One year ago Sunday, Jared Lee Loughner arrived at a Tucson, Arizona gathering with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) intending to assassinate the congresswoman. Miraculously, Giffords survived the bullet to her head, but six of her constituents — including a sitting federal judge and a nine year-old child — were not so lucky. In addition to the six people slain by Loughner’s gun, more than a dozen were injured.

So it is more than a little puzzling why the Crossroads of the West gun show picked the anniversary of this horrific mass killing to hold one of their shows in the very same town where the Tucson massacre occurred.

To their credit, this gun show at least admits that they are selling an inherently dangerous product. At the same time that gun lobbyists are trying to impose the country’s laxest concealed carry laws on the rest of America, Crossroads of the West is warning its attendees not to bring loaded concealed weapons because they endanger the gun show’s attendees:

Q: Can I carry a loaded gun in the gun show? I have a Concealed Carry Permit.
A: We respectfully request that you do not bring any loaded firearm into the gun show. Safety is our Number One Priority, and a safe environment in the show can only be maintained if there are no loaded guns in the show.

Admittedly, loaded guns are especially dangerous in a room full of firearm dealers where potential customers will be testing the triggers on their unloaded merchandise, so these kinds of bans are reasonably common at gun shows. Yet, while Crossroads of the West quite sensibly bans loaded firearms from a room full of dry firing guns, they have a long history of ignoring basic rules of firearm safety. Just weeks after Loughner went on his rampage in Tucson, Crossroads of the West dealers were caught selling firearms to undercover police officers who told the dealers that they “probably couldn’t pass a background check.”

The Affordable Care Act has done very well in court so far; three of the four courts of appeals to consider it have upheld the law. Moreover, there is every reason why it should be doing well. As conservative Judge Laurence Siliberman recently explained, the legal case against health reform “cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.”

Nevertheless, a handful of judges have ignored the clear and unambiguous command of the Constitution and struck the law down. This minority view among judges is largely rooted in a misguided concern that, should the Affordable Care Act be upheld, it would somehow mean that there would be nothing else left that Congress cannot do. If Congress can require you to carry health insurance, the argument goes, why can’t they force you to eat broccoli?

This is not a very good argument. As ThinkProgress has explained, Congress cannot do lots of things. Broadly speaking, the Constitution gives the federal government sweeping authority to regulate economic matters — like the national health care market — but Congress has far less authority over non-economic matters. For this reason, federal murder laws, assault laws, laws regulating sexual morality or many laws regulating the family are all unconstitutional, but the Affordable Care Act fits clearly within Congress’ constitutional authority.

Nevertheless, to the extent that judges have fallen for the “if Congress can do this, they can do anything” argument, part of that is because the Justice Department has at times been reluctant to state clearly and explicitly what the limits of federal power are. There’s a good reason for this — if DOJ concedes that a hypothetical law is unconstitutional today, Congress could pass that law tomorrow, and then DOJ will be stuck defending a law they’ve already conceded to be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, a few judges have misread DOJ’s reluctance as a concession that there are not meaningful limits on Congress’ power if the ACA is upheld.

Today, however, DOJ filed its brief defending the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage requirement, and with one sentence the Justice Department takes the plaintiff’s silliest and most successful argument off the table:

[T]he minimum coverage provision is justified on the basis of a constitutional analysis that poses no risk of “convert[ing] congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States.” Respondents “have not argued that health care and health insurance are uniquely state concerns, and decades of established federal legislation in these areas suggest the contrary.” Indeed, respondents do not contest that Congress has the authority to enact the Act’s comprehensive regulatory scheme; nor do they question the undeniably pervasive federal role in providing and regulating the methods of health care financing. They have also conceded that Congress could constitutionally achieve the end that the minimum coverage provision seeks to achieve through the (more coercive) means of prohibiting individuals without insurance from obtaining health care. Given those concessions, respondents cannot plausibly contend that the minimum coverage provision “upsets the federal balance to a degree that renders it an unconstitutional assertion of the commerce power,” or that it trenches upon areas such as family law, general criminal law, or education, “where States historically have been sovereign.”

