Over the past few weeks, conservative news outlets have attempted to gin up controversy about dogs and dead people supposedly tainting American elections.

Their evidence: the fact that a mailing list used by a voter registration group contained a handful of out-of-date or incorrect entries. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has more:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign is asking Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into voter-registration forms that are being sent to Virginia residents and addressed to deceased relatives, children, family pets and others ineligible to vote.

The errant mailings from the Washington-based nonprofit group Voter Participation Center have befuddled many Virginia residents, leading to hundreds of complaints.

The group, which has helped register more than 1.5 million people since 2004, sent out nearly 200,000 registration forms to Virginia addresses last month. Because their list of recipients is culled from a number of different sources, a handful of them were indeed addressed incorrectly.

If someone were to actually register their dog or their dead relative to vote, that would be illegal. If someone were to actually try to impersonate a dog or a dead relative at the polls and cast a ballot, that would also be illegal.

But actual voter fraud like this is extraordinarily minuscule, both in Virginia and everywhere else, and it’s far different from simply mailing out registration forms. There is nothing nefarious about sending people reminders to register to vote.

If mailing inadvertent forms were illegal, by that same standard, most political organizations like the Republican National Committee would be committing a “crime” every time they accidentally send out a campaign contribution solicitation to someone who has recently died. After all, it’s illegal for political parties to raise contributions from dead people.

Mitt Romney’s campaign is now trying to use the issue to disenfranchise people who have registered in the past two months. If he succeeds, more than 15,000 Virginians could have their registrations annulled.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice and the New Orleans Police Department have struck an agreement on reforms to the NOPD. Holder called the 122-page consent decree the most thorough such agreement in United States history.

“Effective policing and constitutional policing go hand in hand,” Holder said at a news conference with federal and local officials. In March 2011, the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division launched an investigation into NOPD which “found dysfunction and corruption in nearly every facet of the department.” Here are some examples of the corruption:

• In 2005, NOPD officers shot six unarmed people at the Danziger Bridge, killing two of them and wounding four others. The police department responded by fabricating a cover-up story in which the officers were shot at by four of the victims, thus acting in self-defense. It was six years later, in April of this year, that the officers were convicted and sentenced to prison terms each lasting more than 38 years.
• In 2011, two NOPD officers were convicted of senselessly beating handyman Raymond Robair to death in 2005. After the beating, the officers dropped Robair off at a hospital but did not alert medical staff about the extent of his injuries. Robair later died from internal bleeding.
• In 1995, two NOPD officers were put on death row for brutally murdering three people, including another officer, while robbing a Vietnamese restaurant. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the incident.

The new agreement outlines hundreds of new department policies governing arrest protocol, use of force, searches and seizures, interrogations, police reports, and more.

“This landmark consent decree is the most comprehensive agreement the Civil Rights Division has ever entered into with a police department,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, “and it will serve as a blueprint for reform for departments across the country.”

– Ben Sherman

Last night, more than 600 protestors gathered around the Anaheim City Hall in California, following the death of two young men at the hands of police last weekend. Their deaths were at least the fifth officer-involved deaths so far this year, and the sixth officer-involved shooting in the city.

Protests started on Saturday, sparked by the death of Manuel Diaz, who police say was a known gang member. Police killed Diaz near an alley on Saturday after Diaz attempted to run away. According to the police, Diaz was not carrying a gun, and two officers were put on paid leave as a result of the killing. Then, on Sunday police shot and killed Matthew Acevedo following a brief car chase during which Acevedo shot at police.

The protests Tuesday were the fourth night of demonstrations against police brutality and misconduct. According to NBC Los Angeles, protestors gathered in front of City Hall at 4pm to “urge councilmembers to investigate those shootings and reform the city’s police force, which residents have accused of racial profiling.” After filling the council chamber, protestors clashed with police on the streets.

Watch a video of police clashing with protestors:

Police fired pepperballs and bean bag rounds at the protestors, who threw rocks and lawn chairs back at the officers. The Orange County district attorney’s office will lead an inquiry of the two police officers put on leave.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

Yesterday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suicide advisory provision of South Dakota’s abortion law is constitutional, voting 7-4 to reverse a decision by a three-judge panel. The law requires doctors to tell patients seeking an abortion that there is a link between abortions and depression and other psychological distress including suicide.

The 8th Circuit decided that, despite the fact that the link between abortion and suicide is unproven and may not exist, the South Dakota law does not unduly burden abortion rights or violate the free speech rights of doctors:

The appeals court ruled on Tuesday that conclusive proof of a causation was not required and the suicide advisory was not misleading and was relevant to the patient’s decision.

“Today’s decision supports the Legislature’s goal of encouraging women seeking an abortion to make informed and voluntary decisions,” South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a statement.

But abortion rights supporters disagree. Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, called the ruling “the greatest intrusion by the government into the patient-doctor relationship to date.” Planned Parenthood is the only abortion provider in South Dakota:

“Every reputable researcher and medical organization has determined that there is no sound scientific evidence that shows a cause and effect relationship between abortion and suicide,” said Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of PPMNS, in a statement. “This law, upheld by the court today, is just one of many reprehensible barriers that South Dakota politicians are determined to impose on women seeking safe and legal health care.”

The four dissenting judges argued that the most reliable evidence presented shows that there is no causal relationship between abortion and suicide and determined that the suicide advisory violates patient’s due process rights and doctor’s free speech rights.

What will happen if the case is appealed and heard in the U.S. Supreme Court is an open question. In Gonzales v. Carhart, the court’s most recent abortion decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, relied on paternalistic reasoning to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortions. Kennedy fretted about the mental health risks of abortion, noting that “some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.” Kennedy’s decision resulted in a variety of state laws aimed at restricting or eliminating abortion rights in the guise of protecting women. In fact, abortion rights supporters are so wary of the risk of challenging unconstitutional abortion restrictions and losing at the Supreme Court that they have opted not to challenge many of them.

–Alex Brown