The South Dakota legislature recently passed a bill which would have allowed most people to carry a concealed firearm without first obtaining a permit. To his credit, the state’s Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed this bill on Friday:

[T]he more he studied House Bill 1248, the more the governor had doubts. And by Friday, he had seen enough to veto the bill.

“When I looked at the bill, it really was a solution in search of a problem,” Daugaard said Friday. “The process for gaining a concealed carry permit is very simple and easily accomplished. I just don’t see this (bill) as something that would improve that by a great deal.” . . .

But the bill’s supporters say Daugaard’s veto was misguided.

“I believe that concealed weapons permit is a restriction on your constitutional right,” said Sen. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, who sponsored HB1248. “Whether or not it’s a legitimate restriction – that can be debated. But it is a restriction. If you don’t have a good, rock-solid restriction to leave that restriction in place, why not remove that restriction?”

Rhoden, of course, is wrong about the Constitution. Although the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects most individuals right to own a firearm, it also concluded that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It then suggested that a long list of gun regulations are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment, including “prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons.”

For over 35 years, government contractors have been prohibited from donating to political campaigns, but the super PAC supporting GOP front runner Mitt Romney is exploiting a grey area in the law to accept money from these companies.

A 1976 amendment to The Federal Election Campaign Act banned federal contractors from making “contributions to influence Federal elections.” The idea behind the law is to prevent companies from using taxpayer dollars to make contributions that could sway politicians to award them contracts. But when the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision paved the way for super PACs, which can accept unlimited corporate contributions, the court didn’t clarify if that includes federal contractors.

Restore Our Future, the deep-pocketed super PAC backing Romney, has taken advantage of this ambiguity to raise $890,000 from at least five contractors that would be barred from giving to Romney’s campaign directly, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Other super PACs, including Republican-allied American Crossroads, and Priorities USA Action, which backs President Obama, have language on their websites warning that federal contractors are not allowed to make donations.

Restore Our Future does not list the prohibition on its website.

One company was apparently unaware of the federal law banning government contractor contributions, and when contacted by the Times, said it would ask Restore Our Future to return its contribution. Charlie Spies, a former Romney aide who is now Restore Our Future’s treasurer, failed to tell the company about the federal contractor ban when the company asked if their donation was legitimate.

The super PAC refused to comment to the Times.

Restore our Future has spent over $35 million so far to support Romney and attack his GOP opponents, far more than the super PACs backing the other candidates.

Last year, conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck during an argument in her chambers. Although a state prosecutor eventually decided not to file criminal charges against Prosser, the state’s judicial conduct body filed a formal complaint against Prosser on Friday:

The commission asked the high court to send the case to a panel of three appeals court judges to consider whether Prosser violated three ethics rules. The panel’s findings would then be sent to the high court, the only body that could make a binding ruling against Prosser.

The confrontation between Prosser and Bradley occurred in front of all but one of the other justices, who will have to decide whether to weigh in on the case or step aside. Stepping aside would effectively end the case.

This marks the fourth time in only a few years that a member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative bloc faced a serious ethics complaint. Justice Annette Ziegler’s fellow justices reprimanded her in 2008 for ruling on cases as a lower court judge regarding a bank where her husband was a director. An ethics case against Justice Michael Gabelman for running a false ad against his predecessor was dropped only after the remaining justices split 3-3 along party lines — and Gabelman now faces a second complaint for refusing to recuse himself from cases argued by a firm that reportedly provided him with tens of thousands of dollars in free legal services.

On Friday, federal Medicaid officials informed Texas that it could no longer receive federal funding for women’s health programs under Medicaid because Texas defied federal Medicaid law by refusing to allow clinics that provide abortion services access to the funds. Texas’ tenther Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) immediately fell back to his go to position whenever he doesn’t like anything the Obama Administration does — claiming that the administration’s action must violate the Tenth Amendment:

We don’t think that — whether it’s Planned Parenthood or one of their affiliates — that they should be getting our dollars to be used in their programs. And we see, whether it’s Planned Parenthood directly or whether it is one of their affiliates that is involved directly in the abortion business, ah, our legislature is pro-life, overwhelmingly voted to not allow Planned Parenthood to be receiving any of these dollars, and yet this administration, in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment of the United States — ah, they’re just playing politics.

