Following Kraft, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Intuit, another influential sponsor of ALEC has withdrawn its support from the right-wing corporate front group. Roll Call reports:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today became the latest backer to withdraw financial support for the American Legislative Exchange Council.

A foundation spokesman told Roll Call that it does not plan to make future grants to the conservative nonprofit, which has come under fire from progressive activists for its support of voter identification laws and other contentious measures.

The Gates Foundation said it supported ALEC on issues regarding “teacher effectiveness and school finance.” Lee Fang reports the funding could potentially have benefited “Microsoft as privatized charters adopt more technology in the classroom.”

Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Color of Change, among others, had targeted the Gates Foundation for giving more than $375,000 to ALEC over the past two years. PCCC garnered more than 28,000 signatures in a matter of hours.

According to NBC News correspondent Mara Schiavocampo, George Zimmerman has launched a new website:

Zimmerman’s attorneys have confirmed the site is operated & authorized by him RT @thinkprogress:@maracamp How do you know this is authentic?

— Mara Schiavocampo (@maracamp) April 9, 2012

On the website — therealgeorgezimmerman.com — Zimmerman solicits donations to support his “living expenses and legal defense.” He writes: “I have created a Paypal account solely linked on this website as I would like to provide an avenue to thank my supporters personally and ensure that any funds provided are used only for living expenses and legal defense, in lieu of my forced inability to maintain employment. I will also personally, maintain accountability of all funds received.”

He also features a photo of a vandalized black cultural center at Ohio State University.

Zimmerman alleges that other purported legal defense funds are not actually providing him with financial support.

In a thinly argued “fact check” of President Obama’s recent criticism of judicial activism, the Washington Post concludes that Obama’s remarks were not entirely accurate in large part because “[s]ome would say that invalidating an economic regulation isn’t extraordinary at all.” Of course, “some” would also say that they were personally abducted by UFOs, or that water fluoridation is a communist plot, or that President Obama was born in Kenya. Normally, however, reliable media sources do not treat “some” people’s objections as a primary basis for a political fact check.

The Post would have been wise to follow that practice here, as its attacks on Obama range from minor nitpicks to complete misrepresentations of the law. Although the “fact check” meanders around some minor criticisms of the president — whether, for example, it was fair for Obama to say that a law that passed by a supermajority in the Senate and a narrow majority in the House enjoyed “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress” — the meat of the Post‘s critique rests on Obama’s unambiguously true statement that it would be an “extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to strike down economic legislation such as the Affordable Care Act.

To build the case against Obama, the Post spoke to two conservative attorneys. One of these sources was forced to resign from the Bush Administration after he made toxic comments questioning the loyalty of certain law firms, the other is an extremist law professor who wants Social Security, Medicare and national child labor laws to be unconstitutional. As a result, the Post was able to identify exactly three cases which it claims undermines Obama’s statement that invalidating economic regulation is “extraordinary”:

Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, pointed out that the government lost two such cases during the Bill Clinton years. It argued unsuccessfully in U.S. v. Lopez (1995) that possession of a firearm at school constituted economic activity, and in U.S. v. Morrison (2000) that violence against women affected interstate commerce.

Those cases dealt with economic matters, right? Not technically. The Supreme Court determined that the laws didn’t involve commerce at all — that’s why Congress failed in defending them under the Commerce Clause.

The challenge against the Affordable Care Act is different. It relates to how rather than whether a law regulates commerce.

We found another case, Printz v. United States (1997), that determined Congress could not force state officials to conduct background checks for firearm sales. This is clearly an economic issue, but the Obama administration argues that it doesn’t count because it dealt with federalism as well. The health law’s controversial insurance mandate would be enforced at the national level, so it’s not a federalist issue.

As the Post seems to concede, two of these cases did not deal with economic regulation at all. There is no market for simply bringing a firearm near a school; nor, thankfully, do people generally buy and sell domestic violence. So Lopez and Morrison are hardly precedents indicating that the Supreme Court can second guess Congress’ economic policy decisions.

Which leaves Printz, an unusual case where the federal government ordered state government officials to take certain actions in order to promote gun safety. The Supreme Court struck this unusual requirement down because “the Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States.” Nothing in the Affordable Care Act requires a state to do anything, so Printz simply has nothing to do with whether health reform is constitutional.

So the Post‘s entire argument boils down to a single case that applied an unusual rule that is not even plausibly relevant to the fate of health reform. Beyond that, the case against Obama consists of the statement of “some” right-wing lawyers who oppose the Affordable Care Act. And yet the Post ends its argument with the following conclusion: “the president earns two Pinocchios—which means creating ‘a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people’—for his comments about the pending Supreme Court decision.”

Simply put, nothing in the Washington Post‘s “fact check” manages to distinguish the legal case against the Affordable Care Act from birtherism. Just like health reform’s opponents, birthers can produce “some” people who agree with them. Just like birtherism, there are exactly zero Supreme Court cases supporting the case against the Affordable Care Act. And, just like supporters of health reform, opponents of birtherism sometimes resort to “legalistic language” to rebut the birthers’ most arcane claims.

