Voting rights advocates, who have been busy protesting voter ID laws across the country in 2011, earned a major victory in Ohio Thursday when state House Speaker William Batchelder (R) indicated that state Senate Republicans would not move on a proposed voter ID law. The bill, which passed the House earlier this year, is opposed by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted and the GOP-controlled state Senate. The Columbus Dispatch reports:

“I think we’ll probably not see it again,” said House Speaker William G. Batchelder after a brief legislative session today. “There’s a limit to the amount of times you want to run your head into a wall, and it makes your ears ring.” [...]

Later, Batchelder spokesman Mike Dittoe said, “Obviously, the speaker wants the bill passed by the Senate, but I don’t believe he has any indication the Senate will be moving on it anytime soon. Certainly our (House GOP) caucus believes that voter fraud is and could be a bigger problem, and every single poll, no matter what polling entity you use, indicates that the American people believe that as well.”

Though Ohio’s voter ID bill is dead for now, Gov. John Kasich (R) did sign a sweeping election reform law that banned various early voting methods used by more than 200,000 voters in Ohio’s capital alone. Like Kasich’s other landmark bill, that law is also subject to a referendum campaign. Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern, meanwhile, says this likely isn’t the end of voter ID efforts in Ohio. “(This will) be it for the voter ID until a new batch of tea party freshmen join the Republican caucus and go about the business of disenfranchisement,” he told the Dispatch.

And while this is a victory for the voting rights movement, voter ID laws continue to go into effect across the country. As many as 22 states this year considered voter ID laws as they attempted to address the virtually nonexistent voter fraud “problem.” The efforts have drawn sharp rebukes from Democrats and voting and civil rights groups. Former President Clinton and representatives from the Congressional Black Caucus compared the efforts to disenfranchise voters to the South’s discriminatory Jim Crow laws and other efforts to disenfranchise minority voters during and prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), a CBC member who is pushing the Justice Department to review the new laws, was happy to see the GOP abandon the bill. “I am pleased to see that Republicans have come to understand the detrimental effects of an ID bill on the electorate,” Fudge told ThinkProgress. “In our democracy, everyone has the right to vote, yet these strategically orchestrated measures attempt to stifle voting much more than encourage it. I can’t understand any other reason to mandate these limitations other than to continue an effort to disenfranchise certain voters.”

As ThinkProgress reported earlier this month, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) promised to drive residents whose right to vote will be jeopordized by her new voter ID law to the DMV to help them obtain a photo license. “Find the people who say this is invading their rights and I will go take them to the DMV myself and help them,” Haley said in a local TV interview.

This week, 76-year-old Army veteran Robert Tucker, who lacks an accurate birth certificate and thus ID, tried to take up Haley on her offer. Tucker’s cousin, Edith Cunningham, caught wind of Haley’s promise and decided to ask the governor for a ride on Tucker’s behalf, only to be turned down:

“When I saw that I thought ‘well maybe they’ll help the plight that we’re in,’” said Cunningham.

Cunningham called Gov. Haley’s office. “They told me the best that they can do is tell me to go to legal aid,” she said. [...] “They talked about how it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they couldn’t do anything for the person whose disenfranchised.”

When a reporter from WISTV asked the governor’s office about tucker’s request, a Haley spokesperson said, “We’ll work to assist anyone who is having trouble getting state services,” but offered no ride. Watch their report:

With 178,000 residents lacking proper IDs, ThinkProgress estimated it would take Haley over seven years to drive all those people to DMV, even if they carpooled. Considering that voter fraud, the problem voter ID laws are meant to address, is exceedingly rare to point of nonexistence, and the potential for disenfranchisement high, Haley’s office could have saved a lot time by merely leaving people’s right to vote unencumbered.

Earlier today, Speaker John Boehner revealed that he is caving to the most radical elements of his caucus and adding a requirement to his debt ceiling plan that will allow the United States to default in six months unless Congress passes a balanced budget amendment. This proposal, which would permanently disable America’s ability to respond to economic recessions, is dead on arrival in the Senate.

