There aren’t many things Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) doesn’t believe to be unconstitutional. While it probably would not be possible to count every essential law or program that violates Lee’s tenther understanding of the Constitution, a short list includes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, FEMA, the FDA, federal income assistance for the poor and national child labor laws.

So it’s really not that much of a surprise that he found yet another law he thinks is unconstitutional today. This time, it’s the entire Violence Against Women Act:

[The Violence Against Women Act] oversteps the Constitution’s rightful limits on federal power. Violent crimes are regulated and enforced almost exclusively by state governments. In fact, domestic violence is one of the few activities that the Supreme Court of the United States has specifically said Congress may not regulate under the Commerce Clause. As a matter of constitutional policy, Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.

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Once again, Lee might want to consider reading the Constitution before he behaves like he’s an expert in what it says. Although it’s true that Congress cannot prohibit domestic violence under its power to regulate commerce — unlike, say, a comprehensive regulation of the nation’s health care market, domestic violence laws are not economic regulation — the Constitution permits Congress to do a whole lot more than just regulate the nation’s economy. Specifically, the Constitution allows our national leaders to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and there is simply nothing in the Constitution’s text that prevents Congress from providing for the general welfare by funding grants that states can use to combat domestic violence.

Lee, however, has made quite a political career out of ignoring the text of the Constitution — and wielding his fake Constitution to declare that pretty much any federal law that protects the sick, the unfortunate, the young, the old and, now, women is somehow unconstitutional.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) announced that he would unilaterally veto Judge Elissa Cadish’s nomination to a federal judgeship in Nevada because she once refused to misrepresent the law in a way that favored the NRA. Heller believes he can carry the gun lobby’s water in this way because of an odd Senate tradition called “blue slips,” which currently allows either one of a judicial nominee’s home state senators to prevent that nominee from receiving a hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

This tradition, however, does not exactly have a longstanding pedigree. During the Reagan and the first Bush Administration, the blue slip tradition did indeed allow home state senators to block a judicial nominee, but only if both of these senators agreed. Indeed, this rule remained in effect until 1995, when Senate Republicans unilaterally changed it to make it easier to block President Clinton’s nominees with only one objecting senator — only to change back to Reagan Era rules once George W. Bush took office.

Heller now seems to think that, because a Democratic president is back in office, he should have the same power to unilaterally veto nominees that didn’t exist under Ronald Reagan or most of George W. Bush’s term. Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) apparently thinks otherwise:

Reid, the Senate majority leader, said he plans to ask Leahy to bypass the blue slip process in this case and move forward with the Cadish nomination. He said the two could meet Thursday.

Reid said his staff has compiled clippings and other material on Cadish that he plans to show to Leahy.

“Leahy is a traditionalist around here,” Reid said. “I’ve gotten all the articles about this together and am going to visit with Pat and go over it, but I don’t think he will do it.“

There’s nothing wrong with being a traditionalist, but there’s also no real tradition giving Heller a unilateral veto over nominees. If one set of rules were good enough for Ronald Reagan, than they should be good enough for Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has been playing with his Etch-a-Sketch when it comes to the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented children who attended school or joined the military. He said he would veto it during the primary when he needed to appeal to hardline conservatives, but then said wanted a Republican version of the bill almost immediately after the general election began.

The leading contender for such a bill comes from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a man many observers believe is also a leading candidate to be Romney’s running mate. Although Rubio has not released the full details of his plan, he describes it as a watered-down version of DREAM that will permit undocumented students to obtain temporary legal status while they study and more permanent status after they graduate.

Rubio’s apparent plan, however, isn’t even supported by Romney’s own immigration policy team. Outside of the Supreme Court hearing about Arizona’s harsh immigration law, S.B. 1070, ThinkProgress caught up with Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona’s law and Romney’s “informal advisor” on immigration issues. Kobach said he wouldn’t stand for any version of the DREAM Act that provides any legal status to any undocumented person. He was quick to distance himself from any criticisms of Rubio specifically, but Kobach did make clear that any form of permanent residency is amnesty, and he doesn’t support that:

KOBACH: Amnesty would be giving any person who is here illegally lawful presence of any sort in an en masse way. You know, there are individual cases which are not amnesty, but when it’s done en masse to a whole category of people, then yeah that’s amnesty.

