Nebraska is one of just two states which allocates its Electoral College votes by congressional district — a fact that enabled President Obama to win one electoral vote in the state despite losing the state as a whole in 2008. The Nebraska Republican Party, however, just voted to twist its own lawmaker’s arms to prevent this from happening again in 2012:

[T]he [Republican state central] committee approved a resolution that would deny party support to any Republican state senator who fails to support legislation returning Nebraska to a winner-take-all presidential electoral vote system.

An ancillary effect of that action, primarily designed to wipe out any Democratic opportunity to pick up the 2nd Congressional District electoral vote for the second presidential election in a row, could be depression of Democratic activity in the Omaha district to [Sen. Ben] Nelson’s disadvantage.

As a matter of electoral fairness, there is no reason why Nebraska should use a different system than any other state — and, indeed, it would undermine the legitimacy of a second Obama term if the only reason Obama won reelection was a bizarre quirk in one state’s law. Nevertheless, the timing of the Nebraska GOP’s decision to eliminate this quirk before a hotly contested election suggests that it has little to do with preserving the legitimacy of 2012′s winner and everything to do with manipulating the state’s law to the GOP’s advantage.

Moreover, the GOP’s plan to make a solid red state a winner-take-all state stands in stark contrast to their plan to force blue Pennsylvania to give away as many of a dozen of its electoral votes to whoever wins the Republican presidential primary. As Alexander Burns explains, “a voter could be forgiven for thinking lawmakers are trying to tinker with the rules of the 2012 race for purely partisan reasons.”

Last week, ThinkProgress noted that GOP presidential candidates Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann are all courting Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in the hopes of securing an endorsement. As “America’s toughest sheriff,” Arpaio is also one of the country’s most radical, especially when it comes to undocumented immigrant, whom the sheriff sweeps up by the dozen and forces to wear pink underwear and live in tents.

The lawman is also a birther, it seems, and one willing to use official resources to pursue the bogus conspiracy theory. As birther website WorldNetDaily gleefully reported:

Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told WND he has assigned a five-member “Cold Case Posse” to investigate the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The decision, he says, is simply a matter of doing his duty.

“This investigation does not involve politics,” Arpaio told WND.

Arpaio’s investigation comes in response to a complaint filed by the Surprise, Arizona Tea Party, which alleges that Obama may be using a forged birth certificate. “I believe Sheriff Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse will be thorough and complete in their investigation,” a spokesman for the group said.

The Cold Case Posse is an officially-sponsored all-volunteer group of people with skills and backgrounds that make them qualified to investigate cases. The group has been inactive in recent months due to “budgetary limitations within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office,” but apparently a wild goose chase looking into the veracity of the president’s birth certificate is an appropriate use of funds.

Obama’s birth place has long been settled and real estate mogul Donald Trump was drummed out of the GOP presidential field thanks to his fixation on the matter — so why are the GOP’s leading contenders associating themselves with Arpaio, who is hardly mainstream, even without the birther stuff? Courting the sheriff is perhaps not surprising for Perrry, who was reportedly interested in Trump’s endorsement. The Obama campaign even predicted Perry will “probably ask to see the president’s birth certificate,” and Perry’s already secured the backing of birther dentist lawyer Orly Taitz. But Romney and Bachmann have both definitely said Obama was born in the U.S. and have dismissed the birther myth.

Our guest blogger is Andrea Nill Sanchez, law student at Yale and former ThinkProgress reporter.

Presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has been getting a lot of attention for his so-called “kinder” and “gentler” view on immigration since he reiterated his support of the Texas DREAM Act and condemned building an expansive border wall. Yet, while Perry’s immigration views unleashed a series of right-wing attacks, there is a far more moderate GOP candidate who helps put Perry’s immigration stance into perspective.

Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman appeared on Univision’s Al Punto. In his interview with anchor Jorge Ramos, Huntsman expressed support for a path to legalization “once you can secure the border and prove to the American people that we can deal with responsibility number one”:

HUNTSMAN: I think you have to take a very practical approach to having them [undocumented immigrants] wait in line. They’ve got to take a place in line. There have to be certain requirements. Language requirements. English is an official language for example. Paying back taxes, if that is applicable. There needs to be some steps along the way that would suggest that they have paid whatever price and penalty in order to come out of the shadows and to gain citizenship in this country.

RAMOS: So are you saying that you would somehow legalize them?

HUNTSMAN: Well, you have to bring people out from under the shadows. That’s where they are today. And that’s not a good place to be. [...]

RAMOS: Again, is that legalization, would you support legalization after securing the border?

HUNTSMAN: That’s a discussion that I would have. [...] You have to create a system whereby you can move towards citizenship. You can’t wish people away. You can’t just use rhetoric that says we’ll ship people back.

Watch it (in Spanish):

Huntsman also reiterated his support for a federal version of the DREAM Act yesterday, stating, “I believe that you can’t punish the kids for the sins of their parents. You know, they came across at a very young age.”

In contrast, although Perry doesn’t support a mass deportation program, he has clearly stipulated that “you gotta come up with a way that clearly stays away from this issue of making individuals legal citizens of the United States if they haven’t gone through the proper process.”

