Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party candidate who proclaimed that “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view” shortly after defeating longtime incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), does not think he should be elected to the U.S. Senate. Indeed, he believes that it should be unconstitutional for anyone to run for the Senate. At a campaign event last February, the Tea Party candidate came out against the Seventeenth Amendment, which ensures that senators will be chosen by elections and not by state legislatures:

You know the issue of the 17th amendment is so troubling to me, our founding fathers, again those geniuses, made the point that the House of Representatives was there to represent the people. The Senate was there to represent the states. In other words the government of the states. . . . You know I think most senators if they had to come back every two years and by the way that would solve another problem. It would solve the idea that Senators move out of their state and never return. But it would cause those senators to have much greater contact with their states. You know just think of this. In today’s you see millions and millions of dollars spent on Senate campaigns. Two years ago, in 2010, Sharon Angle out in Nevada spent 31 million dollars, just herself. How much money would be spent in federal senate races if the state legislators were electing those people. You just took the money out of politics. Is that a bad thing?

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Mourdock is certainly right that eliminating U.S. Senate elections would end the practice of corporations and wealthy individuals throwing millions of dollars to change the result of those elections. Indeed, under Mourdock’s logic there’s no reason to stop there. If we simply named someone the hereditary monarch of the United States — King Mitt I — then no one would ever spend money to influence an American election again!

Mourdock is dead wrong, however, to suggest that ending Senate elections would eliminate corruption. Rather, one of the primary forces driving the Seventeenth Amendment’s ratification was the fact that the old system led to a kind of Citizens United on steroids:

[T]he system led to rampant and blatant corruption, letting corporations and other moneyed interests effectively buy U.S. Senators, and tied state legislatures up in numerous, lengthy deadlocks over whom to send to Washington, leaving those bodies with far less time to devote to the job of enacting the laws their states needed for the welfare of the people.

Sadly, Mourdock is not the first major Republican to say that the American people should not be allowed to elect their own senators. Texas Gov. Rick Perry believes this, as does Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Justice Antonin Scalia.

An unidentified individual from Virginia is hoping to cash in on the tragic death of Trayvon Martin by selling gun range targets meant to resemble him.

While the targets don’t feature a photo of Martin, they do depict a silhouette of a hoodie clutching a can of iced tea and a pack of Skittles hanging out of the pocket, details pulled directly from the descriptions of Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.

According to a local news station in Orlando, the seller of the targets readily admits he’s hoping to make a profit over the tragic shooting of a teenager:

In an email exchange with reporter Mike DeForest, the seller wrote, “My main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”

The seller would not disclose how many paper targets had been made, but said in an email, “The response is overwhelming. I sold out in 2 days.”

Some of those targets were sold to two Florida gun dealers, according to the seller.

The listing, which appeared to have been posted on the online gun outlet store gunbroker.com, has been removed, although as of publication the Google Cache of the page is still available. For $8 plus shipping, anyone could purchase a 10-pack of the paper targets.

Mark O’Mara, the lawyer for Trayvon’s killer George Zimmerman, strongly rebuked the targets, calling it “hate-mongering.”

Gun owners, even those who believe George Zimmerman is innocent, were quick to criticize the targets and the person behind them. “Even though I fully believe Zimmerman was justified in shooting, Trayvon was still a human being and does not deserve that kind of disrespect in death,” one member of the firearm owners association told the Orlando station.

Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, has released a video ahead of Mother’s Day asking parents across America to lend their support to The Second Chance on Shoot First campaign, a recently launched coalition of elected officials, civil rights leaders, law enforcement professionals and concerned Americans who are working to raise awareness as well as “reform, repeal and prevent” the passage of reckless Shoot First and Stand Your Ground gun laws. Blotting her eyes and clutching a framed photograph of her slain son, Sybrina calls on parents to act:

“Just like me, 30,000 mothers lost their children this year to senseless gun violence. Nobody can bring out children back. But it would bring us comfort if we can help spare other mothers the pain that we will feel on Mother’s Day and everyday for the rest of our lives. I’m asking you to join Florida by calling upon the governor of your state to re-examine similar ‘stand your ground’ laws through out the nation to keep our families safe.”

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– Fatima Najiy

Yesterday, Mary Jamis and her partner joined eight other gay and lesbian couples to seek a marriage license at the Register of Deeds office in Winston-Salem. Although the other couples left the office after being denied, Jamis and a straight friend of hers who joined the protest chose to remain behind and refuse to leave until Jamis was given her constitutional right to marry the person she loves. This was the result:

This is at least the third time a North Carolina woman was arrested simply for insisting upon her constitutional right to be free from marriage discrimination. Last fall, a lesbian couple who had been together for 30 years were arrested after seeking a marriage license in Asheville, NC.

Every two years, when the Senate’s newly-elected members take office, the Constitution opens up a brief window when the Senate’s rules can be changed with just 51 votes — the rules typically require a two-thirds majority to make any changes. Last year, several senators proposed taking advantage of this window to reform the filibuster rule and prevent Senate Republicans from continuing their unprecedented campaign of obstruction of bills and nominees. Ultimately, however, these reforms failed because too many Senate Democrats were unwilling to move forward with them.

Yesterday, in a floor speech, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) admitted that the reformers were correct, and that the senators who kept the filibuster intact were wrong:

If there ever were a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it’s tonight. These two young, fine senators said it was time we changed the rules in the Senate, and we didn’t. They were right. The rest of us were wrong — or most of us now anyway. What a shame. So here we are, wasting time because of the Republicans. … And then, to top it off, one of the finest members of the Senate we’ve had, ever, was defeated yesterday by a man, listen to this, Mr. President, who campaigned on the platform that there’s too much compromise in the Senate. And he’s going to come back here and not compromise with anybody on anything. Now that’s what we need in the Senate, more people who are willing to do nothing but fight.

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Reid’s frustration with the result in the Indiana GOP Senate primary closely maps concerns that ThinkProgress raised shortly after Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock defeated long time incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN). In the wake of Mourdock’s success running on a platform of uncompromising obstructionism, it is unlikely that any Republican senator will be willing to cross party lines in order to pass even the most essential legislation or to fill crucial jobs such as a seat on the Supreme Court. As Reid now seems to recognize, the choice facing Senate Democrats is whether to dramatically reform the Senate rules or leave America completely unable to govern itself.

Despite their unwillingness to do so last year, however, they will have another opportunity to do so very soon — provided they have at least 51 votes in favor of reform. Next January, when the 113th Congress convenes, another window opens enabling the Senate’s rules to be changed by a simple majority vote.