ThinkProgress filed this report from the Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, California.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) just doesn’t know what to do with his radical book arguing that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional. The Perry campaign has alternatively embraced the book, distanced itself from it, run away from voters asking him about it, and misrepresented what it says.

ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes caught up with Rick Perry’s campaign manager yesterday, and learned that Team Perry is back to simply not telling the truth about what their candidate believes:

KEYES: Does the governor still think that Social Security exists at the expense of the Constitution?

PERRY SPOX: In the book he never said — he didn’t say it was unconstitutional. Is that what you’re getting at?

KEYES: Well, just that he wrote that Social Security exists at the expense of the Constitution.

PERRY SPOX: He believes Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and that we’ve got to address it. We’re starting a national conversation.

Watch it:

For the record, here is the passage in Fed Up! where Rick Perry says that Social Security is unconstitutional:

There is no ambiguity in this passage. Nor is there ambiguity in a subsequent interview where Perry reiterated his belief that Social Security and Medicare violate the Constitution:

I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in [the Constitution] were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that.

Simply put, the Perry campaign needs to stop misrepresenting what their candidate believes.

Earlier today, the Fourth Circuit handed down two decisions requiring challenges to the Affordable Care Act to be dismissed. The decisions included four separate opinions, including a sharp spanking to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), a majority opinion dismissing Liberty University’s challenge to the law on jurisdictional grounds, and two separate opinions saying the law is constitutional. In case you’re confused, here is a handy guide to the opinions:

• The Cuccinelli Sideshow: Virginia’s attorney general is one of the most strident opponents of the Affordable Care Act, but his case is also the weakest. The Supreme Court held in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Constitution “prohibits” states from suing the federal government “to protect her citizens from the operation of federal statutes” — and Virginia’s lawsuit clearly tries to “protect” its citizens from the operation of a federal law. To get around this problem, Virginia passed an unconstitutional law claiming to nullify part of the Affordable Care Act, and then claimed that this unconstitutional act allows it to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s decision. The Fourth Circuit had no patience for this frivolous argument.
• It’s A Tax!: The Affordable Care Act’s so-called “individual mandate,” which was challenged in these two lawsuits, requires most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes. Because the law does not take effect until 2014, however, no one has actually paid this tax yet and no one will for a few years. The reason why this matters is because the Tax Anti-Injunction Act does not permit plaintiffs to sue in order to prevent a tax from being collected. They can only wait until after they have paid the tax and then sue claiming they are entitled to a refund. Because the mandate is a tax, and because no one has paid the tax yet, Judge Motz held that the Tax Anti-Injunction Act prevents anyone from challenging the mandate.
• It’s A Tax! And It’s Constitutional!: Judge Wynn joined Motz’ opinion dismissing the case without reaching the question of whether the law is constitutional. He also agreed with the dissenting judge’s argument that the law is a valid exercise of Congress’ power to regulate commerce. Additionally, Judge Wynn argued that the fact that the mandate is a tax is also sufficient reason to uphold the law as constitutional because the Constitution gives Congress the authority to “lay and collect taxes.”
• Commerce: Finally, Judge Davis dissented from Motz’ conclusion that the law is a tax for purposes of the Tax Anti-Injunction Act. He then explained that he would uphold the law under Congress’ power to “regulate commerce…among the several states.”

So, in summary, two judges (Motz and Wynn) voted to dismiss the Liberty University case on jurisdictional grounds. Two judges (Wynn and Davis) also said that they would uphold the law on the merits. As a technical matter, this means that the case was dismissed without an opinion on the merits. As a practical matter, however, a majority of the Fourth Circuit panel unambiguously concluded that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional.

New Hampshire Republicans were excited to pass a restrictive and disenfranchising voter identification law in 2011, so much so that they placed illegal signs outside polling locations demanding voters show ID in a May special election, even though the legislation hadn’t yet been signed into law. Senate Bill 129 never did become law, however, as Gov. John Lynch (D) vetoed it immediately.

Wednesday, voter ID efforts hit another roadblock when legislative efforts to override Lynch’s veto failed in the state Senate. Both the Senate president and majority leader flipped their earlier votes and voted to uphold the veto, the New Hampshire Union-Leader reports:

The Senate voted 17-7 to sustain Lynch in his stance against Senate Bill 129. Senate President Peter Bragdon, R-Milford, and Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, were among those voting to sustain the veto.

Bragdon and Bradley both voted to pass the bill three months ago, when it passed 14-9 in the Senate.