This statement, that federal efforts to directly regulate the family, general crimes or education stand on much weaker constitutional footing than the ACA, is a very big deal. It shows that DOJ recognizes the only thing that even vaguely resembles a hole in their previous legal arguments, and that they have now sewn that hole up. When one of the justices asks them “if Congress can do this, what can it not do?” they will now have a clear and well-articulated answer.

With just one sentence in its brief, DOJ took away the last few straws the ACA’s opponents were desperately grasping at.

Both former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) support effectively rigging the federal judiciary to ensure that it hands down results they approve of. Yesterday, Santorum proposed banishing the Ninth Circuit’s judges — who he views as too liberal — to Guam. Not to be outdone, Gingrich wants to abolish the Ninth Circuit, thumb his nose at court decisions he disagrees with and wage a campaign of intimidation against judges who he disagrees with. So it’s a bit jarring to hear both men accuse President Obama of failing to respect the rule of law at recent campaign stops because of the president’s recent recess appointments:

• Santorum: “I would lay the lumber and say, you either withdraw these appointments — you are not above the law Mr. President. The law says you cannot do this. I hope the Senate has the backbone to shut the Senate down and say you will repeal these nominees or we are doing nothing. If the rule of law means nothing in this country, then why are we meeting?”
• Gingrich: “I hope the Congress will commit itself to defund the National Labor Relations Board until the president agrees to operate in a lawful way, and to go through the process of senatorial confirmation, and to put the NLRB back into a lawful position. [...] As of today, this president has proved a total willingness to violate the law and to impose an imperial presidency.”

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress previously explained, Obama’s recent recess appointments are firmly rooted in the Constitution. The president can make recess appointments when, as Alexander Hamilton explained, the Senate is not in “session for the appointment of officers.” Right now, the Senate is not around to confirm nominees and it hasn’t been so since December 23.

Moreover, as the Bush Justice Department’s top constitutional lawyer explained in 2010, the Senate cannot, as its Republican members now claim, prevent recess appointments by having a single senator pretend to do work for a few seconds every three days. During such sham sessions, “no business can be conducted, and the Senate is not capable of acting on the president’s nominations. That means the Senate remains in ‘recess’ for purposes of the recess appointment power, despite the empty formalities of the individual senators who wield the gavel in pro forma sessions.”

Simply put, the rule of law has nothing to fear from Barack Obama, but it is has a whole lot more to fear from presidential candidates who think they have the power to rig the federal courts.

The Obama administration is expected to announce a change today to immigration rules to reduce the amount of time undocumented spouses and children spend separated from their families. Currently, undocumented immigrants have to leave the country before they can ask the government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S., leading to lengthy separations for families.

The Associated Press reports that, under the new rule, children and spouses of citizens can ask the government to decide on a waiver request before they return to their home countries to apply for a visa. The government would still require undocumented immigrants to leave the country to finish the visa process to come back to the U.S., but “[t]his would streamline the process (and) reduce the time of separation between family members,” a senior administration official told the AP.

Immigrants without criminal records who have only violated immigration laws can receive a waiver if there is proof that their absence would cause “extreme hardship” for their citizen spouse or parent. But it could take up to three months to hear back about a waiver request, and if their waivers are denied, then undocumented immigrants who had left the country to apply for the waiver could be indefinitely stranded away from their families. The New York Times reports that this change could give families peace of mind before an undocumented immigrant leaves the U.S.:

Having the waiver in hand will allow them to depart knowing that they will almost certainly be able to return, officials said. The agency [Citizenship and Immigration Services] is also seeking to sharply streamline the process to cut down the wait times for visas to a few weeks at most. [...]

White House officials are resigned to the fact that there will most likely be no progress before the November elections on immigration legislation that President Obama supports that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. They have been looking for ways to help immigrant communities without going through the partisan dissension in Congress.

“This will open up a huge door to bring a large number of people into the light,” said Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta who is a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There are hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States illegally who are married to U.S. citizens who have not taken advantage of the waiver that is currently available. This changes their lives.”