Shortly before Boehner announced his new plan to place political grandstanding before preventing economic catastrophe, however, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) went on Fox News to explain why Boehner’s new plan is a terrible idea:

The problem is that my Democratic colleagues…say “no” to a balanced budget amendment, and we have a deadline approaching of Tuesday. So I’m just not sure how realistic it is to demand our Democratic colleagues that they change their position on the balanced budget amendment over the next couple of days. [...]

The question is: what can be crafted that Senate Democrats will say “yes” to, because they are half of the legislative equation here, and then you have the President in the White House, also a Democrat.

Watch it:

Sen. Kyl is right. The American people elected 53 Democratic senators and they put a Democratic president in the White House. John Boehner made it absolutely clear that he does not respect Barack Obama or the Democratic Senate majority’s right to govern long before he became speaker, but the Constitution disagrees with Boehner’s belief that he can simply ignore entire branches of our government simply because they won’t indulge his tantrums.

Next week, the United States will enter a catastrophic economic death spiral unless Republicans take Kyl’s advice and stop insisting on outlandish Tea Party fantasies as the price of saving America from disaster. John Boehner and just a handful of his fellow House Republicans have the power to end this crisis today — and they’ve chosen instead to send ransom note after ransom note to the American people.

For weeks, Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Jerry Moran (R-VA) have blocked Tenth Circuit nominee Steve Six without deigning to explain why they were doing so. Yesterday, Roberts finally explained himself, citing Six’s unwillingness to rewrite the Constitution to advance the GOP’s legislative agenda:

[A]s Kansas Attorney General, [Six] failed to see any Constitutional defects with the newly passed health care reform law. While this view runs counter to the overwhelming belief of many Kansans, and the decisions by two federal judges, it points to a larger issue concerning the proper role of government in our lives. And with all due respect, the average person can identify the constitutional defects of Obamacare.

This is madness. Five of the eight judges who have considered the merits of the Affordable Care Act — including former Scalia clerk and George W. Bush appointee Judge Jeffrey Sutton — have all voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Does Roberts think that Sutton — a states rights crusader who devoted much of his career to preventing people with disabilities, religious minorities, and even children who are illegally deprived of Medicaid coverage from holding states accountable in federal court — is too much of a leftist to sit on the federal bench?

Indeed, the constitutional case against the Affordable Care Act can’t even be squared with Justice Scalia’s decisions. In a case called Gonzales v. Raich, Scalia explained that “where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.”

The case against the ACA focuses on its provision that requires most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes, but this provision exists for a very good reason. The ACA also eliminates one of the insurance industry’s most abusive practices — denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. This ban cannot function if patients are free to enter and exit the insurance market at will. If patients can wait until they get sick to buy insurance, they will drain all the money out of an insurance plan that they have not previously paid into, leaving nothing left for the rest of the plan’s consumers.

In other words, the ACA’s regulation of the national insurance market cannot function without a requirement that nearly every American carry insurance. Accordingly, the coverage requirement is clearly constitutional under Justice Scalia’s statement that Congress possess “every power needed” to make it’s economic regulations effective, and Scalia is also disqualified from the federal bench under Roberts’ standard.

The bottom line is that conservative lawmakers like Roberts don’t particularly like the fact that the Constitution allows our elected leaders to solve national problems — they’d rather have a Constitution that ensures that only conservative governance is allowed — so Roberts has now decided to rewrite the Constitution by refusing to confirm any judges who insist up following it.

Last night, the House handed Speaker John Boehner an embarrassing defeat. Boehner had to cancel a vote on his proposed plan to enact a short term debt ceiling hike and then trigger another default crisis in just six months because his own GOP-dominated House lacks the votes necessary to pass it. Indeed, according to one whip count, Boehner may be as much as 12 votes short of the majority he needs to pass his plan.

It is possible, if unlikely, that Boehner could still dig up the votes he needs to pass his plan. Many commentators, however, have already labeled his caucus’ decision on his plan a referendum on Boehner that could potentially put “Boehner’s Speakership is on the line.”

