Even before President Obama took office, the Affordable Care Act’s opponents touted tort reform as a central prong of their health care policy. Texas Gov. Rick Perry even claims that Texas added 23,000 new doctors thanks to a tort reform law he signed in 2003. A new academic study shows that the data simply does not back up this claim, however. According to the study, there is no evidence that tort reform attracted more doctors to Texas:

The bottom line: Our original findings remain correct. There is no evidence that the number of physicians per capita practicing in Texas is larger than it would have been without tort reform. Any effect of tort reform is too small for us to measure, against the background of other, larger forces affecting physician supply, both in Texas and nationally. This ‘non-result’ is broadly consistent with other studies, most of which find that state-level tort reform has a modest impact on physician supply. It also offers a counterpoint to these studies, by demonstrating that the small average effects found in other studies will not reliably appear in any given state, even one which undergoes especially dramatic reform.

Indeed, the paper finds that Texans’ access to primary care physicians actually declined slightly after Rick Perry’s tort reform became law, and that the number of primary care physicians per capita in Texas is significantly lower than in the United States as a whole:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the author of Arizona and Alabama’s harsh immigration laws and an advisor to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on immigration policy issues. He also told ThinkProgress that any law providing legal status to a class of undocumented immigrants would be unacceptable “amnesty.” According to a new National Journal poll, however, this view places Romney’s immigration advisor far outside the American mainstream:

The survey also tested attitudes toward dealing with young people brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents. Asked what should be done with young people brought here illegally who are attending college or have enlisted in the military, a 49 percent plurality agreed that Congress should allow them to remain in the country “and guarantee them that they can become American citizens if they complete their studies or military service.” Another 35 percent said that Washington should instead allow them to remain here and “apply for citizenship … but not guarantee them that they can become American citizens.”

The question did not identify the partisan sponsors, but the first option summarizes the Democrats’ existing Dream Act, and the second, the alternative that Republican star Rubio is drafting. Democrats strongly preferred the first option, while independents did so narrowly, and Republicans split almost evenly between the two. Hispanics heavily preferred the Democratic option, which also drew support from a slight majority of African-Americans and a narrow plurality of whites. Only one-in-10 of those polled (and even just one-in-seven Republicans) said that those young people should not be allowed to remain here. Similarly, just 17 percent said that the government should deport all of the illegal immigrants here “no matter how long” they have lived in the country; that’s down from 25 percent last December.

Mr. Romney, meanwhile, appears caught between his advisor and the watered down bill favored by Sen. Rubio. Rather than decide between these two unpopular options, Romney should do the right thing which, in this case, also happens to be the most politically popular thing.

The Republican Party of Greene County in Virginia published their monthly newsletter in March and in it, the editor suggested an “armed revolution” will be necessary if President Obama is reelected in November:

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized. . . . The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse[sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.

The editor of the newsletter, listed as Ponch McPhee, is the latest Virginian to threaten violence towards the president or his administration. Just this week, Christopher Hecker was charged with a felony for threatening to kill the president and other officials, as well as bomb landmarks along the east coast.

The eight page newsletter features remarks from the chairman of the Greene County Republican Committee alongside contributions from fellow members, and is heavy on generic tea party talking points on President Obama, socialism and the liberal media.

The Secret Service, which is tasked with investigating all threats made against the president, wasn’t immediately available for comment on whether they have — or will — conduct a similar investigation into McPhee or the county committee.

Last July, Fullerton, California police officer Manuel Ramos discovered a homeless man named Kelly Thomas near the site of a car break in. Over the course of 15 minutes of questioning, during which Ramos and Thomas both remained peaceful, Ramos eventually discovered that Thomas was carrying someone else’s mail in his backpack.

A quarter hour into this encounter, Ramos escalated to threats of violence. After Thomas ignored several instructions to put his feet out in front of him and his “hands on [his] fucking knees,” Ramos told Thomas “you see my fists? . . . They are getting ready to fuck you up” — and the encounter rapidly degenerated.