A 2007 regulation promulgated by the Federal Election Commission significantly de-fanged disclosure rules for outside groups engaging in “electioneering communications” shortly before federal elections. And even after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for outside spending, the commission’s three Republicans have steadfastly blocked any efforts to even consider closing those loopholes to allow voters to know who is paying for the speech they now endure virtually non-stop.

But a recent federal court ruling against that FEC rule may force slightly more disclosure of previously secret political spending.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (commonly known as McCain-Feingold or BCRA) required that those running electioneering communications — targeted broadcast, cable or satellite ads that refer to a clearly identified candidate for federal office and air shortly before an election for the office that candidate is seeking — disclose the sources of their funding. That law, signed by President George W. Bush, said that groups spending over $10,000 in a year on such ads must reveal, at a minimum:

the names and addresses of all contributors who contributed an aggregate amount of $1,000 or more to the person making the disbursement during the period beginning on the first day of the preceding calendar year and ending on the disclosure date

In 2007, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) ruling (which struck down some spending restrictions imposed on those running “issue ads”) the FEC dramatically reinterpreted the disclosure rules, requiring disclosure only if the contribution was made “for the purpose of furthering electioneering communications.”

This huge loophole has meant that 501(c)(4) groups like Crossroads GPS are required to disclose only their donors who overtly earmark the donation for that communication. Very few donors have done so.

Last April, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) challenged the regulation in federal court, arguing it was not consistent with the text of BCRA. Now, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has agreed, ruling:

Congress spoke plainly, that Congress did not delegate authority to the FEC to narrow the disclosure requirement through agency rulemaking, and that a change in the reach of the statute brought about by a Supreme Court ruling did not render plain language, which is broad enough to cover the new circumstances, to be ambiguous. The agency cannot unilaterally decide to take on a quintessentially legislative function; if sound policy suggests that the statute needs tailoring in the wake of WRTL or Citizens United, it is up to Congress to do it.

It remains to be seen whether and when the gridlocked FEC will change its rules to comply with the ruling — and the unambiguous text of the law. And, while this may mean some additional disclosure for one type of third-party spending, countless loopholes remain. For instance, donors and companies could more-or-less launder donations through middle-man groups, shielding their own identities.

While increased campaign finance transparency is a small positive step, the problem remains that giant corporations and billionaire activists dominate the airwaves and overwhelm the political process. Even if we somehow achieved full disclosure — like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) used to back — for all political spending, any meaningful reforms to the campaign finance system will require the high court to reverse the 5-4 Citizens United ruling.

In his 2004 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush attacked “activist judges” who “insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people.” He returned to this theme over and over again during his presidency. President Reagan similarly railed against judges who “legislate from the bench,” and President Nixon routinely attacked judges who “twist or bend” the law to supposedly impose their personal views upon the nation.

ThinkProgress could not find a single example of an American Bar Association statement criticizing these Republican presidents for making a claim that has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric — the claim that activist judges are twisting the law in order to negate the will of the people. We could not find such a statement in the online archives of their press releases, and when we contacted the ABA to point out that they do not appear to have criticized past presidents for their attacks on judicial activism, an ABA spokesperson told us that “everything you’ve said seems to be accurate.”

Which is why a recent statement by ABA President Bill Robinson, which criticized President Obama’s response to the oral arguments in the Affordable Care Act case, is so baffling:

President Barack Obama’s remarks on Monday speculating about the Supreme Court’s potential decision in the health care legislation appeal are troubling. Particularly worrisome was his suggestion that the court’s decision in this case could serve as a “good example” of what some commentators have cited as “judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint” by an “unelected group of people.” . . .

It is incumbent on all of our elected officials—including those aspiring to hold office—to continually demonstrate that the courtroom is not a political arena. It is a measure of a free society that individuals are able to openly disagree with court decisions, but we should expect our leaders to refrain from partisan statements aimed at judges fulfilling their constitutional role and responsibilities.

We contacted the ABA at 9:30 this morning to give them an opportunity to produce a past statement criticizing Republicans for engaging in political rhetoric critical of the judiciary. Although they did point us to a criticism of Newt Gingrich’s recent calls to “Abolish courts. Ignore rulings. [And] Impeach judges,” as of this writing they were unable to produce a single example of an ABA statement criticizing a past Republican president (or similarly prominent official) merely for calling judicial activism a problem. Gingrich’s proposals, which call for specific lawless actions to be taken in response to judicial decisions he disagrees with, are different in kind from Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Obama’s statements, which merely advocate the position that political power should rest with elected officials and not unelected judges.

It’s difficult to imagine a principled reason why the ABA would deem decades of Republican anti-judicial rhetoric unworthy of a statement, then suddenly deem President Obama’s single, nearly identical statement to be over the line. Unfortunately, however, there is strong evidence suggesting a partisan explanation for why the ABA’s president suddenly came out against Obama — ABA President Robinson is a major Republican donor:

In fairness to Robinson, he has, in the past, put the interests of the legal profession that he is supposed to represent as ABA President ahead of his partisan political affiliation. Robinson recently praised the Obama Administration’s support for legal services for the poor, for example.