If Boehner’s caucus wants to depose him, the House Rules allow this to happen. According to Jefferson’s Manual, a 19th century procedural manual that has been largely incorporated into the House Rules:

A Speaker may be removed at the will of the House, and a Speaker pro tempore appointed.

A resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant presents a question of constitutional privilege, though the House has never removed a Speaker. It has on several occasions removed or suspended other officers, such as Clerk and Doorkeeper. A resolution for the removal of an officer is presented as a matter of privilege.

There is, however, a catch. Speaker Boehner may presently be the highest ranking Republican in Congress, but speakers are elected by the entire House — not simply the majority party. A resolution removing Speaker Boehner — most likely because of a Tea Party revolt seeking to replace him with someone even further to the right — would require either overwhelming support in Boehner’s own caucus or collusion with the Democrats.

Indeed, Boehner knows better than anyone how difficult it can be to remove a speaker mid-term. In 1997, after many Republicans decided that Speaker Newt Gingrich had become an embarrassment, Boehner helped lead a failed coup to replace Gingrich and replace him with Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY). At least according to Gingrich, the coup failed because Gingrich refused to resign, and warned the coup leaders that if they kicked him out of the speakership there may not have been enough GOP votes to install Paxon — and could even have been enough GOP defectors willing to join with the substantial Democratic minority to make Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) speaker.

It is, to say the least, exceedingly unlikely that any current Republicans would vote to restore Nancy Pelosi to the speaker’s chair. At the same time, however, it is easy to imagine a situation where Boehner is removed and his caucus divides among several GOP candidates. In that situation, Pelosi could have the power to play kingmaker — and to potentially exact concessions in return for her caucus’ support.

Alabama’s extreme immigration law, slated to go into effect on Sept. 1, is already under fire at the federal level. Several civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against the law, which makes it illegal to live or work in Alabama without proof of legal residence, and a federal judge in Georgia has blocked a similar law in that state.

Now, a group of Alabamians, including undocumented workers as well as U.S. citizens who fear discrimination from the law’s enforcement, is challenging the law at the state level because they say it violates the 1901 state constitution. According to Section 30 of Article I, “immigration shall be encouraged; emigration shall not be prohibited, and no citizen shall be exiled.”

Thomas E. Drake II, the lawyer who filed the suit, said the federal challenge against the law — that it pre-empts federal immigration policy — is not needed because of the state constitution. “The fact of the matter is the Alabama constitution is significantly more liberal that the federal constitution,” he said, according to the Huntsville Times.

The laws supporters already have a plan to neutralize Drake’s suit — if the constitution does not fit the law, simply change the constitution:

Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, co-sponsor of the new law, said Republicans were delivering on a popular campaign promise and could rewrite the constitution if necessary.

“If they are challenging it due to state law, that should be something we can take care of ourselves,” said Hammon on Tuesday. “The people of the state of Alabama want this. I’m very confident that if we have to pass some type of constitutional amendment, the people will overwhelmingly support it.“

Sadly, there is precedent for this strategy. When the Alabama courts held that the state’s education system did not meet its constitutional obligation to educate low-income children, the state responded by simply deleting that requirement from its constitution.

If the Alabama immigration law survives — whether by court decision or constitutional amendment — it will be the harshest state immigration statute in the nation. The law lets police officers detain those suspected of being illegal immigrations, requires schools to inquire about a student’s immigration status, and makes it a crime to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant. One of the plaintiffs whom Drake represents is the unidentified wife of an illegal immigrant. If the law goes into effect, then she would become a criminal overnight for living with her husband.

Last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said he is “fine” with New York’s marriage equality law because “if you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business.” Yet, in an interview with the leader of an anti-gay hate group, Rick Perry announced that he doesn’t “believe in the 10th Amendment” after all:

I probably needed to add a few words after that ‘it’s fine with me,’ and that it’s fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn’t changed. [...] To not pass the Federal Marriage Amendment would impinge on Texas and other states’ right not to have [gay] marriage forced upon them by these activist judges and these special interest groups.