And while Perry backs allowing undocumented youth to pay in-state tuition through the Texas DREAM Act, he reportedly opposes the federal version of the DREAM Act, which would also allow young undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements to obtain legal status.

However, Huntsman has shifted farther to the right when it comes to border security. When asked by Ramos if he wants a “bigger fence,” Huntsman stated that “we do what needs to be done” in the minds of border states “through a combination of fencing and technology.”

Huntsman also did not evoke a previous statement in which he said that although a fence “repulses” him, “I don’t think we have a choice.” Last week, Huntsman called Perry’s suggestion that the border can’t be secured “treasonous.”

At a speech to Nebraska law students, Justice Clarence Thomas made a surprising claim — that the Supreme Court has been too activist and should stop second-guessing elected leaders:

[Thomas] told the group that the court is being asked to play too big of a role in the nation’s governance. Currently, he said too many of the difficult decisions are being left to the courts to decide.

“The really hard calls ought to be made by citizens and their political leaders,” Thomas said.

Thomas is, of course, correct that the current Supreme Court has gone out of its way to undermine democracy. Thomas and his four conservative colleagues destroyed meaningful checks on corporate money in politics. They undermined essential workplace protections enacted by democratically elected officials, and they wholeheartedly endorse a privatized, corporate-owned arbitration system which allows powerful corporations to immunize themselves from countless laws.

Moreover, Justice Thomas is by far the worst offender on the Supreme Court. A 2005 Yale study found that Thomas is more likely to strike down an act of Congress than any other member of the Court. Indeed, if given his way, Thomas would return America to an era when fathers competed with their teenaged children for work and African-Americans could legally be excluded from jobs, hotels, and lunch counters:

Congress may regulate activities that “substantially affect interstate commerce.” This “substantial effects” power is the basis of Congress’s authority to make labor laws universal throughout all places of employment.

Yet Justice Clarence Thomas claimed in three separate cases—U.S. v. Lopez, U.S. v. Morrison, and Gonzales v. Raich—that this “substantial effects” test is “at odds with the constitutional design.” It is possible that Thomas’s vision would still allow some limited federal labor regulation—such as a law prohibiting children from becoming railway workers—but anything resembling the essential web of federal laws that protect American workers today would be impossible. [...]

In 1964, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters—once again relying on the “substantial effects” test to do so. For this reason, it is likely the Justice Thomas would strike down this and other federal laws protecting civil rights.

So Thomas’ claim that “the court is being asked to play too big of a role in the nation’s governance” is quite true — and all that Thomas needs to do to fix this problem is to quit the relentless campaign of judicial activism he began the minute he joined the Supreme Court.

Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) announced a plan to rig the 2012 presidential election by effectively giving up to a dozen electoral votes away to the Republican presidential candidate for free. Under Corbett’s plan, each of the state’s 18 congressional districts — which are being gerrymandered so that as many as 12 of them favor Republicans — would choose how to allocate a single electoral vote rather than having all of the state’s votes go to the winner of the state. The plan is opposed by several GOP congressmen, who fear that its new set of rules will cause the Obama campaign to shift resources from bluer parts of the state into their districts.

Nevertheless, Corbett and his chief ally in the legislature, GOP Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, are not swayed by these congressmen’s claim that it is more important to protect their seats than it is to steal the election. According to the subscription-only site Capitolwire:

Gov. Tom Corbett and Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, have not budged from their support of a plan to change the allotment of Pennsylvania’s presidential votes. [...] Pileggi said “nothing I have heard” from congressional and state party and national party leaders “indicates that the bill does not have the right objective, that it is not a good objective. I have heard about concerns and questions about money, about clout. I’m interested in fairness to the voters and citizens of Pennsylvania, I’ll leave the rest of those issues to political consultants and the political apparatus in Washington, D.C.” [...]

“There’s a real debate in the party about this, about whether Sen. Pileggi’s bill should be adopted or not,” said Matthew Brann, chairman of the Northeast Central Caucus. “If we’re a state in play, with 20 electoral votes, then I think we probably shouldn’t do it. If we are not, then there is a case to be made for doing this.”

So for those of you keeping track at home, here are the three factions within the Pennsylvania GOP.

• Just Rig The Election Already: Gov. Corbett and Sen. Pileggi fully support the plan. In Pileggi’s words, they have heard “nothing” indicating that this election rigging scheme “does not have the right objective.”
• Protect Me First: GOP Reps. Jim Gerlach, Pat Meehan and Mike Fitzpatrick care more about keeping their own jobs than they do about electing a president who will eliminate Medicare, so they oppose a plan which might endanger their ability to get reelected in what have traditionally been Democratic-leaning districts.
• Be More Coldly Calculating: Perhaps the most despicable faction is captured by Matthew Brann’s statement that Corbett should only rig the election if he is not sure the GOP can carry the state. This faction apparently believes that the biggest problem with Corbett’s election rigging scheme is that it could backfire and benefit the Democrats

Sadly, there does not appear to be any faction within the Republican Party that opposes rigging elections because rigging elections is wrong.