Unfortunately, Robinson’s most recent statement appears to be part of a pattern of Republican legal luminaries placing partisanship ahead of precedent and reasoned analysis in the context of the health care litigation. Republican Judge Jerry Smith recently issued a partisan order trying to force DOJ to criticize President Obama. And, of course, the five most powerful Republican judges in the country recently gave the Affordable Care Act a cold reception in the Supreme Court, despite the fact that three of them have previously joined decisions indicating that health reform is constitutional.

According to Mexican census data, 1 million undocumented immigrants returned to Mexico from the U.S. between 2005 and 2010 — more than three times the number who said they had returned from 2000 to 2004. The majority of these immigrants are returning to their homes for good, leading to a massive shift in Mexico, which has relied on billions in remittances as a form of social welfare. And the changing immigration patterns has led to “net zero” migration:

At the macroeconomic level, Douglas Massey, founder of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University, has documented what he calls “net zero” migration. The population of undocumented immigrants in the US fell from 12 million to approximately 11 million during the height of the financial crisis (2008-09), he says. And since then, Mexicans without documents aren’t migrating at rates to replace the loss, creating a net zero balance for the first time in 50 years.

After analyzing census data and household surveys, Agustin Escobar, a demographer at the Center for Research in Social Anthropology in Guadalajara, Mexico, found that migrants leaving Mexico dropped from more than 1 million in 2005 to 368,000 in 2010.

The shift began as a result of the weak U.S. economy, but experts say anti-immigrant state laws, tougher U.S. border enforcement, and border violence are contributing factors as well.

Last week, President Obama reminded the many conservatives urging the Supreme Court’s five Republicans to strike down the Affordable Care Act that, for years, they believed that “the biggest problem is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Obama’s statement, which closely mirrors rhetoric President George W. Bush used throughout his presidency, sent those very same conservatives into apoplexy. One Republican judge even ordered the Department of Justice to produce a three page, single-spaced homework assignment responding to President Obama.

Unfortunately, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to be suffering from the same condition as this Republican judge:

Grassley’s objection to President Obama would have far more credibility if Grassley himself did not have a long history of using this very same rhetoric. Indeed, as recently as 2011, Grassley harshly criticized people who “turn to the courts” after they “can’t get their policy views enacted through the legislative process.” In Grassley’s words, “the Constitution vests legislative power in the Congress, not the courts. Judges are simply not policymakers.” Watch it:

Nor, for that matter, does Grassley have any business attacking President Obama because the president may not have chosen the most precise words when he chose to speak out against judicial activism. Grassley embarrassed himself during both Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan’s confirmation hearings by repeatedly insisting that a 1972 Supreme Court case definitively decided that marriage equality is not an issue for the federal courts — when, in fact, that decision simply said that the Court was not going to hear the case at all. Likewise, shortly before he became the top minority member of the Judiciary Committee, Grassley called for a return to the “real original Constitution,” a position that, if taken seriously, would require a return to slavery.

There’s no reason, of course, to believe that Grassley actually wants to return to slavery. Nevertheless, given his own penchant for loose rhetoric, Grassley may want to think twice before he lays into President Obama for doing nothing more than echoing the past views of lawmakers such as Chuck Grassley.

Less than one month after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida, 22-year-old Rekia Boyd, who was unarmed, died after an off-duty Chicago police officer fired in self-defense on March 21. The officer has said he drove up to a group of people at 1 a.m. while looking into a disturbance near his home. The officer pulled out his gun and fired after he saw 39-year-old Antonio Cross pull out a gun. The shots hit Boyd in the head, and she died the next day.

But neighbors and witnesses disagree with the officer’s account of what happened. Cross has said he was unarmed and was using his cell phone when the officer fired. He has been charged with aggravated assault. And an alderman representing the area said residents have told him they witnessed the shooting but haven’t been contacted by authorities to give their statements. “A young person’s life [has been] taken away and there is not one person that has been out on these streets to canvass the area to talk to any of these witnesses,” said Alderman Michael Chandler.

Boyd’s older brothers Martinez Sutton and Darian Boyd received no information from police after they informed the family that she had been shot. They’ve now taken to investigating on their own to find out more:

According to Sutton, witnesses say the officer appeared intoxicated that night and was known by neighbors to have been drunk most of the time. Witnesses also say the off-duty officer approached the park in an unmarked car dressed in plain clothes while yelling belligerently at the crowd to “shut up.” More importantly, they say he never identified himself as a police officer. [...]

“My only objective out of this entire thing is to see that the police officer responsible receives some type of charges for his negligence,” says Darian Boyd, who described his sister as “a light hearted, free spirit.”

Martin’s death sparked a closer examination of similar shootings, but Sutton said he thinks Martin’s family has a better chance to receive justice since George Zimmerman, who claims he shot Martin in self-defense, is a private citizen and not a police officer. Like demonstrations following Martin’s death, anti-police brutality activisits and neighborhood residents held a march late last month at the scene of Boyd’s shooting.