Failed Massachusetts GOP candidate and anti-vote operative Tom Weaver recently set up a camera at a polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts in hopes of catching a plethora of poll violations. He caught nothing, except himself and his colleague Ralph Zazula sitting behind the desk at the polling place with a sign, “Show I.D. To Vote.” On the sign, Weaver had “Rules”: including, “be polite,” “have valid government issued ID,” and “voluntary compliance.” Telling Elections Commission Chairman Maria Tomasia that they had permission to be there (they didn’t), Weaver proceeded to tape himself suppressing the vote.

Though the “rules” said “voluntary compliance,” New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang (D) said Weaver’s act was tantamount to “voter suppression” and he demanded an investigation. The Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin took a look, and informed Tomasia the sign was indeed “illegal”:

Tomasia said she will go back to requiring a letter from the Secretary of State for all election observers. She said she didn’t know about the “Show ID to Vote” signs until she arrived at the Parker Street precinct at 4 p.m., but acknowledged that she herself didn’t ask the dynamic duo to take it down.

She said Secretary of State William Galvin’s office has now informed her that the “Show ID to Vote” sign was illegal. The secretary’s office says it is taking “remedial” steps to make sure the group never displays a similar sign inside a precinct.

Watch MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the dynamic anti-vote duo:

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Weaver and Zazula insist they “merely intended to hold their helpful sign outside the New Bedford polls” and that that their group “Show ID to Vote” is “not advocating that Massachusetts voters obtain an ID in order to vote — it’s simply encouraging people to voluntarily show their ID when they vote.” Illegally.

Galvin’s office told Maddow that “they’ll be taking steps to keep this from happening again,” including “reminding the local elections commission about statutes that prohibit electioneering at the polls, specifically be election observers” like Weaver and Zazula.

GOP presidential frontrunner Herman Cain has struggled all week to explain his position on abortion in a way that won’t antagonize his the Republican base. On Tuesday, he flip-flopped twice in the same interview on whether rape victims should be able to seek abortions — before ultimately concluding that, no, they should not. On Wednesday, however, he told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “the government shouldn’t be trying to tell people everything to do” with issues like abortion. On Thursday, he had an entirely new position: “I am 100% pro-life. End of story.”

Nevertheless, in an interview with Fox News today, Cain wrote yet another chapter to this story:

CAIN: I do not believe that abortion should be legal in this country, if that’s the question.

QUESTION: So then you’re saying that if those circumstances come up and the family does make that decision — that they decide [abortion] is the best thing for that young person or she decides it on her own — that if that’s what they decided then it would be an illegal abortion that they would need to seek?

CAIN: It would be an illegal abortion if the law — look, abortion should not be legal. That is clear. But if the family made a decision to break the law, that’s that family’s decision. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Watch it:

So now it’s Friday, and Cain’s position is that abortion should be illegal. In all cases. And if someone gets an abortion they are personally breaking the law. But if someone gets one anyway, that’s their family’s decision.

Florida will gain two new congressional seats thanks to its growing population and plans to create a majority-Hispanic district in Central Florida, where the Puerto Rican population has surged. But Florida Sen. Alan Hays (R) is not a fan of the idea, claiming that many of “Hispanic-speaking people” in the region are “not legal,” the Miami Herald reports:

Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, rekindled the divisive debate over illegal immigration when he told the Senate committee reviewing a series of congressional redistricting plans that “before we design a district anywhere in the state of Florida for Hispanic voters, we need to ascertain that they are citizens of the United States.”

“We all know there are many Hispanic-speaking people in Florida that are not legal,’’ he said. “And I just don’t think it’s right that we try to draw a district that encompasses people that really have no business voting anyhow,” he said.

Of course, Puerto Ricans are American citizens from birth, as the territory is part of the U.S. “We’ve never had a problem with illegal voting in Lake County, no way,’’ said Lake County Supervisor of Elections Emogen Stegall, who has worked in the election’s office for 40 years.

Hispanic lawmakers of both parties were quick to condemn Hays. Sen. Rene Garcia (R), the chairman of the Hispanic caucus, said he asked Hays for an explanation and two Democratic lawmakers demanded an apology or resignation. “He is calling on a witch hunt before a Hispanic district can be realistically considered,’’ said Rep. Janet Cruz (D). The GOP-dominated caucus met late Wednesday night to discuss the matter.

