In an attempt to rig the Supreme Court and ensure that the Affordable Care Act will be struck down, high ranking members of the House and Senate GOP — including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) — have made a series of increasingly improbable claims that Justice Elena Kagan must recuse herself from the lawsuit challenging health reform. This morning, however, George W. Bush’s former Attorney General Michael Mukasey puts these ridiculous claims in their place:

The [law] that potentially relates to Justice Kagan requires disqualification “[w]here [the Justice] has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel [or] adviser concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case or controversy.” “Proceeding” is defined to include all stages of the relevant litigation.

In order to run afoul of that provision, Justice Kagan herself would have had to participate in her official capacity as counsel or adviser in the case at any stage, or expressed an opinion in her official capacity about the merits. Asked during her confirmation proceedings whether she had done so, she said no. Absent evidence to the contrary, there is no reason not to credit that denial. Statements of opinion to friends or former colleagues do not count here.

Mukasey’s op-ed also rejects calls from several progressive lawmakers for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from this case, and Mukasey is right that there is not currently any public evidence justifying Thomas’ recusal. Despite the many, many ethical issues surrounding Justice Thomas, no one has yet uncovered evidence that Thomas’ family has a current financial stake in the outcome of this litigation — although Justice Thomas’ wife did once solicit lobbying clients that could potentially raise recusal issues for her husband.

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

“I look at that like paying a fee to vote,” Frank said.

And for Frank, that might not be the end of it. The attending physician at Frank’s birth misspelled her maiden name, which was Wedepohl. To get a birth certificate that has correct information, she will have to petition a court to amend the document — a weeks-long process that could cost $200 or more.

The State Vital Records Division advised frank to just pay the $20 for an incorrect birth certificate and cross her fingers that the DMV accepts it. “If she gets [the state ID], great!” officials said in an email. If not, they said “she can begin the lengthy, potentially costly process of getting the document fixed. Then she can return to the DMV and try again.”

Another state official suggested Frank claim she is “indefinitely confined,” a category that would grant her an exception under the law. “That would be real voter fraud,” said Frank. “I go down to the Village Hall for meetings. I get around ok.” She added, “I don’t want to be a liar” and “that would be lying.”

“It’s just stupid,” Frank said of the situation. A stupidity that numerous citizens like 96-year-old Dorothy Cooper and 86-year-old Darwin Spinks face on account of their own state’s voter ID restrictions. In Wisconsin, one study noted that “an estimated 177,399 Wisconsin residents 65 and older do not have a driver’s license or state photo ID — 23 percent of that population. The study estimated that another 98,247 residents ages 35 through 64 lack IDs,” particularly among minorities.

Thus, unfortunately, Frank does not face disenfranchisement alone. “I feel for other people out there” who don’t have the necessary IDs or certificates, Frank said. “I think they just won’t vote.”

As Igor Volsky reported this weekend, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) falsely claimed on Saturday that he would have the power to unilaterally halt the Affordable Care Act by executive order if he is elected president — a claim so radical that even Tea Party Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) was skeptical. Perpetual second-place GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has long claimed the illegal authority to allow states to simply opt out of health reform. And current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich has gone even further — claiming he has the power to simply ignore Supreme Court decisions he disagrees with.

Simply put, this is lawlessness. The Constitution gives the president the power to veto bills immediately after they pass Congress. It does not allow the president to retroactively veto a law years after it is signed — and it certainly does not give him the power to thumb his nose at the rule of law. Sadly, however, this lawless belief that presidents can simply ignore laws they disagree with is not simply something three presidential candidates dreamed up to pander to GOP primary voters — it has also begun to infect the federal judiciary. Consider a dissenting opinion D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh recently wrote in a case upholding the Affordable Care Act:

Under the Constitution, the President may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the President deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional. Similarly, Congress may repeal or decline to pass a statute based on its own constitutional interpretation even if the courts have (or would have) upheld the statute as constitutional. This power does not work in reverse, either for the President or Congress. In other words, the President may not enforce a statute against a private individual when the statute is deemed unconstitutional by the courts. Nor may Congress pass a statute and have it enforced against private individuals simply because Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court. In those situations, the Judiciary has the final word on the meaning of the Constitution.

To Kavanaugh’s credit, he rejects Gingrich’s authoritarian position that the president can simply ignore decisions striking down unconstitutional acts — but his position is strikingly similar to the view advocated by Romney and Perry. Essentially, Kavanaugh argues, the president does have the power to retroactively veto a law simply by calling it “unconstitutional.” Nor is Kavanaugh — a former Supreme Court clerk who is widely viewed as a likely Supreme Court nominee in a GOP administration — alone in this view. He cites an opinion by Justice Scalia, claiming that “the President possesses ‘the power to veto encroaching laws or even to disregard them when they are unconstitutional.’”

The constitutional argument against the Affordable Care Act, in the words of conservative Judge Laurence Silberman, “cannot find real support…in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” It is likely to be upheld by the Supreme Court next year. Nevertheless, the lawless suggestions of Romney, Perry, Scalia, and Kavanaugh present a looming threat to this and all other laws that Republicans disagree with. Health reform could win the day in Court, take full effect in President Obama’s second term — only to have a power-hungry president try to retroactively veto it many years later.

Although GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich previously took the view that “personhood begins at conception,” on Friday, Gingrich told ABC’s Jake Tapper that life begins at the “successful implantation” of a fertilized egg in a woman’s uterus. This position would effectively lead to a ban on all abortions while still maintaining women’s access to most forms of birth control. Unfortunately for Gingrich, however, this position proved insufficiently radical to his anti-choice base, and he flipped back to an even more right-wing stance just one day later:

Newt Gingrich has moved quickly to repair any potential fallout from his remarks last Friday to ABC’s Jake Tapper in which he said that life begins at the “successful implantation” of a fertilized egg, rather than at conception.

