Gary Mitchell of New Castle, Pennsylvania is a rare example of a public servant. In 2002, Mitchell was found guilty of two drug-related felonies. But after serving a reduced sentence and turning his life around, Mitchell decided to run for city council. After being open with New Castle voters about his record, Mitchell and two others were elected to serve. But because the Pennsylvania Constitution bars any person convicted of an “infamous crime” from holding office, the state wants to prevent Mitchell from taking his seat:

The state Constitution says, “No person hereafter convicted of [an] infamous crime, shall be eligible or capable of holding any office of trust or profit in this Commonwealth.”

“I can run, I can win, and citizens can elect me, but the state will not allow me to take oath. Who runs the law? I thought the Constitution was for the people and by the people, and the people have spoken,” Mitchell said.

The state Supreme Court has ruled that any felony is an “infamous crime.”

Mitchell appealed to Lawrence County Judge John W. Hodge last Friday, noting that he had applied for clemency with the state Board of Pardons. He asked the judge to dismiss or stay the state’s attempt at his removal until the board rules on his request. Hodge rejected his request within less than an hour of hearing his argument.

Voters who elected Mitchell are incensed by the decision. “They took his money and then when he wins, which I don’t think they expected him to, they won’t let him serve. That’s not right,” said the Rev. Linda Martinez. Indeed, such an denial of office flies in the face of rehabilitation and pushes an overly targeted group of people further away from participation in the democratic process. After all, 13 percent of adult African-American men like Mitchell are currently prevented from voting — let alone from holding office — because of a previous conviction.

Mitchell promised to pursue his right to serve: “It doesn’t make me bitter, but it does rile me up for a fight.”

Earlier this month, former Speaker Newt Gingrich made the offensive claim that his policies should appeal to African-Americans because he will “talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps” — as if receiving federal food assistance was a universal component of the black experience in the United States. When confronted with these remarks at last night’s GOP debate, however, Gingrich was utterly dismissive of the mere suggestion that they might be insulting:

JUAN WILLIAMS: Speaker Gingrich, you recently said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic, and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?

GINGRICH: No, I don’t see that.

Watch it:

It’s deeply disturbing that a man who claims he should be president of the United States cannot understand why his remarks are offensive. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans are not on food stamps. Indeed, the majority of people who receive food stamps are white. Most recipients are also either children or seniors who are of retirement age. In 2010, working women represented only 28 percent of recipients, and working-age men represented only 17 percent.

Gingrich’s suggestion that food stamps are somehow a preeminent black issue flies in the face of reality. Worse, it lumps all African-Americans together as federal aid recipients when the overwhelming majority of working-age black men and women are self-supporting taxpayers. Thousands of them are professionals such as doctors or lawyers. One of them is the President of the United States.

Sadly, Gingrich’s snide answer earned an enthusiastic response from the largely white, Republican audience at the debate. The only thing more disturbing than the fact that Gingrich cannot understand why his comments are so deeply offensive is the fact that his ignorance is shared by others.

Earlier this month, two conservative business groups filed a motion in federal court challenging President Obama’s recent recess appointments on the grounds that the Senate can block such appointments by having a single senator hold a sham session every few days. Yesterday, however, this legal argument received a skeptical response from an unexpected audience: Fox News.

In a segment discussing the case (which features a constitutional attorney very familiar to the readers of this blog), Fox host Shep Smith described the lawsuit as a “real long shot.” Fox legal analyst Stacy Schneider said that she thinks “the president is going to win in this case,” and another Fox legal analyst, Randy Zelin, launched into an rant about the Senate Republicans’ tactic of pretending the Senate is not in recess because it occasionally holds a sham session:

If you watched coverage of the [Senate] floor, there was nobody there! It was ridiculous. So I think this is the president’s way of saying “you ain’t going to play nice in my sandbox? I ain’t going to play nice in yours.” And it’s this kind of thing — because at the end of the day, how does it help us, the citizens? It doesn’t.

Watch it:

Fox’s unexpected defense of President Obama is just another sign of the weakness of the case against Obama’s actions. As two of the Bush Administration’s top constitutional attorneys explained in a 2010 op-ed, the Senate is in recess when it is “not capable of acting on the president’s nominations.” Moreover, when the president announced his recess appointments, the Senate was adjourned under an order stating that there will be “no business conducted” for weeks. So the Senate was in no shape to confirm a nominee until it returned to Washington, and the president acted entirely within his legal rights in making recess appointments.

Hopefully, the fact that the case against these recess appointments is so weak that even Fox is skeptical of it will deter any of the more ideologically rigid members of the federal bench from ignoring the law and blocking these appointments.

In an article about the reasons Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign fizzled, the Des Moines Register points to “sexism among conservatives,” singling out an offensive email written by a staffer to Rick Santorum:

Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. [...]

“The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said.

Johnson, who remains on Santorum’s staff, complained that the email was “blown out of proportion” and should not be held against him because it was sent from a personal email account.

But he refused to back away from the substance of the email, saying “I was sharing my personal reflections with a friend…[T]hey were reflections on over 25 years of formal, theological study [based in] classical Christian doctrine.”

After Bachmann left the race, several of her advisers pointed to sexism as a contributing factor. “We did believe that sexism — I use the stronger word misogyny — was at play,” said Peter Waldron, her faith outreach coordinator. Waldron said that several influential pastors called for her to drop out of the race, reasoning “that a female could not be a civil magistrate.” Johnson himself is a pastor at a central Iowa church.