In 2011, the government received 23,000 applications for hardship waivers, and about 70 percent were approved, so thousands of families will be aided by this small change.

President Obama has called for an overhaul of the immigration system, but with little progress in Congress on the issue, he has made greater use of executive power to make changes on immigration. In August, the administration announced a plan to conduct case-by-case reviews of roughly 300,000 active deportation cases to ensure that it was focusing its resources on high-priority cases.

But congressional Republicans still complain about Obama’s “backdoor amnesty” for undocumented immigrants even as the changes attempt to help families caught in the immigration system.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Department refused to “preclear” South Carolina’s new voter ID law, ruling that it would discriminate against minorities and therefore violated the Voting Rights Act.

Texas, another state covered under the Voting Rights Act, could soon meet the same fate if it is unable to provide sufficient evidence that its law does not also discriminate against minorities. The Justice Department is currently reviewing Texas’ move and has requested the state for more information about the law’s effect on minorities. Once that information is received, the DOJ will rule within 60 days.

ThinkProgress spoke with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R), a key proponent of the new law, about the upcoming ruling earlier this week. Dewhurst, who is running for his state’s open Senate seat this year, warned that if the Justice Department rules that Texas’ voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act, such a move would be “unconstitutional.”

KEYES: Do you worry that that same fate (regarding the Justice Department ruling against South Carolina’s voter ID law) is going to happen to Texas as well?

DEWHURST: In Texas we passed what I believe to be a very good and constitutional bill that requires some photo identification to vote. That is a simple procedure for protecting the integrity of our voting system. It’s a principle in America: one person, one vote. For the Justice Department to interfere with that process would be wrong and I believe unconstitutional.

KEYES: You think it’d be unconstitutional if they ruled against the voter ID law in Texas?

DEWHURST: If the Justice Department were to come down on our Texas law, they would be wrong under the Constitution because I believe we’ve had our law looked at over and over again and I feel comfortable it is constitutional.

Listen to it:

Dewhurst’s view that enforcing the Voting Rights Act would be unconstitutional is unfortunately becoming more commonplace among modern conservative cognoscenti. Former senator and current Mitt Romney advisor Norm Coleman told ThinkProgress last year that we should “absolutely” consider gutting the Voting Rights Act, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli argued that his state should be exempted because it has “outgrown” racism. Earlier this year, Arizona filed a lawsuit claiming that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, and there is a very real risk that the Supreme Court’s conservatives will agree with them. If this view should prevail, a pillar of the civil rights movement that has successfully protected the rights of minorities for nearly 50 years could become a relic of history.

In August 2010, Quelino Ojeda Jimenez, an undocumented construction worker in Chicago, fell 20 feet off a building while on the job and was paralyzed from the neck down. Unable to pay his own medical expenses, he was deported back to Mexico on December 22, 2010.

But he never made it home. Instead, he was left to languish at a small Mexican hospital that was unequipped to handle his needs. UPI reports that Ojeda died on New Year’s Day:

A young man returned to Mexico by a Chicago-area hospital after a construction injury that paralyzed him from the neck down has died, officials say.

Advocates say Quelino Ojeda Jimenez, 21, spent months in a small hospital in Mexico that did not have the facilities to care for a quadriplegic, the Chicago Tribune reported. [...]

“He never even made it to his home,” said Jesus Vargas, a friend in Chicago. “He was always in the hospital stuck to the machine that helped him breathe.”

Ojeda, who was working illegally in the United States, was treated at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., after a 20-foot fall paralyzed him. The hospital transferred him to Mexico three days before Christmas in 2010.

Ojeda’s deportation followed a heated battle between the hospital and immigration advocates. He was transferred to a Mexican hospital in an air ambulance despite protests from Ojeda and his family that the move would jeopardize his health.

In light of his death, the Chicago hospital that treated him has said it will reexamine its policies for treating international patients.

Ojeda told the Chicago Tribune last February that he feared returning to Mexico because he “need[ed] a lot of things they don’t have.” Tragically, his fears turned out to be all too real.