That is heresy to the pro-life movement, and had the potential to complicate Gingrich’s rise in the Republican presidential polls, especially in crucial states like Iowa and South Carolina, whose early caucuses and primary are dominated by conservative Christian voters.

“As I have stated many times throughout the course of my public life, I believe that human life begins at conception,” Gingrich said in a statement posted Saturday on his campaign’s website and sent to Joshua Mercer at CatholicVote.org, a conservative political site that had first called attention to — and sharply criticized — Gingrich’s statement.

Gingrich’s current stance closely maps the views of radical “personhood” advocates who don’t just want to ban abortion, but who also intend to ban many common forms of contraception. Because birth control bills and IUDs prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, Gingrich’s Friday position suggested that he wanted to preserve women’s right to use these forms of contraception. His sudden switch, however, appears to abandon this view in favor of the much more radical belief that women should not be allowed to use the pill.

Of course, Gingrich’s view runs headlong into the Constitution — the Supreme Court held several decades ago that laws prohibiting contraception are unconstitutional. Sadly, however, the fact that banning birth control is unconstitutional won’t matter one bit to Gingrich if he decides to ban it. Gingrich recently pledged to openly defy Supreme Court decisions he disagrees with, and he even endorsed a radical proposal to have Congress thumb its nose at the Constitution and simply declare that fertilized eggs enjoy the exact same rights as people.

Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R) spends a lot of time playing politics and apparently no time doing his actual job. The AP reports that, over a three-year period ending in 2007, Arpaio “inadequately investigated” or in some instances didn’t even work more than 400 sex-crimes reported to his office. The cases “include dozens of alleged child molestations.”

In El Mirage, Arizona, where Arpaio provided contract services, he failed to follow through on at least 32 reported child molestations — with some victims as young as 2. Many of the children were undocumented immigrants. According to an El Mirage detective, Arpaio’s people essentially “put their feet on the desk, and that was that”:

In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio’s office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 — in which the sheriff’s office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. [...]

El Mirage Detective Jerry Laird, who reviewed some the investigations, learned from a summary of 50 to 75 cases files he picked up from Arpaio’s office that an overwhelming majority of them hadn’t been worked. That meant there were no follow-up reports, no collection of additional forensic evidence and zero effort made after the initial report of the crime was taken.

“I think that at some point prior to the contract [for police services] running out, they put their feet on the desk, and that was that,” Laird said.

Arpaio refused to answer questions for months and “declined a public records request for an internal affairs report, citing potential disciplinary actions.” He acknowledged his office completed an internal probe into the investigations, but said, “I don’t think it’s right to get into it until we get to the bottom of this and see if there’s disciplinary action against any employees.”

Tomorrow, the Senate will attempt to break a conservative filibuster on Caitlin Halligan, President Obama’s nominee to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that has been vacant for more than six years. By all objective measures, this should be an easy vote. Halligan is a former Supreme Court clerk. She is a top appellate litigator who once served as solicitor general of New York, and she received the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association.

Nor is Halligan a particularly ideological nominee. Remember Miguel Estrada, the ultraconservative attorney whose own nomination to the D.C. Circuit was rejected during the Bush Administration? Senate Republicans routinely pretend that Estrada’s failure to be confirmed is one of the greatest injustices of the last 10 years, yet Estrada himself signed a letter praising Halligan as a model of judicial fairness:

We write in enthusiastic support of the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. We are lawyers who have worked with Caitlin in various capacities. We believe that Caitlin is an outstanding selection for the D.C. Circuit. She is a first-rate lawyer and advocate. She is well respected and highly regarded as a leader of the profession. Caitlin also has an ideal judicial temperament. She brings reason, insight and judgment to all matters. Even those of us who have been on opposite sides of Caitlin in litigation have been greatly impressed with her ability and character. We have no doubt that she would serve with distinction and fairness.

So if Halligan’s nomination receives a fair hearing tomorrow, there’s no reason to doubt that the filibuster against her will be easily broken and even less reason to think that she will not be confirmed by a wide margin. But, of course, in the era of Mitch McConnell, the mere fact that a nominee is both outstandingly qualified and widely praised for fairness is no reason to stand in the way of a good filibuster.

Many Senate Republicans have grasped for straws justifying their decision to oppose Halligan — but even this has proved a difficult task for her opponents. Most of the incredibly thin arguments they raise against Halligan boil down to the claim that, because she once argued for a positions like gun control or diversity in education when she was New York’s solicitor general, she must be a hardcore supporter of affirmative action and a militant opponent of the Second Amendment.

But, of course, this is pure nonsense. A solicitor general’s job is to defend the government’s position on an issue regardless of whether or not they personally agree with it. George W. Bush’s first SG, Ted Olson, defended campaign finance reform while he was in the Justice Department, only to convince the Supreme Court to destroy meaningful limits on corporations buying elections after he left the government. Bush’s second SG, Paul Clement, argued and won a case that conclusively established that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional while he was in the government. Now, of course, he’s been hired by the Republican state officials who are trying to convince the Supreme Court that Clement’s previous victory never happened.

Simply put, there is no argument against confirming Caitlin Halligan — beyond a purely partisan desire to keep excellent Obama-nominated judges off the courts entirely, that is. If the Senate does it’s constitutional duty to fairly evaluate judicial nominees tomorrow, there is no doubt that Halligan will be confirmed.