passed an anti-choice bill requiring the state’s only three abortion clinics to be inspected twice a year, including one unannounced review. Under the new licensing standards, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment will create new standards for exits, lighting, bathrooms, and equipment and would have “the power to fine clinics” or “go to court to shut them down.” The law specifically targets abortion clinics and left other surgical clinics untouched by the new requirements — a fact that moved state Senate Majority Leader Jay Emler (R) to note the hypocrisy and vote against his party. However, the law passed in May and demands compliance by July 1.

Kansas Health Department inspectors began reviewing a Planned Parenthood clinic Wednesday “ahead of a decision by [the] health department on whether the state’s three abortion clinics will be allowed to continue operating” and receive licenses. Given the level of new requirements and the short time-period in which clinics have to comply, anti-choice advocates are confident that the clinics will close and Kansas will be “the first abortion-free state in the nation“:

“We have doubts that any of the abortion clinics can meet the safety requirements of the new law,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “If they cannot comply, all three abortion clinics would be forced to cease abortion operations, making Kansas the first abortion-free state in the nation.”

If Kansas’ law succeeds in shutting down the state’s abortion clinics, that would be nothing less than a direct attack on the Constitution. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that states may enact some abortion regulations, but they may not “strike at the right itself” to terminate a pregnancy. A law specifically designed to make it impossible to operate abortion clinics is a direct attack on women’s constitutional right to choose.

Given the persistent anti-choice motivations of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) and the state Legislature, Planned Parenthood of Kansas fears “none of the three clinics will get licensed, forcing them to shut down July 1.” Kansas’ Aid for Women clinic administrator Jeff Pederson said the clinic “will be forced to spend $10,000 immediately on a new exit mandated by the law.” He also notes the law’s requirement that physicians at a clinic have privileges with a hospital within 30 miles is “problematic because anti-abortion groups pressure hospitals into revoking or not granting such privileges.”

As another state Republican who opposed the law pointed out, the law is also going to cost Kansas taxpayers an “absurd” amount of money: $67,000 a year to do six inspections at three clinics. “I’d like to know where I can apply for that job,” he quipped. Of course, anti-choice activists insist that any amount of taxpayer funds is appropriate to end a woman’s constitutional right, not protect it. As anti-choice activist Newman notes, that is his definitive goal. “We certainly believe there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ abortion clinic,” he said. “The best way to protect women is to close the abortion clinics.”

In a Fox News interview this morning, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) floated an odd choice for the Supreme Court, Fox host Andrew Napolitano:

PAUL: I really admire Judge Napolitano. . . . I think he would be good in any administration. I think he’d be grand on the Supreme Court.

Watch it:

This kind of poor judgment is hardly surprising for Rep. Paul. When he is not calling the U.S. dollar unconstitutional, Paul is best known for calling pretty much everything the federal government does unconstitutional — including the departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Labor.

But the real scandal here is the fact that Fox thinks Napolitano has any business whatsoever telling their national audience what the Constitution has to say about anything. Napolitano is Fox News’ in-house tenther, and he is a radical even by the tenther movement’s standards.  Among other things, Napolitano believes President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a “swindler” who created an unconstitutional program called Social Security. He also believes that the United States Census is unconstitutional, and once claimed that “the 17th Amendment is the only part of the Constitution that is unconstitutional.”

Yet what Napolitano lacks in actual understanding of the Constitution, he makes up for in sanctimony. In one televised rant, Napolitano attacked President Obama for praising “federal child labor laws, the Clean Air Act, the EPA and the Department of Transportation” because none of these things are “even arguably authorized by the Constitution.”

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

As ThinkProgress has chronicled at length, Justice Clarence Thomas is caught in a series of ethics scandals concerning his and his wife’s close relationships with major right-wing donors and organizations. A central figure in these scandals is real estate mogul Harlan Crow, a leading conservative donor who has provided several lavish gifts and other favors on Thomas and his family, including $500,000 to allow Thomas’s wife to start a Tea Party group and a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass.

Today, Rep. Louise Slaugher (D-NY) became the first member of Congress to weigh in on the controversy with an e-mail calling upon Justice Thomas to explain the details of his relationship with Crow:

Despite the ethically questionable actions uncovered by the Times, Justice Thomas refuses to provide details about his relationship with Mr. Crow. The report from The New York Times is the latest in a long line of troubling actions taken by Justice Thomas, yet he refuses to share the necessary information to ensure that his service on the Supreme Court is fair and free from conflict of interest.

It is time we demand full answers from Justice Thomas.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Justice Thomas failed to report six years worth of income from his wife’s work with the Heritage Foundation — a right-wing think tank that is often involved with issues that appear before for the Supreme Court.

It has also been revealed that Justice Thomas attended a Palm Springs retreat hosted by the Koch brothers — Republican donors who are among the main beneficiaries of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Citizens United.

Finally, despite his wife’s work with the group Liberty Central to oppose the Affordable Care Act, Justice Thomas has given no indication that he will recuse himself from any future case that may appear before the Supreme Court regarding the health care reform law.

Slaughter is also collecting online signatures for a petition demanding that Thomas reveal just what influence Crow has exerted over him.

Newly Confirmed Judicial Nominee Michael Simon

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed judicial nominee Michael Simon by a lopsided 64 to 35 vote. His vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee was an even more lopsided 14-4 vote, so Simon should have been on the fast track to confirmation. Instead, his seat remained vacant for nearly two years before Simon finally received a confirmation vote because Republicans have erected yet another obstacle to judicial confirmations:

“Traditionally,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said from the floor Tuesday, a lopsided committee vote would mean “a vote on the Senate floor almost the first day after he was reported” from the committee.

“It should not have taken more than four months after Mr. Simon had been approved for a second time,” Leahy said, describing the current climate on nominations as “unseemly.”

The problem was in the numbers. While the committee vote was emphatic, Republicans generally said they would allow only nominees who won unanimous approval to move to the Senate floor. The four opposing votes from Judiciary — all from Republicans — meant that Senate leaders would be forced to negotiate a deal to bring his name to the floor. That process took months.

The idea that a nominee must please every single member of the judiciary committee before they can receive a timely floor vote is absurd — and it is an incredibly high bar to clear. Committee member Mike Lee (R-UT) thinks that child labor laws are unconstitutional. Committee member Tom Coburn (R-OK) thinks Pell Grants and federal student loans are unconstitutional. So they are not the kind of senators who are likely to see eye to eye with nominees who believe that they should actually follow the Constitution.

Moreover, this game of obstructionism is producing tragic results for ordinary litigants in federal court. Along the Texas border, judges have only enough time to treat serious criminal defendants as if they were minor traffic offenders. In the Ninth Circuit, a massive appeals court that encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, the judges are so overburdened that they rely on partially retired judges in their 80s in order to function. Throughout the country, the average civil litigant must wait nearly two years for a jury trial, and this wait grows even longer if their case is appealed.

During Obama’s first two years in office, the Senate confirmed fewer judges than during the same point in any previous presidency, but President Obama isn’t the one who suffers because of this. It is the thousands of Americans forced to wait for justice who do.