Today, Justice Breyer denied a petition from Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I-RI) to delay the transfer of a Rhode Island inmate to federal authorities because of the possibility that he would face a death-penalty prosecution. Chafee appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal circuit court refused to delay a decision requiring Rhode Island to turn over the inmate, Jason Pleu, to federal authorities. Federal prosecutors want custody of Pleu in order to try him for the death of a gas station manager during a robbery in 2010 despite the fact that that kind of case is usually tried by state officials. Chafee has refused to turn over Pleu because under federal law Pleu may face the death penalty if convicted.

Rhode Island has a long history of standing against the death penalty. The state has not executed anyone since 1852, and officially abolished the death penalty in 1984. Chafee argues that the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act, which governs prisoner transfer, allows him to refuse to surrender Pleu to federal authorities. Earlier this month, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rhode Island was required to surrender Pleu to federal authorities, and this week, the same court decided 3-2 not to delay the decision until Chafee and Pleu had a chance to appeal to the Supreme Court. The transfer of Pleu may happen as soon as next Tuesday.

Federal officials have refused to indicate whether or not they will seek the death penalty in Pleu’s case. The rate of executions at the federal level are much closer to the rate in Rhode Island than the one in Texas; no one has been executed by the federal government in 9 years, and given the choice between a death sentence and life in prison, juries at the federal level choose life in prison at a rate of more than two to one.

–Alex Brown

Alberto Gonzales knows something about distorting the law. As George W. Bush’s White House Counsel, he called the Geneva Convention’s protections for wartime prisoners “quaint” and played a key role in authorizing the Bush Administration’s torture policies. As Attorney General, he presided over massive efforts to politicize the Justice Department’s hiring process, infamously delegating responsibility for much of DOJ’s hiring to former Republican National Committee opposition researcher Monica Goodling.

And yet, in an interview on Fox News this afternoon, even he couldn’t bring himself to claim that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional:

QUESTION: Some on the right are now saying they are concerned that Chief Justice Roberts is not going to go along with the way they want to see this case come out. They believe he might go with the liberals in a possible decision to uphold the law. As you say, having been the man to recommend him to the high Court to President Bush, what is your anecdotal thought on it?

GONZALES: This is a very hard decision. I almost laugh when I hear pundits say it’s going to go this way, it’s going to go that way, it’s a fairly easy decision. I think this is a very difficult decision.

Watch it:

For the record, it’s not just “pundits” who say that this is an easy case. It’s also iconic conservative judges. Judge Laurence Silberman, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gonzales’ former boss, upheld the law because the case against it “cannot find real support . . . in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a former law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia who spent much of his pre-judicial career looking for ways to undermine federal power, nonetheless wrote his own opinion rejecting a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. And Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, one of the finalists for the Supreme Court seat President Bush eventually gave to Chief Justice Roberts, called the case against health reform “a prescription for economic chaos that the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.”

So the Affordable Care Act lawsuit is not a hard case — it is one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court has heard in years. The fact that former Bush Administration official who devoted much of his career to placing politics ahead of the law isn’t willing to embrace the case against health reform only lends credence to that fact.

Oklahoma state Rep. John Bennett (R-OK) thinks a lot of people are out to get him, so he and his fellow lawmakers should be allowed the right to carry a deadly firearm. Anywhere. Including schools:

Oklahoma legislators need to have the ability to carry handguns to defend themselves from angry constituents and others who might carry out death threats and turn public meetings into killing fields, a House member said Tuesday.

“We don’t protect ourselves,” said Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw.

“According to the Constitution, the Second Amendment, I can carry in this building, that building, anyplace I want to go except if I do now I’m going to get in trouble, probably get arrested.

“How many people in here go to public events and public meetings and speak out in public either at the libraries, football fields, schools and places like that?” he asked House members. “Some of you may carry there anyway even though you’re not supposed to. But you probably do it because those are killing grounds. We have provided killing grounds for the bad guys to come and get us.”

For the record, the Second Amendment does not allow Bennett to bring a gun wherever he wants. As Justice Scalia explained in District of Columbia v. Heller, nothing in that amendment prohibits laws “forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”

Bennett’s colleagues rejected his proposal by a 55-32 vote, with state Rep. Steve Martin (R-OK) criticizing Bennett’s attempt to “start us down the dangerous path of giving ourselves really unjustified privileges that the average citizen doesn’t have.”

