Police in Sanford, Florida still maintain that George Zimmerman’s actions when he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin were legally justified because of the state’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. The self-defense law passed in 2005 over objections that it could lead to “racially motivated killings,” and now, lawmakers have asked Gov. Rick Scott (R) to appoint a special task force to look into the Martin case.

The governor’s office said he is reviewing the request. In the meantime, Senate President Mike Haridopolos said there would be no special committee on the use of the “Stand Your Ground” law, according to the Palm Beach Post:

“The Senate President feels that Governor Scott is currently taking all of the appropriate steps to address the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin. Additionally, the Senate President is confident that the circumstances surrounding this shooting will be closely examined by lawmakers, and if the Senate concludes that laws need to be revised they will be addressed in the future,” Haridopolos’s spokeswoman Lyndsey Cruley said in an e-mail.

Haridopolos’ reaction is another example of Republicans who bow to the National Rifle Association, which pushed for the Florida self-defense law in the first place. And while debate continues in Florida about it, the NRA continues to lobby other state legislatures to enact the same controversial law. Just days after Martin’s tragic death, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action urged Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) to sign a bill that would bring a Florida-style “Stand Your Ground” law to Minnesota. (Dayton vetoed the legislation.)

Despite the NRA’s backing, the statistics still show that “justifiable homicides” have shot up in Florida since the self-defense law passed. And even the bill’s author thinks that, in this case, Zimmerman should be arrested for his role in Martin’s death. Nationally, Martin is one of more than 400 people who have been killed by people who have permits to carry a concealed gun.

When then-State Sen. Durell Peaden (R-FL) introduced Senate Bill 436 — the “Stand Your Ground” law that Sanford police have used to excuse the shooting and killing Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman — the National Rifle Association had already been working behind-the-scenes to make it happen.

On January 25, 2005, the group’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) posted an enthusiastic news item on its website: “Florida State Sen. Durell Peaden wants to make sure people have a right to use deadly force to shoot home intruders without fear of prosecution.”

Days later, they issued an action alert to their Florida members:

The Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hold a hearing on SB-436 by Senator Peaden and others on Wednesday, February 9, 2005 from 2:00PM – 4:00PM.

YOU MUST SEND EMAIL NOW IF YOU WANT YOUR PERSONAL PROTECTION RIGHTS RESTORED !!!!

Please immediately send email to members of the Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee and URGE THEM TO SUPPORT SB-436 by Sen. Peaden.

IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR EMAIL PUT:

SUPPORT SB-436 – Use of Force/Restoring the Castle Doctrine

The alert claimed that “SB-436 corrects a serious problem for citizens who chose to protect themselves in the face of attack by violent criminals. ” There has been no evidence to suggest that was what happened in the Martin case.

The NRA heavily lobbied the Florida legislature for the bill. Their chief Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, called the measure the group’s top priority for the year.

And, beyond the lobbying and grassroots efforts, the NRA had already made a financial investment. They had given $500 contributions — the state’s legal limit — to 23 legislators at least once in the preceding five years (22 Republicans and one Democrat). They had backed Gov. Jeb Bush (R)’s re-election in 2002. And they had given $165,000 in contributions to the Florida Republican Party since 2000 — the majority party in both the state house and senate.

The legislature passed the bill with the support of all 22 of the the 23 recipients of NRA funds who voted. Gov. Bush signed the bill with NRA lobbyist Hammer by his side. The NRA claimed victory.

And they used it as a model for a national campaign to get a similar law in every state — a campaign that continues even in the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin. The American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) formed a task force to draft model legislation based off the Florida bill. Working with the NRA, ALEC then pushed the legislation in states around the country.

SANFORD, FL — Two Sanford city commissioners who, amidst widespread outrage at the police investigation of Trayvon Martin’s death, sided with police chief Bill Lee at a meeting last night, will soon face a recall, ThinkProgress has learned exclusively.

In an interview at the Goldsboro History Museum, which has become a hub for local grassroots activists, community leader Frances Oliver revealed the plans for the recall. Oliver said that Patty Mahany and Randy Jones, who voted in support of police chief Bill Lee Wednesday night, would be targeted for recall by a number of local community groups, including the NAACP.

Oliver also alleged that, while Mahany and Jones had met with Zimmerman’s family and neighborhood watch group, they had not called Martin’s family to express their condolences. She also accused them of “badmouthing” Trayvon Martin in the Sanford community. Watch it:

Florida recall procedures stipulate that city commissioners in Seminole county can be removed for malfeasance, neglect of duty, and incompetence, among other factors. While the process is elaborate and complicated, it begins with a recall petition getting approved for circulation by filing the requisite forms with 10 percent of the total required number of signatures needed. (The total required number of signatures is dependent upon a percentage of the number of registered voters in the area.)

