The United States attorney in San Diego announced an ill-conceived effort to target newspapers and radio ads from medical marijuana dispensaries:

This month, U.S. attorneys representing four districts in California announced that the government would single out landlords and property owners who rent buildings or land where dispensaries sell or cultivators grow marijuana. Now, newspapers and other media outlets could be next.

U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy, whose district includes Imperial and San Diego counties, said marijuana advertising is the next area she’s “going to be moving onto as part of the enforcement efforts in Southern California.” Duffy said she could not speak for the three other U.S. attorneys covering the state, but noted their efforts have been coordinated so far. [...]

Federal law prohibits people from placing ads for illegal drugs, including marijuana, in “any newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication.” The law could conceivably extend to online ads; the U.S. Department of Justice recently extracted a $500 million settlement from Google for selling illegal ads linking to online Canadian pharmacies.

Because the law prohibits the “placing” of ads, it’s likely that it only applies to the dispensaries themselves and not to the newspaper and radio stations — but there’s no guarantee that media outlets cannot be prosecuted as well because a few courts have actually interpreted the law.

It is unfortunate that the Obama Administration would expend scarce prosecutorial resources on these kinds of cases. California’s marijuana dispensaries serve patients seeking medically prescribed treatments for their health conditions. Admittedly, it is also notoriously easy to obtain recreational marijuana from these dispensaries as well, but so what? Forty-two percent of Americans will smoke marijuana at some point in their lifetimes. Three people who’ve already used it are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It’s difficult to justify treating an activity that nearly half of all Americans engage in as if it were a serious offense worthy of a potentially life-destroying jail sentence.

Harsh marijuana laws are hemorrhaging support, as a recent Pew survey shows a sharp and unambiguous trend in favor of legalization:

The numbers leave no doubt that the days of needless jail sentences for marijuana crimes are numbered. It’s time for the Obama Administration to get on the right side of history and back major reforms.

Wisconsin’s new voter identification law has been plagued with problems even before its first election, whether from government officials trying to shield the public from learning about the free version of a vote-only ID, Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) pledge to close Department of Motor Vehicle offices where the IDs can be obtained, or from protests from angry Wisconsinites who claim the new law, like similar laws around the country, is only aimed at disenfranchising voters who are more likely to vote Democrat.

Now, after test votes in Madison led to long lines and confusion, the law has a newer and perhaps even bigger problem: rather than remaining in line, frustrated would-be voters left before they even got to the polls. And according to state officials, who are now encouraging other locations to run trial votes to prepare for upcoming elections, the issues won’t be solved by the spring primaries in February, the Appleton Post-Crescent reports:

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told The Post-Crescent the same issues that arose during their mock election Tuesday would come up across the state during the spring primaries on Feb. 21. The primaries will be the first time Wisconsin voters are required to show photo identification and sign a poll book before casting their ballot.

But Wisconsin officials continue to dispute that the new law will cause massive problems, primarily because the state is preparing to spend as much $600,000 on public education projects in an effort to prepare voters for its implementation. In all, the law — backed by the same Republicans that fought to end collective bargaining rights for public workers to fix a budget “problem” that didn’t actually exist — could cost the state as much as $7.5 million, all to fix a voter fraud “problem” that doesn’t actually exist either.

When Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signed Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant bill into law, church leaders worried that provisions of the law would prevent them from even providing transportation to undocumented immigrants so that they could attend religious services. Alabama clergy filed a lawsuit challenging the law, saying it would “make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.” And when Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled that the state could implement key portions of the immigration law, like asking school children about their immigration status when they enroll, she did temporarily halt a portion of the law that made it illegal to transport or house an undocumented immigrant, which was the portion of the law that most concerned the church leaders.

But regardless of the law, one religious charity in Decatur, Alabama is turning away individuals who cannot prove their immigration status. The Committee on Church Cooperation, a not-for-profit organization supported by local churches in Morgan County, announced that it is enforcing a policy to ask everyone for a Morgan County photo ID, a social security number and proof of income for each person in the household, and proof of Morgan County residency before it offers food, clothing, or assistance. Gayle Monk, CCC executive director, told the Decatur Daily that the organization has taken extra steps to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving help. “We’ve even got wind that a lot of them have illegal Social Security cards. So I’ve tried to educate my staff on what to look for,” Monk said:

“It used to be about 10 percent (Hispanics) that we served,” Monk said. “Since cracking down, I haven’t seen anybody, especially in the last month.

