Segregated public buses may seem like a anachronism that went out with Rosa Parks, but women are still required to sit at the back on one New York City bus line. The New York World reports that while the B110 in Brooklyn is open to the public, a council of Orthodox Jewish leaders has control over its policies because the route serves a Jewish community in the city.

And the rabbis on the bus’ consulting council have decreed that male passengers should ride in the front of the bus and female passengers in the back:

The B110 bus travels between Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn. It is open to the public, and has a route number and tall blue bus stop signs like any other city bus. But the B110 operates according to its own distinct rules. The bus line is run by a private company and serves the Hasidic communities of the two neighborhoods. To avoid physical contact between members of opposite sexes that is prohibited by Hasidic tradition, men sit in the front of the bus and women sit in the back.

The arrangement that the B110 operates under can only be described as unorthodox. It operates as a franchise, in which a private company, Private Transportation Corporation, pays the city for the right to provide a public service.[...]

City, state and federal law all proscribe discrimination based on gender in public accommodations.[...] The Department of Transportation, which issues the franchise, confirms that it understands the B110 to be subject to anti-discrimination laws. “This is a private company, but it is a public service,” said Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the DOT. “The company has to comply with all applicable laws.”

The rule is no mere formality. Women who ride the bus, even those who are not Jewish, report that they are ordered by male passengers to move to the back, and scolded when they ask questions.

The DOT spokesman said the agency would contact the bus company about these incidents, “with the expectation that it will take steps to prevent the occurrence of incidents of this nature.” However, the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which prosecutes violations of anti-discrimination law, said it would not investigate unless someone filed a complaint. But a spokeswoman for the commission indicated that they too understood the bus line to be a public accommodation subject to anti-discrimination laws, even if it is run by a private company.

The city’s peculiar arrangement with a group of orthodox religious leaders often criticized for their exclusionary treatment of women seems to blur the constitutional line between church and state beyond distinction. Hasidics’ segregationist policies are not representative of the Jewish community as a whole — in fact, many Jews reject their practices because they prohibit women from participating in the most meaningful parts of religious life, including prayer and public reading of the Torah.

Ross Sandler, a professor at New York Law School, says anti-discrimination laws apply to buses that are franchises but “the question is whether there is an exception for this particular bus line.” The Transportation Department said that the B110 had not been granted any exceptions to anti-discrimination laws.

GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson told reporters today that he would consider issue “a full presidential pardon” for every non-violent marijuana convicted under current drug laws if elected. Asked by blogger Darren Richardson if he would consider such a move, the libertarian former governor of New Mexico — who called himself “part of the marijuana movement, forever” and has acknowledged using marijuana — said he would, comparing the prohibition on marijuana the prohibition of alcohol:

JOHNSON: Yes. … After prohibition of alcohol was repealed, one of the untold stories was of all the pardons that went out to all those people who had been convicted or were serving jail sentences for trading in alcohol. I think that same phenomenon accompanies legalizing marijuana and what I call rational drug policy, which starts with looking at the drug problem or the drug issue first as a health issue rather a criminal justice issue.

Most offenders are convicted under state drug laws and thus not eligible for Johnson’s scheme, but activists have sought a presidential pardon for some egregious federal convictions.

Perhaps the most startling thing about Johnson’s stance is not the comments themselves, but the fact that only a fringe candidate with less than one percent support in most polls is willing to say them. As Johnson happily noted, a new Gallup poll released this week finds that a full 50 percent of Americans now support marijuana legalization, and not just for medical use. A CNN poll from April, a Pew poll from February, and many other recent polls have similar results, with support for legalization in at least the mid 40s. Meanwhile, support is as high as 62 percent other controversial among Americans under 30 years old. Support for other social policies is often not much higher, yet they garner immense attention while drug policy is largely ignored or taken for granted.

Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have been perhaps the most mainstream politicians to take up the issue, introducing a bill to allow states to regulate marijuana as they please.

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, a slew of Voter ID laws pushed by Republican legislators in several states are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise core Democratic voters, especially the poor, college students, and minorities. In May, South Carolina became the 10th state to adopt this legislation.

The ACLU warned that “nearly 180,000 voters in South Carolina – most of whom are elderly, student, minority or low-income voters – will be disenfranchised as a result of this discriminatory bill.” The NAACP added that it “immediately disenfranchises eight percent of registered voters in the state.”

Those predictions are already coming true. A study by the Associated Press finds that South Carolina’s law hits minority precincts the hardest:

A new South Carolina voter identification law is impacting majority-black precincts more than others in the state, according to a study by the Associated Press.