The initial paperwork was delivered to Oliver as the interview concluded.

Oliver described the recall petition as the first component of a larger plan of action. If the police chief was not fired by March 26, the same coalition is planning to call for the ouster of the Sanford City Manager, Norton N. Bonaparte. (Lee announced he was “temporarily” stepping down this afternoon.) Absent Lee’s permanent removal, the groups are also planning a “boycott” of the Sanford police whereby residents would insist that the Seminole County police, not the Sanford PD, respond to any emergency situation.

Moments ago, embattled Sanford, Florida police chief Bill Lee announced he would be stepping down temporarily, saying his leadership has become a “distraction” for the investigation into Trayvon Martin’s killing. Lee said he stood by the Sanford police department’s actions, but then added, “It is apparent that my involvement in this matter is overshadowing the process. Therefore, I have come to the decision that I must temporarily remove myself.” Watch it:

Earlier in the week, calls for firing Lee were met with standing ovations at an NAACP meeting. Also, the Sanford city commission voted 3-2 to express no confidence in Lee. The resignation comes hours before a massive rally is scheduled to take place in support of Martin and his family.

Critics have faulted the police chief for botching aspects of the investigation from the start, including failing to immediately launch an investigation, failing to administer drug/alcohol tests to the shooter George Zimmerman, and failing to take Zimmerman into custody.

Supporters of Voter ID laws routinely justify them by claiming they are necessary to combat an epidemic of people showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone else. And yet, when asked to prove that such an epidemic exists, their case immediately falls apart. When the Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to strike down these unconstitutional assaults on the franchise four years ago, it was only able to cite one actual example of voter fraud in the last 140 years.

The laws’ opponents, however, do not have this problem. Here are just nine examples of the kinds of people being denied voting rights by Voter ID laws:

• Ricky Tyrone Lewis is a 58 year-old Marine Corps veteran. Despite the fact that he was able to offer Wisconsin voting officials proof of his honorable discharge from the Marines, Milwaukee County has been unable to find the record of his birth that he needs in order to obtain a voter ID card.
• Ruthelle Frank is an 84 year-old former elected official who voted in every election for the last 63 years, yet she will be unable to obtain a voter ID unless she pays a fee to obtain a birth certificate from the Wisconsin government — despite the fact that the Constitution explicitly forbids any voter from being charged a fee in order to vote. Worse, because the attending physician at her birth misspelled her name on her original birth certificate, she may need to pay hundreds of dollars in court fees to petition the state judiciary to correct her certificate before she can obtain a voter ID.
• Paul Carroll is an 86-year-old World War II veteran who has lived in the same Ohio town for four decades. Yet, when he attempted to vote in the recent Ohio primary, he was told his photo ID from the Department of Veterans Affairs was not good enough because it did not include his address.
• Dorothy Cooper is a 96-year-old African-American woman who says she has voted in every election but one since she became eligible to vote. Yet, when she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was turned away because she did not have a copy of her marriage license. In a subsequent interview, Cooper said that she didn’t even have problems voting in Tennessee “during Jim Crow days” — only now under Voter ID.
• Thelma Mitchell is a 93-year-old woman who cleaned the Tennessee Capitol for 30 years. She never received a birth certificate, however, because she was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918 and there was no record of her birth. When she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was turned away for lack of a birth certificate by a clerk who suggested she could be an illegal immigrant.
• Virginia Lasater is a 91-year-old woman who has been active in political campaigns for 70 years. Because of her advanced age, however, she is no longer able to stand for extended periods of time. When she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was confronted with lines that stretched for several hours and no place to sit while she waited — forcing her to abandon her effort to obtain an ID due to her physical constraints.
• Darwin Spinks is an 86 year-old World War II veteran. He was told to pay a fee before he could obtain a voter ID in Tennessee, despite the fact that charging someone to vote is unconstitutional.
• Rita Platt is a Wisconsin resident who was turned away from her attempt to obtain a voter ID because she required either a birth certificate or a passport to obtain one — both of which can only be obtained if the voter pays a fee. Worse, in Wisconsin, voters must fill out a misleading form which suggests that they cannot obtain the birth certificate they need to obtain a photo ID unless they already have a photo ID.
• Jessica Cohen is a Texas resident who lost her license and other identification papers in a burglary. She now must also pay an unconstitutional fee in order to obtain the birth certificate she needs to obtain a new voter ID. Because Cohen lives in Texas, she will likely be able to vote in 2012 because the Department of Justice blocked Texas’ law under the Voting Rights Act — although there is a high risk that the Supreme Court’s conservatives will declare the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
  

Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling who believes that Medicaid is unconstitutional, has taken a moment from spouting paranoid conspiracy theories about a secret George Soros plan to ban the game of golf to produce his first campaign ad. The ad is not subtle, asserting that Cruz can be relied upon as an uncompromising conservative because he once fought to ensure than an undocumented immigrant would be killed:

When the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury’s verdict to execute an illegal alien for raping and murdering two teenage girls, Ted Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and he delivered. . . . Politicians cut deals, principled conservatives deliver.