Other GOP lawmakers, however, were less concerned, with one saying Hays’ comments were “irrelevant” and another saying, “I don’t think he meant it in a way that was negative or demeaning or detrimental.”

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) wrote a book, “Scorpions for Breakfast” — a 228-page account of her harrowing efforts to enact SB 1070, the first of the radical anti-immigrant laws that conservative state lawmakers enacted in the last two years. Brewer has since earned global backlash from political leaders, police, businesses, sports teams, celebrities, and Arizona citizens. Recounting the reaction, Brewer insists in her introduction that the backlash felt just like “waterboarding“:

[T]he thrust of the book is her attempt to tell her side of the immigration debate.

In the introduction, the governor likens the days preceding her signing of SB 1070 to a “waterboarding,” noting that “advice, objections, encouragement, discouragement, fan letters and death threats were coming at me so fast I could barely breathe.”

A reminder: Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the covered face of an immobilized prisoner. Such torture can result in dry drowning, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, and broken bones if the prisoner struggles against the restraints. Getting angry phone calls for signing an extremely prejudicial bill into law is not waterboarding. But it is, apparently, a way to make ridiculously hyperbolic statements about a self-described hardship from which you plan to profit. Brewer’s book goes on sale Nov. 1.

A restaurant owner in Birmingham, Alabama knew he had a problem after Alabama’s extreme immigration law went into effect. All nine of Steve Dubrinsky’s kitchen workers at his Jewish deli were legal immigrants, yet several of them have told Dubrinsky that he should hire people to replace them because they’re leaving with undocumented relatives or simply do not feel safe. He spoke to the Birmingham News about his sudden employment issue. “They are scared and I can’t blame them,” he said to the paper about his employees. “It is affecting a lot of restaurants. It’s a mess.”

Then his problems got worse. On the morning the newspaper published his quote, Dubrinsky heard a local radio host talking about if people should boycott his deli because of his sympathetic comments. An anti-immigrant website picked up the article, and Dubrinsky told the Huffington Post he was suddenly receiving hateful emails:

One reads: “well u can bet your ass that i will never eat in your resturant agian and will tell everybody i know what kind of person you are for suporting those dam wetback that are ruining our country.”

Another: “if you cant keep the doors open and employ legal people then it is time to close.”

And another: “I hope your unamerican establishment closes down!!!!”

On the day many workers planned to not show up to work as a protest against the immigration law, Dubrinsky struck a compromise with his workers to close early that day. After he hung a sign on his door explaining the closing, he only received more hate mail from those who had seen the sign.

Despite claims from Alabama politicians that American citizens will line up to take the jobs undocumented (and legal) immigrants leave, Dubrinsky has been unsuccessful in hiring additional workers to prepare for the likely vacancies in his staff. One worker left after only two hours of manning the grill.

Dubrinsky is hardly alone in not being able to find other Alabamians to replace his kitchen workers. Alabama farmers have been hurt the most economically by the state’s immigration law. Undocumented immigrants or even legal immigrants who are afraid have fled the state, leaving farmers without longtime workers during harvest. And they have not been able to replace their previous Hispanic workers with American citizens. Farmers report that replacement workers do not work as hard and often do not last either. “I’ve had people calling me wanting to work,” said Keith Smith, an Alabama potato farmer. “I haven’t turned any of them down, but they’re not any good. It’s hard work, they just don’t work like the Hispanics with experience.”

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s (R) office has set up a database to connect farmers and other businesses with workers looking for jobs, but no state official could tell the Associated Press how many people had actualy been hired to replace immigrants who have left. In the meantime, crops are rotting in the field because farmers don’t have enough workers and business owners are being harassed for showing concern for their legal workers.

When it comes to Social Security, the pugilistic presidential contender Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is normally the one attracting all the attention. After all, he called the program all sorts of names: A “Ponzi scheme,” a “monstrous lie,” and unconstitutional. But the new GOP front runner — pizza mogul Herman Cain — seems eager to challenge Perry’s title as the world heavyweight champion fear-monger on the nation’s most successful economic program.

