Wisconsin prohibits employers from discriminating “on the basis of age, race, creed, color, disability, marital status, sex, national origin, ancestry, arrest record, conviction record, military service, use or nonuse of lawful products off the employer’s premises during nonworking hours, or declining to attend a meeting or to participate in any communication about religious matters or political matters,” and it ensures that this law has teeth by allowing victims of discrimination to hold their employers accountable in state court. That’s about to change, however, as the Wisconsin legislature recently voted to strip the state’s workers of their ability to actually enforce this law — leaving anti-worker Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) as the only obstacle to the law’s total repeal:

The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating by giving workers more avenues to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.

In November, the state Senate approved (SB 202) rolling back this provision. On Wednesday, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes. The legislation is now in the hands of Gov. Scott Walker (R). His office did not return a request for comment on whether the governor would sign it. . . .

Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it’s 75 cents, according to [the Wisconsin Alliance for Women's Health], which also estimates that families in the state “lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay.”

Walker, of course, has no power to repeal federal law, so he cannot strip Wisconsin workers of their right to be free from race, gender and other forms of discrimination that are banned by national civil rights laws. Nevertheless, Wisconsin law provides additional protections, such as safeguards for people with criminal convictions, that are not available under federal law.

Moreover, as Amanda Terkel points out, Wisconsin state courts can enable victims of discrimination to receive swifter justice instead of waiting for an increasingly overburdened federal judiciary to act. And this problem is only likely to get worse as Walker’s political allies in the U.S. Senate wage an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s nominees to the federal bench.

It’s tough to imagine something more fundamental to a just society that a guarantee that employers will not discriminate, which is why it is so baffling why Wisconsin lawmakers do not believe that their state should protect against such discrimination.

Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu has been a central character in Arizona’s ongoing fight over immigration ever since he appeared in Senator John McCain’s infamous “danged fence” ad in 2010, and was a vocal supporter of the state’s anti-immigrant SB 1070 bill. According to a recent news report, however, he also presided over draconian mistreatment of his students while he was headmaster and executive director of a boarding school for at-risk youth.

A local ABC affiliate in Arizona conducted an exhaustive investigation into Babeu’s time at The DeSisto School, a private boarding school for troubled teenagers in rural Massachusetts. The report alleges that the school, under Babeu’s leadership, punished students by depriving them of food for extended periods of time, forcing them to sit in solitude for weeks, and conducting regular strip searches of them. At least one student suffered severe trauma from his punishment at The DeSisto School:

In one case, records show a student with bi-polar disorder, ADHD and impulse control disorder was “cornered” for “weeks on end.”

The student’s medication was not monitored properly. He began to “urinate and defecate” on himself. He was also taken to the hospital for pneumonia.

Days later, that same student was returned to DeSisto and sent back to the corner.

The ABC report also alleges that Babeu maintained a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old teenage boy from the school. In Massachusetts, the legal age of consent is 17. That news comes just a week after Babeu was outed by a former lover.

During last night’s Oscar broadcast, a corporate front group ran an attack ad claiming that only a small percentage of the Humane Society of the United States’ donations fund animal shelters. Watch it:

This ad was surprising because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Who, exactly, has such a beef with the Humane Society that they would buy ad during a broadcast where a 30 second segment costs an average of $1.7 million? As it turns out, the food industry.

It is indeed true that much of the Humane Society’s money goes to programs other than animal shelters for stray cats and dogs — much of the Society’s resources go to fighting animal cruelty in the courts and in legislatures. In court, the Humane Society defends laws prohibiting horse slaughter, it fights to protect dolphins from aggressive tuna fishing techniques, and it supports regulations governing the treatment of “downed” cattle. In Congress and state legislatures, the Humane Society backs many anti-cruelty bills, including the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012, which would prevent egg-laying hens from being packed into tiny cages that leaves them with virtually no room to move around.

The anti-Humane Society ad was paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a corporate front group run by right-wing PR flack Rick Berman that is closely tied to the food industry. Berman’s Center accuses the Humane Society of engaging in “a slow but steady push to take away consumer choices by forcing meat, eggs, and dairy foods out of more Americans’ reach,” and he has a long history of similarly hyperbolic claims paid for by corporations looking to misrepresent the safety of their food products.

• Sweet Scam: Berman is behind a campaign called “Sweet Scam” which attempts to debunk “myths” such as “sugary sweeteners are bad for your teeth” or “significantly reducing sugar intake leads to healthy weight loss.”
• Trans-Fats: Another Berman campaign, whose website has since been pulled down, claimed that trans-fats have “may possess health benefits, including fighting some cancers, enhancing immunity, and counteracting artery clogging fats—the primary cause of cardiovascular disease.”
• The Steak Diet: Another Berman website touts how one can shed unwanted pounds by eating beef.
• Soft Drinks For Athletes: Berman also claims that high-sugar soft drinks “actually improved physical performance among elite athletes.”
• Fast Food Marathon: Berman also touts a marathon runner who proclaims “I love running and I love [fast-food]–might as well combine the two.”
• Global Warming Denial: And, of course, no right-wing anti-science campaign would be complete without some kind of attempt to deny global warming. Berman’s effort is an attack on former President-elect Al Gore’s statement that a high meat diet fosters global warming because meat requires forests to be cleared and more energy consumption to produce than other foods.

So the anti-Humane Society ad appears to be the latest in a long line of Berman’s attempts to pad the food industry’s bottom line at the expense of ordinary Americans’ health. Nevertheless, this particular attack is disturbing even by Berman’s standards. It’s one thing to advance arguments — even false arguments — intended to rebut the policy arguments of your opponents. It is another thing altogether, however, to attack a charity by targeting their donors. Berman’s latest effort is nothing less than an intimidation campaign designed to send a clear message to charities that if they work against a wealthy corporation’s interests, they will find themselves on the receiving end of a hit job led by deep pocketed industries capable of throwing away more than a million dollars on a single ad.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s statement yesterday claiming that there should not be absolute separation of church and state does not simply place him at odds with the First Amendment, or with presidents ranging from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, it also places him wildly out of step with the American people:

The number of Americans who believe that the First Amendment requires a clear separation of church and state remains about the same as last year, with 67% agreeing there is a clear separation and 28% disagreeing with the statement.

It’s important to note just how far Santorum is willing to go to break down this wall between government and religion. Santorum has previously suggested that religious groups should be able to unilaterally exempt themselves from laws they do not agree with, a view that simply cannot be squared with the rule of law.

[HT: Nate Silver]