According to an email ThinkProgress received from the Center for Media and Democracy, one of the leaders of a progressive campaign to push corporations and other funders to break with the American Legislative Exchange Council, online retail giant Amazon.com just announced that it will part ways with ALEC. In the wake of this campaign, ALEC eliminated a task force that pushed voter suppression laws and the so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws that played a significant role in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, but the conservative group remains committed to other priorities such as repealing minimum wage laws, eliminating capital gains and estate taxes, and blocking safeguards that protect children from eating rat poison.

Other groups that have dropped ALEC include: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft, Wendy’s, Mars, Inc., Arizona Public Service, the National Board for Professional Teaching StandardsScantron, The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Kaplan, Procter & Gamble, Yum! Brands, five Pennsylvania legislators, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Reed Elsevier, American Traffic Solutions, Intuit, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

POMPANO BEACH, Florida — Rep. Allen West (R-FL) took aim at early voting this week, criticizing its proliferation and suggesting that it may be unconstitutional.

In 2008, more than half of Floridians voted before Election Day, a process that former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush (R) called “wonderful.” Yet early voting has been under attack recently in Florida. Last year, the state legislature passed a voter suppression bill that slashed early voting in the state from two weeks to eight days, including cutting out the Sunday before the election, a day when many congregants in black churches would vote en masse. Worse, this appears to be part of a much larger effort to suppress the vote in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL), for example, is currently engaged in a massive effort to remove as many as 180,000 people from the voting rolls.

ThinkProgress spoke with West about this rollback after a town hall meeting Tuesday. West was critical of “this early voting thing,” protesting that “people see it as an entitlement”:

KEYES: Obviously the state legislature rolled back a lot of the early voting days, including cutting out the Sunday before the Tuesday for voting. I’ve been speaking with a lot of voters down here and they have programs called, for instance, “Souls to the Polls” where a lot of black churches and historically Latino churches would go to church on the first Sunday of the month and then go everybody transport and vote. That’s cut out now because now it’s cut off at the Saturday before the Tuesday election. Does that concern you at all, does that bother you?

WEST: No, I think that when you look at our voting process here in the United States of America, it really comes down to you should be able to go out and vote on Election Day. If you cannot get out to vote on Election Day, you get an absentee ballot. I think that this early voting thing was something we provided and now some people see it as an entitlement, which is really not consistent with constitutional voting practices and procedures.

Early voting has no business being a partisan issue. It simply allows people who can’t reach the polls on Election Day to still participate in our democracy. It also eases the burden on election officials who can spread out the process over weeks instead of a single day. West’s opposition to a program that even Jeb Bush admits is “great” and results in “high voter turnout” is inexplicable.

Last January, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) nominated openly gay attorney Bruce Harris to a seat on that state’s supreme court. According to the Star-Ledger, however, Harris is not expected to clear the state’s senate judiciary committee, which will hold a hearing on him today, due to both his lack of litigation experience and concerns over his overwillingness to recuse himself from cases:

Harris, a graduate of Yale Law School, is a transactional attorney at the international law firm Greenberg Traurig. . . . The sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said Harris’ lack of courtroom experience was indeed a sticking point for committee’s eight Democrats. . . .

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) said he remained opposed to the nomination because Harris has said that if approved, he would recuse himself from cases involving gay rights.

Christie has said Harris planned to recuse himself because in the past he had advocated for gay rights.

But Lesniak and other critics said a blanket recusal was unnecessary, and that most likely was a concession to Christie, who opposes same-sex marriage. A lawsuit brought by seven gay couples seeking the right to marry is pending in a lower court and is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court in a couple years.

Harris’ lack of experience is a legitimate concern. While transactional work can certainly be very challenging, it bears little resemblance to litigation, so it’s not clear how Harris is prepared to decide some of the most important cases that arise in his state.

His promise to recuse from gay rights cases, however, is far more troubling. An openly gay judge is no more required to recuse himself from gay rights cases than Clarence Thomas is required to recuse himself from race cases because he is black or Ruth Bader Ginsburg is required to recuse herself from gender discrimination cases because she is a woman. If Harris becomes a judge on the back of a promise to remove himself from gay issues because he is gay, he will set a dangerous precedent that anti-gay groups will cite every time another LGBT judicial nominee is named. Gay judges are not second class judges, and it is a grave mistake for them to behave like they are.