Watch it:

This marks the second time the United Nations has played a starring role on Cruz’s list of America’s enemies — Cruz claims that the UN is Soros’ co-conspirator in his supposed socialist plot to eliminate golf courses — and, indeed, Cruz’s decision to tout his role in this case says as much about his belligerent approach to foreign policy as it does about his passion for state-sponsored killings.

Contrary to Cruz’s implication, the case that he touts in his ad, a 2008 case called Medellín v. Texas, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Texas may execute anyone. Rather, Medellín presented the very narrow question of whether Texas must comply with America’s then-existing treaty obligations under the Vienna Convention to inform foreign nationals who are arrested in the United States of their right “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” Texas flouted this obligation before sentencing a Mexican national to die, but no one in that case questioned Texas’ power to execute someone who had been tried in full compliance with America’s treaty obligations.

It’s worth noting that Cruz’s belief that Texas should simply ignore this treaty places him in very lonely company. Even North Korea honored the Vienna Convention when it took two American journalists captive in 2009.

Last month, African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by what increasingly appears to be a vigilante “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” At the time of his death, Martin carried a a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea — his killer, George Zimmerman, armed himself with a 9mm handgun and a concealed weapon permit.

Yet, even in the wake of this tragedy, Senate Republicans continue to push a reckless effort to force every state to follow the nation’s laxest gun laws:

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and 28 other Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill that would allow people authorized to carry concealed weapons in their home state to do the same in other states that allow concealed carry, without requiring a federal permit.

The Respecting States’ Rights and Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, S. 2213, is meant to ensure that the Second Amendment rights of people are not infringed upon when they travel between states. But rather than set up a federal permitting process for concealed weapons, the bill would essentially require states with concealed-weapons permits to honor the permits of other states.

First of all, this bill has absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with the Second Amendment. As Justice Scalia established in his opinion in D.C. v. Heller “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” and laws regulating or even prohibiting concealed carry are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment.

More importantly, this bill is a terrible idea. As ThinkProgress explained when a similar bill advanced in the House, the bill is strongly backed by the NRA, and it would enable residents of states with shockingly lax gun laws to carry concealed firearms nearly anywhere in the country. Martin’s state of Florida, for example, issued 1,700 concealed carry permits to people with “criminal histories, arrest warrants, domestic violence injunctions and misdemeanor convictions for gun-related crimes.” Indeed, Florida has yet to revoke Zimmerman’s concealed carry permit.

If Sen. Thune’s bill becomes law, it would mean that Zimmerman would be free to wander nearly any neighborhood in the country, packing a hidden firearm in his waistband.

Jonathan Cohn notes an odd quirk about a recent American Bar Association poll showing that 85 percent of legal experts polled by the ABA believe that the Affordable Care Act will be upheld by the Supreme Court. The same experts are more likely to pick conservative Chief Justice John Roberts than slightly less conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy as the most likely conservative to uphold the law:

The experts ABA surveyed were unanimous in predicting that the four liberal justices (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg) would vote to uphold and that Clarence Thomas would vote to strike it down. Fifty-three percent said Anthony Kennedy would join the liberals, but a higher proportion, 69 percent, thought Chief Justice John Roberts would join the majority. Majorities of about 60 percent predicted that the other two conservatives, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia, would determine the law is unconstitutional.

Although this view of Roberts and Kennedy is counterintuitive, it is not exactly surprising. In 2010, the Supreme Court handed down a case called United States v. Comstock which upheld a law that was very much at the margins of Congress’ lawful authority. In that opinion, Roberts took a somewhat more expansive view of federal power than Kennedy.

Because the Constitution gives Congress authority to “regulate commerce,” the United States has broad, sweeping authority over economic matters, but far more limited authority over non-economic regulation. Comstock upheld a federal law allowing for the indefinite detention of some sex offenders — a law which has virtually nothing to do with the nation’s economy. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Roberts joined the Court’s four more moderate members in a majority opinion upholding this non-economic law. Justice Kennedy wrote a separate concurrence which upheld the law as well, although on somewhat narrower ground.

Both the opinion Roberts joined and Kennedy’s concurrence support the conclusion that the ACA is constitutional. Moreover, unlike the law in Comstock, the ACA is very much at the core of Congress’ lawful authority because the Affordable Care Act regulates a market that comprises one-sixth of the national economy. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, in the only major federal power case that both Roberts and Kennedy sat on together, Roberts took the more expansive view of federal power.