Listen:

Perry’s claim that he supports states’ rights to govern themselves, while simultaneously supporting the anti-gay “Federal Marriage Amendment” is impossible to reconcile. The FMA provides that:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

So Perry’s position is that we should ram his anti-gay views down New York voters’ throats by rewriting the Constitution to make marriage equality illegal in all 50 states. The states can have any law they want, so long as Perry approves of them.

Perry’s attempt to impose anti-gay bigotry on progressive states is also a stark contrast to his stance on economic issues. While Perry is perfectly willing to let the federal government force New York to discriminate against gay couples, he believes that Texas should have the right to flout Medicaid laws, ignore federal education laws and thumb its nose at environmental regulations.

In other words, Perry doesn’t actually care one bit about the 10th Amendment — he doesn’t even care all that much about his own twisted tenther interpretation of the 10th Amendment — he just wants to force everyone to live the way he wants them to live.

Last night the Chicago Sun-Times broke the story that Tea Party freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who has spent months lecturing President Obama and Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes $117,437 in child support to his ex-wife and three children. Laura Walsh has asked a judge to suspend his driver’s license until he pays his child support. Despite loaning his own campaign $35,000 — and paying himself back at least $14,200 for the loans — Walsh claims he failed to make the payments because he “had no money.”

The tax-bashing congressman campaigned on a pledge to reject the Washington “status quo” and has bragged about his own frugality, claiming he even sleeps in his congressional office to save money. Walsh, who’s been described as “the biggest media hound in the freshman class,” has been a prominent voice in the debt ceiling showdown in recent weeks, making television appearances almost every day to denounce President Obama’s “reckless spending,” which he says has “bankrupted this country.”

“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says in one video. But today, when confronted in a CNN interview about his failure to support his own children, Walsh not only refused to acknowledge his hypocrisy but insisted that being a deadbeat dad meant he understood the plight of average Americans:

I know that story just broke, and it’s interesting that it just broke right now as I’m out there trying my best to fight this President and fight the Democrats and solve this debt crisis. But look, I’m the most openly vetted candidate in the world. I have had financial troubles and I talked about them throughout the campaign. This is where real America is.

Watch it:

This is not the first time Walsh has faced scrutiny for the disconnect between his rhetoric and the way he conducts his personal life. In 2009, Walsh lost a condo to foreclosure because he owed more than $300,000 on the property. In April 2010, an investigation revealed that Walsh failed to file his personal financial disclosure form as required by federal election law. When questions about his personal finances dogged his congressional campaign, Walsh once again claimed he wasn’t a rich man, despite managing to pay $3,300 per month for a house in upscale Winnetka.

Walsh also rejected the congressional health insurance plan for his family on principle, much to the chagrin of his current wife, Helene, who had a preexisting condition and needed surgery while the couple was uninsured. (Walsh’s Wikipedia page excludes his first marriage.) But Walsh apparently thinks he can have it both ways — claiming his own indebtedness and failure to care for his family’s needs allows him to understand average Americans, while railing against Washington for irresponsibly racking up deficits. As he put it in a recent interview, “Thank God congressmen like me are here!”

Earlier this month, 16 senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for DOJ to examine whether the voter ID laws, which are the centerpiece of the GOP’s war on voting, violate the Voting Rights Act. Earlier this week, over 100 members of the House of Representatives wrote to Holder echoing this call for the Justice Department to take action to preserve America’s democracy:

Approximately 11 percent of voting-age citizens in the country — or more than 20 million individuals — lack government-issued photo identification. We urge you to protect the voting rights of Americans by using the full power of the Department of Justice to review these voter identification bills and scrutinize their implementation.

The Voting Rights Act vests significant authority in the Department to ensure laws are not implemented in a discriminatory manner. [...] [T]he Department should exercise vigilance in overseeing whether these laws are implemented in a way that discriminates against protected clauses in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The VRA not only forbids laws that are passed specifically to target minority voters but also strikes down state laws that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. Because voter ID laws disproportionately affect minority communities, it is difficult to see how many of the voter ID laws being pushed in GOP-controlled states could survive scrutiny under this law.