“I think word kind of got around. We really had to crack down because they would come in, and they wouldn’t have any documents.” [...]

Monk, who has been director for two months, said the renewed focus on documentation was not advertised, but word got around.

“People talk among themselves,” Monk said. “They knew they couldn’t get by with finagling, so they stopped coming here. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any Hispanics walk through our door.”

According to the organization’s Facebook page, it has been their policy since 1973 to ask for proof of residency and a social security card — although the organization admits that the policy has not “always been strictly enforced.” Monk said the organization does not discriminate.

Regarding the policy, pastors told the Decatur Daily they were unsure of the policy. Bill Hurt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Decatur, said he was uncomfortable with citizenship being a requirement to receive help. Bishop Will Willimon of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church was surprised by the policy, saying, “I can’t imagine what biblical basis would cause them to take such a stance.”

In fact, turning away those in need would seem to be the exact opposite of Christian teachings. In Matthew 25:40, the Bible reads, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Doing his part in the GOP’s campaign to disenfranchise voters, Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler prohibited election officials from sending ballots to tens of thousands of “inactive/failed to vote” voters because they skipped the 2010 election and had yet to respond to postcards asking them to re-activate their registration.

Many of these “failed” voters included military men and women who were still on active duty. When the military voters were brought to his attention, Gessler stated, “my office’s position remains the same.” Aghast at such overreaching infringement on voter rights, the Denver County clerk Debra Johnson disobeyed the order and decided to send the ballots anyway. Gessler took her to court to prevent her from sending the ballots — and lost.

Gessler insisted that the election law that states “the designated election official shall mail to each active registered elector” means that ballots for inactive voters is strictly prohibited. Denver District Judge Brian Whitney, however, ruled differently on Friday. Whitney noted that while Gessler “hadn’t shown there would be irreparable harm if the ballots are sent,” it “is irreparable to disenfranchise a voter“:

In his ruling on a request for a preliminary injunction, Whitney said that at worst, the results of Denver’s election Nov. 1 could be called into question, but he said that could be repaired with a special election.

“It is irreparable to disenfranchise a voter,” Whitney ruled. “It is a fundamental right to be able to vote.”

Gessler vowed to continue the fight. “Unfortunately, the judge’s decision today allows counties to operate this election differently based on how much money they have. We’ve seen constant erosion of personal responsibility and this decision continues that erosion,” he said. “Coloradans can continue to expect my office to enforce the laws on the books.”

Any inactive voter in Colorado can update their voter registration at the Secretary of State’s website.

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) announced a plan to rig the 2012 presidential election by effectively giving away up to a dozen of the state’s electoral votes to the Republican candidate. Now, as Dave Weigel reports, the Wisconsin GOP is considering the exact same plan:

In Wisconsin, Republican Rep. Dan LeMahieu is asking his colleagues to sign onto a bill that would change the state’s method of picking electoral college electors — a plan identical to the one alive, if losing some steam, in Pennsylvania.

“This bill would change Wisconsin to a state using the Congressional District Method,” explains LeMahieu in a letter to colleagues. “Each congressional district would choose their own Electoral College vote based on the popular vote in that congressional district and the 2 at large votes would be decided by the popular vote of the entire state.” [...]

In the 2008 election, a vote-split wouldn’t have made much of a difference for Wisconsin’s electors. Barack Obama took the state by 14 points, winning all but one of eight fairly un-gerrymandered congressional districts. But had this been in place four years earlier, John Kerry would have won only six of ten electoral votes — two statewide, one for each district. And Wisconsin hasn’t gone Republican since 1984, when Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by 9 points.

As Weigel notes, this effort to render democracy irrelevant in Wisconsin was inevitable. Indeed, ever since Gov. Scott Walker (R) was sworn in last January, Wisconsin has become ground zero for GOP efforts to ensure that only Republicans can win elections. Walker stripped state workers of their right to organize to strengthen the GOP’s position in the next election. He gutted the state’s public financing system, which allows candidates to run effective campaigns without pleading for money from big dollar donors, and used this money to pay for a voter ID scheme that disenfranchises thousands of poor, minority and student voters.