THINKPROGRESS: So there’s been a lot of talk, no specific language yet, about a Rubio DREAM Act.

KOBACH: I just don’t want to comment on a Rubio DREAM Act, cause I just don’t know what it is [...] and, you know, he says he doesn’t want it to be an amnesty so I’ll take him at his word and we’ll see.

TP: So, but if it does provide legal residency without citizenship, would you consider that amnesty?

KOBACH: Yeah.

TP: And so you wouldn’t support that at all?

KOBACH: Not if it provides legal residency en masse to people who are illegally in the country.

TP: Do you think if he does, that would disqualify him to be Vice President in your mind?

KOBACH: I don’t know, I mean, who knows.

Watch it:

 

If Rubio is a serious contender for the VP slot, he likely will have to water down his bill even more than he claims to fit the campaign’s hard line on immigration — Romney is already playing coy about Rubio’s DREAM Act. If Rubio’s bill won’t please Kobach, Romney is going to need to shake his Etch-A-Sketch again to keep up with his latest favorite’s immigration policy.

From the very beginning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) led the opposition to reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — even leading Senate Judiciary Republicans to unanimously vote against it because they object to its protections for LGBT victims, immigrants and Native Americans. Grassley has now teamed up with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) “offer a substitute that would address GOP concerns with the bill.”

Although the full details of Grassley and Hutchinson’s watered down protections for domestic violence victims have yet to be released, it is likely that they will map Grassley’s previously stated opposition to providing greater support for LGBT, undocumented, and tribal victims of domestic violence. The Hutchison/Grassley amendment will likely leave out some victims who face particularly harsh discrimination. If Senate Republicans embrace Grassley’s earlier objections to reauthorizing VAWA, they will show that they are willing to tolerate a certain amount of domestic violence by ignoring certain victims:

For Native victims: In 86 percent of reported rapes or sexual assaults on Native women, the perpetrators are non-Native. While Hutchison has criticized the tribal provisions, saying that ‘any American’ could be imprisoned by tribal courts, in actuality, the provisions allow tribal members to prosecute a non-tribal people who commit domestic violence and who either live or work on a reservation, or are married to a tribal member. The Grassley / Hutchison amendment requires any domestic violence to be prosecuted in federal courts, meaning that rural tribal victims won’t seek help. Additionally, federal prosecutors “already decline to prosecute half of Indian Country crimes that are referred to them,” and with the added number of domestic violence crimes, victims are likely to never see justice.

For LGBT victims: The new version of the bill also lacks any additional provisions for the LGBT community, blanketing over LGBT-specific issues with gender neutral language that lumps the needs of gay and lesbian protections in with the needs of straight couples. The original version of VAWA says that domestic violence shelters cannot discriminate against gay, lesbian, or trans people, but the new version says nothing about this issue. Grassley has said that he does not believe discrimination in shelters is an issue — despite the fact that “44.6 percent of LGBT/HIV-positive survivors of intimate partner violence were turned away from shelters.”

For undocumented victims: The Grassley/Hutchison version of the bill takes out the added visas for undocumented people who are beaten and seek assistance from the state. The visas are put in place so that victims aren’t too scared to contact the authorities when they find themselves physically harmed or in danger. When such protections don’t exist, people are forced to work outside of the law to protect themselves.

But there may be a bit of good news in the amendment. It may offer increased funding for rape kits, the processing of which is notoriously backlogged in the criminal justice system across the U.S. This funding should be increased, but LGBT, Native American and immigrant victims should not have to suffer for it.

Devon Boyer, a council member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and a former law enforcement officer, shared the stories of two women who couldn’t see justice done to their abusers: