Ohio state Rep. Tim Grendell (R) said today that he will introduce legislation requiring Ohioans in need of unemployment benefits, welfare, or other government aid to take a drug test first. Patterned on Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) new law, the bill, Grendell says, will force those seeking state aid “to pay for the drug tests” upfront — a payment that would only be repaid “if they pass.” If anyone fails the test two times, they will be banned from receiving aid for three years.

In defense of stigmatizing aid beneficiaries in such a way, Grendell declared that “assistance from the state is for those who need these funds for food and shelter, not illegal drugs”:

“Hard working taxpayers of the state of Ohio should not have to pay for the drug habits of illegal drug users,” Grendell said in a press release.

“This assistance from the state is for those who need these funds for food and shelter, not illegal drugs.”

If Grendell actually took a look at the Florida law he is so eager to emulate, he’d realize his big idea might run into an equally big obstacle: The Constitution. As UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler notes, “the Supreme Court has upheld the ability of government to mandate random drug tests in a few limited circumstances,” particularly in high-risk public safety environments. However, the courts have repeatedly struck down policies like the Florida law (and the Ohio proposal) that constitute “unreasonable searches and seizures” — a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

What’s more, the Florida law is actually costing rather than saving the state money. Only 2 percent of welfare recipients actually failed the drug tests, which means Florida will reimburse the 96 percent of recipients the $30 for the drug test. Florida will now owe “about $28,800 – $43,200 monthly in reimbursements.”

The only thing this bill will succeed in doing is impugning the character of the 529,000 unemployed Ohioans and numerous others who may seek support in the struggling economy. Perhaps that is why Grendell has yet to find cosponsors for the proposal.

In 2006, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) committed the unforgivable sin of signing a wildly successful health reform law that provided health insurance to nearly every Massachusetts resident while simultaneously slashing individual insurance premiums by 40 percent. As penance, the Republican primary electorate forced him to travel the country proclaiming his undying belief that the 10th Amendment prevents the Obama Administration from achieving the same triumphant success Romney achieved in Massachusetts.

It’s clear, however, that Romney’s new love affair with tentherism is little more than a marriage of convenience. In response to a question about whether he would support an anti-union “right to work” law at the federal level, Romney twisted himself into a pretzel trying to come up with an answer that would satisfy both hardcore states’ rights supporters and hardcore anti-union activists:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said today that while he favors right-to-work legislation on a state level, he will not push for a federal right-to-work law.

“If there were to be a federal right-to-work law that reached my desk, I would support it,” Romney said. “But the right approach is a state by state approach at this stage.”

Pressed by John Kalb, executive director of New England Citizens for Right to Work, about whether he would actively advocate for a federal law, Romney responded, “I’m a Tenth Amendment guy. I’d like the states to be the place we carry out this path.”

So Romney’s position is that a federal anti-union law is the wrong approach. But he would sign it into law. Even though he thinks the law runs counter to the 10th Amendment. Or something.

Romney’s nonsensical answer is just one more sign that Republicans really only care about states rights when doing so advances their policy goals. President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court appointees fought tooth and nail to give drug companies, banks, and the tobacco industry sweeping immunity from state law through preemption — often with the public and enthusiastic support of Bush’s Department of Justice. More recently, the House GOP rallied behind a tort reform proposal despite claims by leading tenthers that this kind of federal government takeover of the state tort system violates the Constitution.

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) claimed in his tenther manifesto Fed Up, all “national labor laws” violate tentherism. So that means no child labor laws or minimum wage, but it also means no federal laws protecting rich businessmen from their workers’ right to organize. Romney, however, thinks he can have it both ways. He wants to wrap himself in the trappings of the tenther movement, but still pledge his support to anti-tenther laws targeting Republican boogie men such as unions.

The Perry campaign is now recognizing that it cannot completely eliminate the income tax “overnight,” but it remains an open question how aggressively Perry would pursue this goal if given the opportunity to do so. In an interview with Jon Stewart last November, Perry strongly hinted that it would be a top priority. When asked to identify the exact moment when America got on the wrong track, Perry flagged the income tax as America’s original sin:

STEWART: In your mind, when did Washington go off the rails?

PERRY: Oh, about a century ago, actually, when you look at the…

STEWART: Seriously?

PERRY: Yeah, ah, Wilson, and the progressive movement started—the Sixteenth Amendment, if you want to know when Washington really got off the track, the Sixteenth Amendment giving them to opportunity to take your money with the personal income tax.

Watch it:

The Daily Show – Rick Perry Pt. 2
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No one likes paying taxes, but the truth is that the federal government’s power to tax incomes is the reason why America can have essential programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Perry, of course, thinks that those programs are unconstitutional as well.

As ThinkProgress has chronicled at length, Senate Republicans are engaged in an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s nominees. As one prong of this campaign, they forced the Senate to hold brief “pro forma” sessions every three days in an attempt to cut off President Obama’s power to make recess appointments.

As Jonathan Bernstein explains, the basis of this tactic is a nearly 20-year-old DOJ opinion concluding that “a recess must exceed three days to count for the purposes of making recess appointments.” Since that opinion was drafted, however, a higher authority has weighed in on the question and reached the opposite result. In 2004, President Bush recess appointed Judge William Pryor to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This led to Evans v. Stephens, the only court of appeals opinion to examine how long a recess must last before the president may make a recess appointment. Evans‘ holding unambiguously permits President Obama to make a recess appointment right now:

The challengers have used both history and textual analysis to support their contentions that the ten- or eleven-day break in the Senate’s Session that underlies Judge Pryor’s appointment was not a “Recess” within the meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause. We have considered all of the arguments. But the arguments are not so strong as to persuade us that [President Bush's] interpretation is incorrect. [...] The Constitution, on its face, does not establish a minimum time that an authorized break in the Senate must last to give legal force to the President’s appointment power under the Recess Appointments Clause. And we do not set the limit today.

To be sure, the Eleventh Circuit is not the Supreme Court, so it is possible that the justices would take a different view of the issue. But such an outcome it highly unlikely. The vote in Evans was 7 to 1 with one additional judge voting to pass the question on to the Supreme Court without deciding the case. In other words, 7 of the 8 judges to consider the question concluded that the president could make a recess appointment even if the recess only lasted five minutes. There is also good reason to believe that the Supreme Court would simply reject any challenge to President Obama’s recess appointments as a “political question.”

So the highest legal authority to weigh in on the recess appointments power said that President Obama can make a recess appointment right now, and it did so by an overwhelming margin. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are slowly shutting down the entire federal government by draining it of long-needed personnel. The newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau isn’t even capable of performing many of its duties because it lacks a director.

President Obama can end this today by recess appointing that director.