Watch it:

Perry, of course, also believes that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, so his views on the Constitution aren’t exactly credible. Nevertheless, Perry’s claim that Texas has a right to openly defy federal law and still expect to receive all the federal funds he wants is particularly unfortunate.

As ThinkProgress previously explained, Medicaid is one of many federal programs where the federal government offers money up to the states in return for their agreement to comply with certain conditions. States may take the money and accept the conditions, or they may refuse the money outright. But they cannot take the money and then refuse to use it as the federal government instructs them to use it for the same reason that someone cannot take a job, refuse to comply with their own job description and then expect to continue to draw a salary.

One condition that Medicaid law places on the states is that the states must allow patients to freely choose their own health provider — even if that provider is affiliated with an organization the state doesn’t like. Texas doesn’t want its Medicaid beneficiaries to have this choice, which is Texas’ right, but Texas does not have the right to openly defy federal law and expect the federal government to pay for it.

Indeed, it should be obvious why Texas cannot have this right. If Texas can defy one part of Medicaid law, it can defy any part of Medicaid law. Under Rick Perry’s reading of the Tenth Amendment, there’s nothing preventing Texas from taking billions in Medicaid funds and then using them to build a luxurious new wing onto the governor’s mansion.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear one of the most politicized lawsuits in decades, a new poll finds that public support for the nine justices has cratered:

[F]ewer voters than ever view the high court positively. . . . The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that 28% give the Supreme Court good or excellent ratings. Nineteen percent (19%) rate the highest court in the land as poor.

Admittedly, this poll was conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a conservative polling firm with a history of inaccuracies. Nevertheless, Rasmussen’s finding is consistent with other polls showing that Americans increasingly believe that, despite the fact that the justices’ very legitimacy stems from their ability to apply the law fairly and independent of partisan concerns, the Court’s decisions are driven in large part by politics.

Certainly, the Supreme Court’s five conservatives have done nothing to disabuse the American people of this unfortunate perception. To the contrary, the Roberts Court has consistently pushed an ideological agenda from the bench — often despite decades of precedent to the contrary:

• Citizens United: Any discussion of the Roberts Court must begin with its most significant case to date — it’s decision to unleash billions of dollars of corporate and other big dollar election spending in Citizens United. Citizens United did not simply overrule a twenty year-old precedent in order to strike down a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate election buying, it was also a huge gift to the Republican Party. Seventeen of the top twenty donors this political cycle are conservatives.
• Forced Arbitration: Citizens United isn’t even the Supreme Court’s biggest gift to powerful corporations. That honor most likely goes to the Court’s forced arbitration decisions, which allow corporations to force their workers and consumers to sign away their right to hold the corporation accountable in a real court and instead force them into a privatized arbitration system that overwhelmingly favors corporate parties.
• Divide and Conquer: Just as significantly, the Supreme Court effectively immunized corporations from consumer class actions by empowering those corporations to force consumers to give away their right to bring such actions before they can buy any product. Class actions, which allow multiple plaintiffs to join together in the same lawsuit, are often the only way to recoup small-dollar loses from a corporate defendant because the value of such small dollar damages is much less than the cost of pursuing the lawsuit outside of a class action. In other words, the Supreme Court gave corporate America a license to cheat its customers a few dollars at a time.
• War on Workers: In its much maligned Ledbetter decision, the justices flouted a unanimous 1986 precedent to make it nearly impossible for women to enforce their right to equal pay for equal work. After this decision was overruled by Congress, the justices showed even deeper contempt for the law by stripping many older workers of their ability to fight age discrimination. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) recently introduced a bill to correct this second era.

So it is easy to understand why the American people are increasingly skeptical of a conservative Supreme Court that appears much more interested in advancing a political agenda than it does in applying the law. Next week, the justices can either show that they are still capable of respecting the Constitution by applying the nearly 200 years of precedent establishing that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, or they can reveal themselves to be nothing more than politicians in robes by accepting an anti-health care argument that, in the words of conservative Judge Laurence Silberman, has no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.”