From 2005 to 2010, Cain wrote weekly commentary for his company The New Voice, Inc. He dedicated a few of his columns to register full support for President George W. Bush’s disastrous idea to privatize Social Security. Viewing Social Security as “immoral” and “oppressive,” he blasted Democrats for supporting “involuntary servitude” of African Americans through the Social Security and payroll tax system. From one column entitled, “Ownerships: An Unalienable Right”:

The 70-year-old Social Security structure and the 92-year-old income tax code thwart the natural, individual motivation of citizens to use their God-given talents to pursue happiness and their respective dreams. Any program that undermines an individual’s liberty to create ownership is, then, by its very nature, immoral. It took our nation nearly 250 years to end slavery and live up to the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. It should not take us another 250 years to cease the involuntary negative return most working people receive from Social Security, or the involuntary servitude imposed by the oppressive income tax code.

In another column entitled “Separate Water Fountains,” Cain said the Social Security system “by its very nature discriminates against black men and women.” With their “unconscionable” refusal to implement private accounts, Democratic “so-called black leaders” want to see “the next generation of Blacks remain in economic slavery on the Democratic plantation“:

It is now evident that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not apply to the Social Security system. Due to the rising retirement age, differences in life expectancy between Blacks and Whites, and mandatory payroll tax deductions, the system by its very nature discriminates against black men and women.[...]

Perhaps most unconscionable is the opposition to personal retirement accounts by the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and many of our nation’s so-called black leaders. Personal retirement accounts would provide future generations of Blacks the retirement security their parents and grandparents never had.

Instead, black Democratic leaders are willing to see the next generation of Blacks remain in economic slavery on the Democratic plantation, so long as they can deny any Republican a perceived political victory.

Cain’s over the top rhetoric strongly suggests that he shares Perry’s belief that Social Security is unconstitutional. Under the 13th Amendment, “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

His claims are also wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the nearly 5 million African Americans who receive Social Security benefit more from this essential program than the average white American. Studies show that they “receive modestly more in Social Security benefits for each dollar they pay in payroll taxes than whites do” because of the progressive benefit structure and that they benefit more from SSDI because they are unfortunately more likely “to become disabled or die before retiring.”

Private accounts, however, would leave African-Americans worse off. As the GAO notes, they “are likely to disproportionately affect equity for minorities.” Because of the “gaps in earnings at younger ages and lower average pay than whites who have the same level of education,” minorities would be at a disadvantage in how much and when they could invest in the private account. Ultimately, “the risks would be more acute for African Americans than for whites, and the potential rewards likely would be smaller.”

As is often the case with Cain, the rhetorical glaze can’t hide the rotten consequences of his policies. And given the popularity of the program as it is, he’s unlikely to win over anyone by equating them with slave owners.

Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a group of United States citizens who were denied in-state tuition at Florida colleges because of who their parents are:

Wendy Ruiz is an American citizen, a native of Miami, where she was born in 1992. She has a Florida birth certificate. She has a Florida high school diploma. She has a Florida voter registration card, a Florida driver’s license and a Florida bank account. She is an honor student in her second year at Miami Dade College–as an out-of-state student.

Ruiz is paying $377 per credit hour, instead of the $105.50 afforded in-state residents. That works out to an annual tuition and fees bill of $9,000 instead of the $2,500 in-state residents pay. Ruiz can’t afford the normal, 12-credit-per-semester load, though that’s what she’d rather take. So she’ll end up taking three years to finish her two-year degree.

Why? Because her parents cannot show proof of her parents’ legal immigration status. Florida’s college and university system’s rule is unbending. A student’s residency status is irrelevant no matter how American, no matter how Floridian. Ruiz could have been Miss Florida for all the university system cares. It’s her parents’ residency status that counts, which also means that for countless students whose parents are being forced to move out of the state for economic reasons, they take their child’s in-state rate away with them.

It’s profoundly cruel when states treat young people who spent all but the very beginning of their life in the United States as if they were strangers. But Florida’s law is even more insidious. Wendy Ruiz is no less an American than Mitt Romney, John Boehner or Barack Obama. States have no right whatsoever to single her out simply because they do not approve of who her parents are.

Indeed, Ruiz’ equal claim to her full status as a United States citizen is written unambiguously into the Constitution itself. Under the 14th Amendment,

[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

Although this Privileges and Immunities Clause largely laid dormant for much of American history, the Supreme Court held more than a decade ago that it forbids states from singling out a group of American citizens for inferior treatment. As the Court held in Saenz v. Roe, once an American takes residence in a state, they are guaranteed “the same rights as other citizens of that State.”

So there is no question that Florida law is invalid and must be declared unconstitutional. Wendy Ruiz is an American and Florida has a constitutional obligation to treat her like one.