One in ten federal judgeships are currently vacant, a reality that has crippled many federal courts. As ABA president Bill Robinson recently explained, “[d]elay at the federal courts puts people’s lives on hold while they wait for their cases to be resolved. Businesses face uncertainty and costly holdups, preventing them from investing and creating jobs. In sum, judicial vacancies kill jobs.”

Of  course, this problem has an easy solution — confirm the people President Obama nominated to fill these vacant seats. Presently, nineteen nominees have cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee. Twelve of these judges cleared the committee without a single objection, and five more were voted out of the committee with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) as the only objector. Lee, of course, recently promised to oppose every single one of Obama’s nominees, and he also believes that national child labor laws, Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional — so his opinion of a nominee’s qualifications for the bench are not really entitled to any weight.

Yesterday, a wave of Democratic senators spoke out of the Senate floor about the growing vacancy crisis and the need to confirm these pending nominees, so it is clear that some action is coming on these nominees. When it comes — and it should not wait one second longer than it needs to — Senate Republicans will have a choice. They can either serve the American people by confirming a slate of judges that no reasonable person has lodged a single objection to, or they can prove that they care about nothing more than obstructionism by blocking these votes.

South Carolina elections are still free of dead voters.

That’s what the State Election Commission concluded from its investigation into South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson’s declaration that over 900 dead people may have voted in recent elections.

Though the charge itself is laughable, South Carolina was still compelled to devote taxpayer money to investigate whether their elections had indeed been tainted by zombie voters. Unsurprisingly, they uncovered no evidence of voter fraud:

The State Election Commission said Thursday that 95 percent of the 207 allegedly dead people who voted in the 2010 general election either were alive and cast ballots legally or did not vote. [...]

Of its review of the 207 contested votes cast in 2010, the commission found:

• 106 votes were clerical errors by poll workers – mistakes like marking John Doe Sr. instead of John Doe Jr.

• 56 votes were “bad data matching” – meaning the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which raised concerns about zombie voters, was wrong in assuming the voters were dead.

• 32 votes were “voter participation errors,” meaning someone was credited as voting in an election when they did not, most likely because of a stray mark on the voter rolls that was electronically scanned to record a voter’s participation.

• Three ballots were cast absentee by voters who died before Election Day.

In the other five percent of cases, there wasn’t enough information to determine an explanation, though still no evidence for fraud.

When Wilson first leveled the charge, many conservative media outlets, from Human Events to Fox News to Weasel Zippers and others, jumped on the story, using it as justification for South Carolina’s discriminatory voter ID law. Now, four days after the State Election Commission released its initial findings, none of these organizations have ran an update or correction, much less a full story informing their readers that “dead voters” in South Carolina still don’t exist.

That’s the major problem with Scooby-Doo accusations like “dead voters”: the investigation is sexy, but the finale is always far more mundane. As ThinkProgress wrote earlier this month, “when the allegations are inevitably shown to be false, far fewer news outlets follow up.” As a result, many people are still left with the mistaken impression that dead voters tainted South Carolina’s recent elections.

Last year, the Florida legislature passed a bill enacting requirements for groups conducting voter registration drives so onerous that even the League of Women Voters were forced to pull out of the state. Sensible individuals would see this episode as a cautionary tale. South Carolina legislators view it instead as a how-to guide.

This week, the South Carolina House will consider HB 4549, a bill that mimics Florida’s changes to its voter registration laws. Among the changes contained in the bill is a new requirement that voter registration groups must submit registration applications within 48 hours of completion or face a fine of up to $1,000 per application. It has already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee and faces good prospects in the overall House, which Republicans control 76-48.

A similar 48-hour requirement is precisely what forced the League of Women Voters out of the Sunshine State. Now, the same could happen in South Carolina.

HB 4549 “would make it very difficult for the LWV to register voters in South Carolina,” Barbara Zia, co-president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina told ThinkProgress. If it’s passed in its present form, Zia said, “the League could not afford the liability and risk that it would entail to continue registering voters in South Carolina.”

Voter registration drives disproportionately benefit minorities and low-income communities. Last election cycle, black voters were four times as likely as white voters to register via a registration drive.

South Carolina is already hurting in the voter turnout arena. In 2010, the state ranked just 36th in turnout. If the legislature succeeds in passing these new restrictions, that ranking will surely drop further.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the “mother of all corporate immunity cases,” by all accounts it did not go well.