The measure requires that every person have photo ID of some kind when they vote, whether it is a driver’s license, military ID or passport, the AP wrote. The law has been under review by the Department of Justice to see if it violates the Voting Rights Act.

The AP found that many voters in majority-black counties in South Carolina do not have proper identification — and the percentage of minority voters without the right identification is higher in those areas than other precincts statewide.

In Richland County, the state’s second-most populous county, there are 11,087 nonwhite voters without ID, and 4,544 in Orangeburg County. According to AP, this means that half of those impacted in Richland — and 73 percent in Orangeburg –are non-white voters.

Under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the burden of proof is on southern states with a legacy of racial oppression to prove that legal changes will not have a discriminatory impact on minority voters. The AP study appears to confirm that South Carolina’s Voter ID law violates the VRA.

Voter ID laws have been widely denounced as the reincarnation of a Jim Crow system that systematically disenfranchised black voters. When the South Carolina House looked as if it would pass the legislation last year, “members of the Legislative Black Caucus and others stood up and walked out of the House chamber to show their collective disgust.”

Democrats say it’s no coincidence that Republicans renewed their disenfranchisement efforts after Barack Obama was elected president. “In 2008, we had too many black folk, too many brown folk, too many poor folk voting,” said South Carolina state Representative David J. Mack III. “They (Republicans) can’t have that in 2012.”

For two decades, the corporate-funded Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment’s (FREE) flagship program was a series of free junkets for judges where judges can ride horses, bunk with industry attorneys, and learn how to decide environmental cases in ways that benefit FREE’s corporate funders — funders that include Texaco, Exxon, General Electric, Koch, Monsanto, and Shell. Thankfully, this effort to undermine the integrity of the judiciary is finally coming to a close:

After 20 years of drawing federal judges to retreats in Montana, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment is scaling back. John Baden, the libertarian economist who leads FREE, said in an interview on Oct. 12 that the group’s most recent conference, in late August and early September, will be its last. Baden said he’ll continue teaching but shift his focus from judges to religious leaders, who he thinks could benefit from economics.

The end of FREE’s junkets is an unambiguously positive development, but a shockingly large number of judges accepted FREE’s free junkets during the 20 years FREE provided them. Those judges include two Fifth Circuit judges who, at the urging of the oil industry, shut down one of the Obama Administration’s most important efforts to reduce the risk of another volcano of oil being set off in the Gulf of Mexico, and Judge Roger Vinson, the Tea Party judge in Florida who handed down an error-laden opinion striking down the entire Affordable Care Act. It also includes Chief Judge Edith Jones, the chief judge of the notoriously right-wing Fifth Circuit.

Three of FREE’s board members, Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Clement and Sixth Circuit Judges Alice Batchelder and Danny Boggs, are sitting federal judges — despite an ethics opinion from a committee of federal judges saying that it is unethical for Batchelder, Boggs and Clement to help lead this junketing organization.

The “Papers, Please!” anti-immigration movement could be moving into Arizona’s elementary school classrooms soon. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), the conservative governor responsible for Arizona’s SB1070 law, would like to adopt Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant measures for her state.

The Alabama law goes farther than what Arizona has already passed. The Alabama law forces schools to check the immigration status of students. Since the law provides new requirements for any Alabama resident to be screened before using public facilities of almost any type, public water utilities have began checking the immigration status of customers.

ThinkProgress caught up with Brewer in the spin room after the CNN debate last night. Brewer referenced the fact that the federal courts have blocked certain provisions of the law, but told us that if Alabama’s law eventually passes constitutional muster, that she would like to see it implemented in her own state of Arizona:

KEYES: Governor, what do you make of Alabama’s recent immigration law?

BREWER: I think that they’re frustrated and they’ve been impacted by illegal immigration down there. Again, states cannot afford it. We cannot afford the health care, the education, the incarceration, and what it does to our communities.

KEYES: Do you think some of the provisions would be appropriate for Arizona as well? For instance, schoolchildren and their families are being asked about their immigration status upon enrolling in school?

BREWER: I don’t really have a problem with that. When I was going to school we always had to bring our birth certificates for whatever reason they needed it at that point in time. Bottom line is that I believe in federalism. With federalism, I think states should have rights, and as long as those taxpayers are paying the tab then they ought to know if they’re legal or illegal. The bottom line of illegal immigration is its all about the rule of law. We are a nation of laws, we ought to abide by the law.

Watch it:

After speaking with Scott Keyes, Brewer confirmed her position in another brief interview with Lee Fang. “I think its important to find out who is going to our schools and if they’re legal or if they’re illegal,” said Brewer.

Despite a federal court blocking parts of the Alabama law for now, including the schools provision, hundreds of Hispanic children have refused to show up at school and many families are fleeing the state.