Andrew Cohen chronicles the many uncertainties in Alabama’s case against Thomas Arthur, who was convicted of murder three decades ago and is scheduled to be executed next month. They include a key witness who recanted and then unrecanted her testimony, another man who admitted to committing the murder, and a wig containing DNA evidence that likely belongs to the real killer.

Alabama, however, refuses to allow this evidence to be tested even though it would cost the state nothing to do so:

Late last month, I profiled the wobbly capital conviction against Troy Noling in Ohio and there are remarkable similarities between it and the Arthur case. Both involve white defendants. Both include contentions of innocence and allegations of bad lawyering at trial. Both include a lack of physical evidence linking the defendants to the crime. Both include crucial witness testimony that borders the farcical. And both include state officials reluctant to permit sophisticated DNA testing that might definitively answer questions about whether the defendants committed the murders they will die for.

Arthur’s attorneys are even willing to pay for that testing, the few thousand bucks it would be, and the testing could be completed by the execution date. It is here where prosecutors and judges lose me when they prioritize “finality” in capital punishment cases at the expense of “accuracy.” It would cost Alabama nothing to let Arthur’s lawyers do the testing. And it might solve a case that already has cost the state millions of dollars. Instead, Alabama wants to finally solve its Arthur problem by executing him. No matter how the new DNA test could come out, the state is more interested in defending its dubious conviction.

Alabama can thank the five conservatives on the Supreme Court for its ability to deny Arthur an opportunity to prove his innocence. In 2009, a 5-4 Supreme Court denied a similar DNA test to a potentially innocent man in Alaska.

In January, marijuana legalization activists in Colorado turned in twice as many signatures as they needed to place a legalization initiative on the state’s 2012 ballot. Yesterday, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler officially announced that the activists had submitted enough signatures, meaning the initiative will appear on the ballot this November.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project, if passed, the Colorado initiative would legalize limited marijuana use and possession for adults over age 21, while regulating and taxing it like alcohol:

If passed, the initiative would allow adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of marijuana. It would also establish a system of regulations to control and tax marijuana sales, much like the system that exists for alcohol, and direct the state legislature to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing, and sales of industrial hemp.

“Supporters of rational marijuana policies everywhere should congratulate the residents of Colorado for placing this initiative on the ballot,” Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a press release. Indeed, a slim majority of Americans now support legalizing marijuana, according to recent Gallup polling, while more than three-quarters support legalization for medicinal purposes. Sixteen states have legalized medical marijuana, but the federal government still maintains strict prohibition laws.

And while progressive Colorado Rep. Jared Polis (D) has led the fight to end marijuana prohibition at the federal level, the cause has also been taken up by libertarians who have used legalization as a wedge issue to attack the Constitution’s guarantee that national leaders can actually govern. Activists in California, for instance, sought to declare Justice Department enforcement of federal marijuana laws unconstitutional last year. While DOJ’s actions were unfortunate, the lawsuit itself was a seemingly frivolous way to attack the federal government.

Meanwhile, libertarian activists and politicians who view much of the 20th century’s social policy as unconstitutional have used marijuana liberalization as an issue to jump-start their anti-government crusades. That should concern progressives, who cannot afford to cede an increasingly popular issue that holds important implications for criminal justice reform and public safety to a movement that wants to use it as a way to end the social safety net and gut worker safety laws.

Since HB 56, Alabama’s extreme immigration law, went into effect last fall, children stayed home from school out of fear that their parents would be deported, and U.S.-born children have been denied food stamps because of their parents’ immigration status. Public utility companies denied service to anyone who did not provide ID to prove they were legally in the U.S. Farmers watched their crops rot in the fields after their workers left Alabama. In all, one study shows that the damage from HB 56 could end up costing Alabama about 100,000 jobs and billions in GDP losses.

After officials began enforcing HB 56, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) set up a hotline for Alabama residents to report how the law affected them. Thousands of calls poured in, and the SPLC has collected some of the most egregious stories: undocumented immigrants denied pay, U.S. citizens harassed because they look like immigrants, a family surviving without water in their home. “The result is a crisis that harkens back to the bleakest days of Alabama’s racial history,” according to the report, which highlights 10 of these stories:

[The stories] illustrate the devastating impact HB 56 has had on Alabama Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. The stories also illustrate that HB 56 has unleashed a kind of vigilantism, leading some Alabamians to believe they can cheat, harass and intimidate Latinos with impunity. These consequences were easily foreseeable.

The law was forged within a legislative debate rife with stereotypes, misinformation, incendiary rhetoric and bigotry. The Senate sponsor told colleagues they needed to “empty the clip” to deal with immigrants. The House sponsor, Rep. Micky Hammon, cited the increase in Alabama’s Latino population to illustrate the growth of the state’s undocumented population. Hammon’s conflation of “Hispanic” with “illegal immigrant” during the legislative debate was so egregious that a federal judge cited it in a recent opinion.

When legislators supporting HB 56 can’t distinguish between ethnicity and immigration status, it should be no surprise the law brings the chaos and confusion described in the following pages. As the Latinos whose stories are told here can attest, HB 56 has been a dangerous, failed experiment—a humanitarian disaster.

“There is no fixing this law,” said SPLC legal director Mary Bauer. “It does not need to be re-written or tweaked at the margins, as some Alabama legislators have suggested. It should be repealed.” State Sen. Billy Beasley (D) described the repeal effort as an “uphill battle.” Three other senators are supporting Beasley’s proposed legislation that would repeal the bill entirely, and a Republican state senator has introduced a bill that would repeal some of the worst parts of the law.

Alabama lawmakers have had a few months to see the irrevocable damage HB 56 has already done to their state. Gov. Robert Bentley (R) should have called a special session sooner for the legislators to do something about this harmful immigration law, but the SPLC’s new report simply highlights how necessary it is that legislators roll back at least the worst parts of HB 56, if not the entire law — and soon.

Conservative conspiracy theories have had a fun ride since President Obama took office.

First, Barack Obama was a Muslim. Then, he was born in Kenya instead of the United States and only served as president via a forged birth certificate. Then, his decisions as president can only be understood through the frame of “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior”.

Now, according to the latest tale, courtesy of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), President Obama wants to “convert [our Constitution] to some South African Constitution.”

Issa made the curious accusation Friday at the California Republican Party’s Spring Convention in Burlingame:

ISSA: We’re going to establish a very different policy. One, that we have a president who will respect the Constitution, not try to convert it to some [inaudible] South African Constitution. [Applause]

Listen to it:

Issa likely conflated the erroneous accusation that President Obama wants “some South African Constitution” with and equally erroneous accusation that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prefers the South African Constitution that has recently infected right-wing commentary.

Earlier this month, Ginsburg told an audience in Egypt that other countries’ constitutions may be better models for their burgeoning democracy than the United States Constitution because more recently drafted constitutions are often more precise in laying out individual rights. If Issa had bothered to the entire interview, however, he would have heard her stirring praise for the First Amendment, her references to the “genius” of our Constitution, and her statement about how powerful it is that our Constitution places power in “We the People.” Moreover, if Issa paid attention to the views of Ginsburg’s conservative colleagues, he would know that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia made a similar point when he testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the Soviet Union’s bill of rights “was much better than ours.”

Yet, even if Ginsburg had claimed that South Africa’s legal traditions are inherently superior to ours, her comments are hardly indicative of President Obama’s views because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is actually an entirely different person than Barack Obama. To help Issa understand this difficult concept, ThinkProgress has prepared the following visual aide:

Hat-tip: @lhfang