The case involves whether Royal Dutch Shell can be held accountable in American courts for allegedly working with the Nigerian government to torture, execute and detain members of an ethnic group under a law holding the most atrocious human rights violators accountable to international norms. To be clear, there are some legitimate reasons why the Supreme Court should be wary of this case — Shell is a foreign corporation, and its alleged actions occurred on foreign soil, so it is not entirely certain that American courts can reach Shell’s actions. There are worrying signs, however, that the Court’s conservatives are prepared to simply declare all corporations, both foreign and domestic, immune from international legal norms. Most notably, the Court’s supposed swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, asked several questions suggesting that he does not believe corporations can be held accountable to this law:

• “[C]ounsel, for me, the case turns in large part on this: page 17 of the red brief. It says, “‘International law does not recognize corporate responsibility for the alleged offenses here.’”
• “[I]n the area of international criminal law, which is just analogous, I recognize, there is a distinction made between individuals and corporations.”
• Suppose an American corporation commits human trafficking with U.S. citizens in the United States. Under your view, the U.S. corporation could be sued in any country in the world, and it would — and that would have no international consequences. We don’t look to the international consequences at all. That’s — that’s the view of the Government of the United States, as I understand.

If Justice Kennedy is willing to go this far, there’s a good chance that his four even more conservative colleagues are willing to come along with him. Worse, his questions yesterday suggest that the Court is prepared to apply a baffling double standard to wealthy and powerful corporations. Kennedy, of course, was the author of Citizens United, which declared that corporations have the exact same rights as actual human beings for purposes of spending money to influence elections. Yet, when a corporation engages in mass atrocities, they are suddenly entitled to legal immunities far beyond those available to people.

In other words, corporations are people, my friend — except when they torture.

A growing number of ethics questions and investigations are mounting for the Republican House majority, despite earlier leadership pledges of ethical purity.

In 2010, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised that if his party won the majority in the midterm elections, he (as majority leader) and his colleagues would take the toughest possible stand on ethics.

I think as the Republicans emerge as a new governing majority, it is incumbent upon us to institute a zero-tolerance policy. We understand there were reasons for our being fired in ’06 and ’08. Some of that had to do with ethics violations. I mean we had several members under public investigations during the time of the ’06 elections. I think we’ve learned that that’s not a good way to gain the confidence of the people and that we ought to be instituting a zero-tolerance policy here.

“We’ve learned our lesson,” Cantor told the National Review Online, “We cannot tolerate any ethics violations or behavior, in terms of compromising the ethics that the people expect us to have as their representatives.” Watch the video:

So, how are they doing?

• Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), finance vice chair for the National Republican Congressional Committee (the House GOP’s campaign arm), is reportedly under federal grand jury investigation for alleged reimbursement of campaign donors by his companies, improper tax deductions, inaccurate Congressional disclosure reports.
• Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), (R-AL) continues to chair financial services despite an ongoing investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for alleged insider trading.
• Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), continues to chair the House Armed Services, despite reports that Congressional investigators allege he got a special cut-rate on his Countrywide home loan.
• Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), continues to chair the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Policy and Enforcement Subcommittee, despite reports that Congressional investigators allege he got a special cut-rate on his Countrywide home loan.
• Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), continues to chair the House Rules Committee’s Rules Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, despite reports that Congressional investigators allege he got a special cut-rate on his Countrywide home loan.
• Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) continues to serve, despite ongoing Federal Election Commission and House Ethics Committee investigations into reports that he engaged in illegal campaign fundraising.
• Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) continues to serve despite reported IRS and FBI investigations into alleged tax evasion and failure to disclose $132,000 in “loans” from a company co-owned by his mother.
• Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) continues to serve despite a reported $117,000 in unpaid child support payments.
• According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Reps. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Gary Miller (R-CA), and Tim Murphy (R-PA) have also been under investigation over the past two years for ethical issues, yet all three continue to serve.

Even Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who chairs the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was hit with an ethics complaint last September. The Office of Congressional Ethics has not yet addressed allegations by American Family Voices that Issa used his “public position to promote his private financial interest” and Issa’s office has denied wrongdoing.

Not only has the House leadership stood by their accused colleagues, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will headline a fundraiser for Buchanan’s reelection campaign this Saturday. But while they may not have learned the lesson, with 68 percent of the country disapproving of the job the House GOP is doing, according to a recent PPP poll, Cantor appears correct that the House Republicans’ ethical laxity is “not a good way to gain the confidence of the people.”