Ohio’s Republican Party, led by one of the most unpopular governors in the nation, has had plenty of struggles on the policy front in 2011. Gov. John Kasich’s (R) budget is immensely unpopular, and the two other landmark pieces of legislation passed by the GOP and signed by Kasich are subject to referendum campaigns.

But the party’s real trouble so far has been the struggles of some of its members to abide by the law. Three Ohio Republicans have had run-ins with the law this year. State Rep. Robert Mecklenborg (R) was arrested for drunk driving with a stripper in his car. State Rep. Jarrod Martin (R) has had three drunken incidents with law enforcement, including one in which he was driving with his kids in the car. State Sen. Kris Jordan, meanwhile, is being investigated for a domestic dispute with his wife while he was allegedly drunk and in possession of a firearm.

And in the wake of those run-ins, Ohio-based blog Plunderbund reports that Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine has seemingly cast aside the “zero tolerance” policy he instituted for “any candidate or party official who crosses the line.” DeWine, in 2009:

Our party historically upheld the highest standard for ethics and morality in government, but most voters know us better for our hypocrisy. Not an election goes by without a major scandal involving a prominent Republican figure.

We cannot continue to campaign on a higher standard of government if we fail to uphold it, so we must adopt a zero tolerance policy for any candidate or elected official who crosses the line.

But as Plunderbund notes, DeWine, Kasich, and other Republican leaders have not attempted to enforce that zero tolerance policy when it comes to the three members who have had legal problems this year. Mecklenborg resigned July 17 and is leaving office today, but both Martin and Jordan are still serving in their current positions.

On June 9, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signed what is now the nation’s most radical anti-immigration measure into law. As Arizona’s “SB-1070 on Steroids,” the Alabama law not only allows police officers to stop and detain anyone they suspect of being undocumented but requires state schools to collect student citizenship information. But before the law can go into effect on September 1, several civil rights groups and state organizations are suing to overturn the measure because it violates the state constitution.

Now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is following suit. On top of the fact that the law “is designed to affect virtually every aspect of an unauthorized immigrant’s daily life” and could even target “legal immigrants and U.S. citizens,” the DOJ declared that “a state cannot set its own immigration policy, much less pass laws that conflict with federal enforcement of the immigration laws.”

On the same day, the state’s Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches filed a separate lawsuit against the law, saying the law unconstitutionally interferes with the right of religious freedom. Representing 338,000 Alabamans, the religious leaders say the law “will make it a crime to follow God’s command” and denounce it as “the nation’s most merciless anti-immigration legislation.”

According to the lawsuit, “the bishops have reason to fear that administering of religious sacraments, which are central to the Christian faith, to known undocumented persons may be criminalized under this law.”

“Motivated by God’s mandate that the faithful are humbly bound to welcome and care for all people, the leaders of the Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic Churches of Alabama respectfully request this Court to stop the enforcement of Alabama’s Anti-Immigration Law,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit states that it seeks to prevent “irreparable harm” to the 338,000 members of the three churches in Alabama. It calls Alabama’s new law “the nation’s most merciless anti-immigration legislation.”

“If enforced, Alabama’s Anti-Immigration Law will make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans,” according to the lawsuit.

Church officials also worry that the law, if enforced, will put church members in the “untenable position of verifying individuals’ immigration documentation” before being able to provide food, clothing, shelter, and transportation.

For what it’s worth, the Department of Justice’s lawsuit is far more likely to succeed than the churches’ suit. The Supreme Court recognized more than 70 years ago “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation,” but it has also held that laws that apply universally to religious groups and non-religious groups alike do not violate religious freedom. Nevertheless, the church’s lawsuit lends an important moral voice against Alabama’s cruel and ill advised policy.

DOJ was successful in securing a temporary injunction against Arizona’s anti-immigration law last year. While civil rights groups have filed lawsuits against five states that passed copycat laws this year, the DOJ’s filling yesterday “marks the first time the department has intervened this year.”

In April of 2010 — more than 15 months ago — President Obama nominated Edward Dumont to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If confirmed, Dumont will be the first openly gay federal appellate judge in American history. Yet Dumont has yet to even receive a confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republicans have yet to give more than the most cursory reason why they are holding up this nomination:

DuMont, also openly gay, was praised at the time [of his nomination] by scholars on the left and right. Eugene Volokh, a libertarian-leaning law professor at UCLA School of Law who described DuMont as a friend, spoke at the time about ”the apolitical, quality factors that Ed has going for him.”

Yet, despite the highest ranking – ”unanimously well qualified” – from the American Bar Association, DuMont has not had so much as a single hearing scheduled within the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination, which is a necessary step before scheduling the nomination for a committee vote.

Committee spokeswoman Erica Chabot told Metro Weekly on July 29, ‘‘Chairman Leahy has been prepared to move forward with this nomination for months, but has been trying to accommodate committee Republicans, who continue to not want to move forward with the nomination.”

Republicans claim that they are blocking Dumont because of unnamed “questions in Mr. DuMont’s background investigation” that they have not disclosed. Given the Senate GOP’s campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s judges, however, it is likely that their refusal to move forward with Dumont is nothing more than prong in their effort to bring judicial confirmations to a near standstill.

Thanks to the GOP’s refusal to allow votes on more than a handful of judicial nominees, the federal bench is facing its own shut down crisis. Existing federal judges are now retiring at twice the rate that new judges are being confirmed, and the confirmation rate under Obama is only slightly more than half that under his two predecessors at this point in their presidencies:

There is more than one way to shut down a government. The GOP can take the entire nation’s economy hostage and threaten a crippling default if the nation doesn’t accept their Tea Party agenda. It can simply refuse to pass any appropriations bills — a battle that we saw at the beginning of this year and will no doubt see again as the current appropriations run out on September 30th. Or the GOP can simply refuse to confirm anyone to essential positions, and hollow out the nation’s essential functions from the inside.