It is difficult to watch what happened next, although the full surveillance video of the incident is embedded below. Ramos and another officer order Thomas to “get on the ground,” and then start beating him with their nightsticks. Over the course of the next seven minutes, more and more officers arrive and try to pin Thomas down, until as many as five men surround him. For fifty seconds, most of the view is obscured by a tree, as the sounds of Thomas’ screams are punctuated by the mechanical clicking sound of him being tazed. In his last moments of consciousness, Thomas moans the word “daddy” over and over again before gradually becoming silent, and he was eventually taken to the hospital with an injured brain, shattered facial bones, broken ribs and a crushed thorax.

After watching this video, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that these officers escalated this encounter far too rapidly, and then let it spiral into a brutal incident that eventually took Thomas’ life. Ramos is now on trial for second-degree murder, and his fellow officer Jay Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter. Both men pled not guilty.

Beyond the actions of these two officers, however, there is a larger problem underlying this tragic event. Thomas was schizophrenic, and yet did not obtain the care he needed to stay off the streets and understand the gravity of a hostile encounter with the police. Likewise, Officer Ramos might not have threatened violence and rapidly escalated this encounter after Thomas repeatedly but peacefully disobeyed his orders if he had received better training in how to interact with mentally ill suspects. If Ramos and Cincinelli acted as brutally as the surveillance video suggests, then they deserve to spend many years learning to control their aggression behind bars. But Americans like Thomas deserve a whole lot more than a media-fueled trial — they deserve a full examination of how to ensure that no incident like this one occurs again.

In 2009, when President Obama was close to the height of his popularity and political capital, only nine Republican senators voted to confirm Justice Sotomayor: Lamar Alexander, Kit Bond, Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham, Judd Gregg, Dick Lugar, Mel Martinez, Olympia Snowe, and George Voinovich. Of these four (Bond, Gregg, Martinez and Voinovich) are now retired. One (Snowe) recently announced her voluntary retirement. And one, Dick Lugar of Indiana, was just involuntarily retired by Tea Party challenger Richard Mourdock.

Lugar is an Indiana institution. He ran virtually unopposed during his last reelection race, and won by more than 30 points the last time a major party candidate tried to challenge him. Had he won yesterday’s primary, he would have been the prohibitive favorite in November (Mourdock, by contrast, could lose in November as easily as he could win). Nor was Lugar particularly moderate. Among other things, Lugar voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) infamous plan to phase out Medicare.

In the age of the Tea Party, however, even the most occasional departures from conservative orthodoxy are enough for the GOP electorate to declare a public official an apostate. Mourdock made Lugar’s votes for Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, in addition to a handful of other breaks with America’s far right, the focus of his campaign — and that was enough to defeat a 36 year Senate veteran. In light of this incident, it is unlikely that any of the few remaining Republicans who backed an Obama Supreme Court appointee will be willing to risk their careers by doing the same again.

Lest there be any doubt, there is probably no one President Obama could nominate for the high Court who would satisfy the newly radicalized Republican Party. Mourdock, for his part, recently promised to oppose any nominee who did not fit his personal constitutional philosophy — and he twice cited failed Supreme Court nominee and Romney legal advisor Robert Bork as his model nominee. As recently as last October, Bork mocked the very idea that women sometimes face discrimination as “silly,” and he infamously described the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters as “unsurpassed ugliness” early in his career. Obama would never, ever nominate such a man to the Supreme Court.

In other words, if President Obama has the opportunity to nominate a new justice during a second presidential term, it is tough to imagine any set of circumstances that allows that nominee to receive the 60 votes necessary to break a filibuster. The parties are too far apart. The Republicans are too eager to obstruct, and the handful of GOPers with a history of bipartisanship will be too spooked to reach across the aisle. America could go years with one or more Supreme Court seats vacant.

There could be, however, a way out of this trap. In his most recent State of the Union Address, President Obama called on the Senate to “pass a simple rule that all judicial and public servant nominations receive an up or down vote within 90 days” — effectively eliminating the filibuster for Senate-confirmed jobs. Moreover, when the newly-elected Senate reconvenes next January, it opens a very brief window where Obama’s proposed rule could be implemented with just 51 votes.

Should the Democrats manage to hold the Senate next year, an outcome that is much more likely than appeared possible just one year ago, they no longer have the option to maintain the status quo. Keeping the current rules means stripping Obama of his power to nominate Supreme Court justices, and potentially turning the Court over to Mourdock’s fellow ideologues for years to come.