Amid protests from minority groups, voting rights advocates, and a group of Democratic U.S. senators, voter ID laws have begun running into trouble across the country. The Justice Dept. recently put a hold on South Carolina’s law until attorneys for the state could prove it wasn’t a form of racial discrimination, while the Wisconsin version continues to come under fire for the various problems tied to its implementation, including a recent memo from a top government official telling Dept. of Motor Vehicle staff not to alert customers to the state’s free vote-only ID unless they asked for it.

In New Hampshire, however, Republicans have promised to keep up the fight. While some Senate Republicans voted to uphold the veto because they opposed provisions inserted by the state House of Representatives, multiple vowed to renew their push for a new voter ID law in next year’s legislative session.

At last night’s GOP presidential debate in California, front runner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) defended his record of overseeing 235 executions in Texas, the most of any modern governor by far and nearly half of those conducted in the state since the death penalty went into effect in 1976.

Perry insisted that he’s never lost sleep at night worrying that any one of them might have been innocent. “I’ve never struggled with that at all,” Perry said.

Watch it:

That’s despite the fact that during Perry’s tenure as governor, DNA evidence has exonerated at least 41 people convicted in Texas, Scott Horton writes in Harper’s. According to the Innocence Project, “more people have been freed through DNA testing in Texas than in any other state in the country, and these exonerations have revealed deep flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.” Some 85 percent of wrongful convictions in Texas, or 35 of the 41 cases, are due to mistaken eyewitness identifications.

Those exonerations include Cornelius Dupree, who had already spent 30 years in prison for rape, robbery, and abduction when DNA evidence proved unequivocally that he was not the man who had committed those crime. Tim Cole, the brother of Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis (D), was posthumously pardoned a decade after he died in prison when DNA evidence proved his innocence. The total failure of the Texas courts to protect these innocent individuals reveal a system plagued by racial injustices, procedural flaws, and a clemency review process that’s nothing but a rubber stamp on executions.

Leading the country in wrongful convictions probably should give Perry a moment’s pause about the reliability of a criminal justice process he described last night as “thoughtful.” Perry has allowed the execution of juveniles, the mentally disabled, and people who have had such inadequate counsel that their court-appointed lawyers literally slept through their trials. Additionally, Perry has overseen the executions of seven foreign nationals and two men who were accomplices but did not actually commit murder.

And he may well have already executed an innocent man. The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the arson deaths of his three daughters and maintained his innocence until his dying day, will likely continue to haunt Perry throughout the campaign. Several scientists and forensics experts have questioned the evidence that led to Willingham’s conviction, but Perry “squashed” an official probe into his execution.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, California.

Though many have wondered if there was any policy position too extreme for the modern Republican Party, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has found one: abolishing Social Security.

During Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate in Simi Valley, California, Perry repeated his pronouncement that Social Security is both a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie.” This follows up on Perry’s own book, in which he says the popular retirement program is unconstitutional and “violently toss[es] aside any respect for our founding principles.”

After the debate, one of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) top advisers, Stuart Stevens, discussed the matter with ThinkProgress and others. Stevens minced no words, declaring that if the Texas governor were to win the nomination, Democrats would see major gains in Congress because every Republican candidate in the country “would have to run on the Perry plan to kill Social Security.” After noting that “the vast majority of Americans” did not want any major changes to Social Security – 64 percent according to a CNN poll, including 57 percent of Republicans – Stevens called the Perry platform of wanting to “abolish Social Security” a “disqualifying position.”

STEVENS: We’re talking about every House candidate that runs, every Senate candidate that runs, would have to run on the Perry plan to kill Social Security. We might as well just admit it now that Nancy Pelosi is going to become Speaker again and the Senate we’ll never get. It’s a position that, in his book he argues for and reasons out well, it’s just a position the vast majority of Americans don’t agree with. We’re talking about a president who will abolish Social Security. It’s not a question of how it’s funded, it’s a disqualifying position.

Watch it:

To be clear, Romney is no centrist. The former Massachusetts governor’s new economic plan includes $6.6 trillion in giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. He wants a federal “right to work” law. Romney even told Iowa fair-goers that he believes “corporations are people.”

Yet, Perry’s position on Social Security isn’t just a bit too conservative for Romney and the Republican Party. It’s so extreme, according to Stevens, that it would go against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans and lose GOPers both houses of Congress. With a strong majority of Republicans wanting to preserve Social Security in its current form, Stevens may indeed be correct that Perry’s bizarre belief that Social Security is unconstitutional is a “disqualifying position.”