As if the usual cost, transportation, and other logistical obstacles to obtaining a photo ID under Pennsylvania’s restrictive new law weren’t enough to keep as many as 750,000 state citizens from the polls, 105-year-old Alice Carlson encountered an extra hurdle last week: her age.

Carlson, a former secretary for the New York City public schools who secured a ride to the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles with state Rep. Mario Scavello, was told when she arrived that the computer system could not recognize ages above 104. After a 90-minute wait, and strong advocacy from Scavello, DOT officials devised a work-around and granted her an ID.

Two days later, the PennDOT responded to the incident by announcing a paper-based procedure for voters older than 104. But most voters will not have an elected official by their sides when they encounter a problem obtaining a photo ID, and this episode exemplifies the state’s ill-preparedness to handle the logistical burden of providing residents voter ID. Even Scavello, a Republican legislator who supports the photo ID law, said after the incident, “I guess they don’t really expect 105-year-old folks to come in for an ID.”

Although the stated purpose of the law is to combat voter fraud, Pennsylvania has admitted there are “no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” and that they “do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.” Nationwide, research has found that voters are 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud at the polls, and 3,500 times more likely to report a UFO encounter.

A state court judge recently upheld the photo ID requirement as a proper exercise of the legislature’s authority, but the Supreme Court will review the law Sept. 13.

Meanwhile, this law and others around the country are threatening to disfranchise many poor, minority and elderly voters.

A poll taken before the Republican National Convention last week finds that voters were less interested in GOP candidates’ Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan’s speeches, and far more interested in what the party’s platform might say. Fifty-two percent of voters expressed interest in the party platform, while only 46 expressed interest in Ryan’s speech and 44 in Romney’s speech.

The good news for the GOP is that the relative lack of interest in speeches suggests that voters may forgive Clint Eastwood’s argument with an empty chair intended to represent President Obama. The bad news for the GOP is that they are likely to notice the “most conservative platform in modern history.” The GOP platform declares Medicare unconstitutional. It claims the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United does not go far enough in allowing powerful corporations and billionaires to influence elections. It declares war on porn. It calls for a constitutional amendment to make tax increases virtually impossible. It floats “impeachment” as a solution to judges the GOP opposes. And it takes the Todd Akin/Paul Ryan position that rape survivors should be forced to carry their rapist’s baby to term.

At a panel during last week’s Republican National Convention, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) strongly suggested that he believes Medicare is unconstitutional — before going on to say that its constitutionality doesn’t matter so long as it is used to achieve conservative ends. Burgess’ comment arose during a discussion of whether the Constitution permits the federal government to enact broad tort reform legislation:

The other problem that we have is the — I don’t want to say it is a problem — but the Tenth Amendment. If we do something at the federal level that changes law at the courthouse, at the state level, that is problematic. . . .

I do like the concept, and, uh, this is something I’ve talked about for a long time. Medicare is a federal system. They’ve already violated the Tenth Amendment so many times that everybody’s immune to it. So if you have, in the Medicare system, a separate liability system where doctors are covered under the Federal Tort Claims Act like they are in federally qualified health centers, you could remove that balance item off the doctor’s balance sheets.

Watch it:

To decode this a bit, tort reform has long been a major goal of conservative policy makers who claim, despite significant evidence to the contrary, that it would decrease health costs for ordinary Americans. Unfortunately for tort reformers, many of their conservative allies also believe (falsely) that federal tort reform violates the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Burgess suggests squaring this circle by somehow laundering tort reform through Medicare — such as by having one set of medical malpractice laws for care paid for by Medicare and another, entirely separate system for other care. In Burgess’ words, this would avoid the Tenth Amendment problem conservatives imagine because Medicare “already violated the Tenth Amendment so many times that everybody’s immune to it.”

So there you have it. Burgess seems to think Medicare, or at least much of Medicare, is unconstitutional. But that’s okay, because Medicare can still be used to achieve unconstitutional ends, so long as those ends are conservative. The Constitution is the Supreme Law Of The Land — except when conservatives want it to say something else.

Last last week, the Department of Justice announced it closed a criminal investigation against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio without deciding to bring criminal charges. Although Arpaio is best known for his harsh anti-immigrant practices and for widespread allegations of anti-Latino racism, the closed investigation dealt with relatively minor allegations. One subject of the investigation was whether Arpaio’s office misused county credit cards. Another was whether Arpaio spent public funds earmarked for one purpose on different, unrelated projects. The most serious allegation at issue in the now-dropped investigation involved a politically-motivated prosecution against two officials and a judge who were at odds with Arpaio.

Unsurprisingly, Arpaio celebrated DOJ’s announcement with a gloating press conference, declaring that federal officials “cleared my office of any abuse of power or wrongdoing that has been going on for years, and publicized almost every week for three years by the news media and critics.” His celebration is premature. Here’s why Arpaio should not break out the champagne yet:

• DOJ’s Civil Rights Case Against Arpaio Remains Live: Many of the most serious allegations against Arpaio are encompassed by the Justice Department’s civil rights lawsuit against the anti-immigrant sheriff. DOJ’s complaint details systemic lawlessness and abuse of Latinos by Arpaio and his officers, including forcing women prisoners to sleep in their own menstrual blood, an alleged assault against a pregnant woman, and widespread racial profiling and use of racial slurs.
• The Criminal Investigation Against Arpaio Began Under Bush: When he is not touting discredited claims that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake, Arpaio likes to dismiss the Obama Administration’s charges against him as “a political witch hunt.” Unfortunately for Arpaio, DOJ’s criminal investigation against him began under George W. Bush.
• Arpaio’s Allies Have Not Escaped Accountability: Although DOJ decided not to bring federal criminal charges against Arpaio or his allies for politically motivated prosecutions, Arizona courts have not been so kind. Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, a top Arpaio ally, was disbarred for targeting the same political enemies at issue in the DOJ probe.

Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), the candidate for Senate from North Dakota, once voted for a bill that would have made any woman who obtained an abortion guilty of a homicide crime — even if it were in the case of rape or incest. Indeed, the bill Berg supported does not even contain an explicit exception if an abortion is necessary to save the woman’s life.

In 2007, Berg was among the small number of state representatives in the North Dakota House who supported the measure. It also would have imposed penalties on doctors and anyone else who “aids, abets, facilitates, solicits, or incites” a person into an abortion:

A new section to chapter 12.1-16 of the North Dakota Century Code is created and enacted as follows:

Intentional termination of human life – Preborn children. A person is guilty of a class AA felony if the person intentionally destroys or terminates the life of a preborn child. A person that knowingly administers to, prescribes for, procures for, or sells to any pregnant individual any medicine, drug, device, or other substance with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of a preborn child is guilty of a class AA felony. A person that intentionally or knowingly aids, abets, facilitates, solicits, or incites a person to intentionally destroy or terminate the life of a preborn child is guilt of a class C felony. For purposes of this section, “preborn child” includes a human being from the moment of fertilization until the moment of birth.

A class AA felony carries a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole in North Dakota. Chapter 12.1-16 of the North Dakota Century Code is the section of that state’s law that covers homicide crimes such as murder or manslaughter.

Although one news outlet claims that Berg’s bill contains an exception “when the life of the mother is endangered” such an exception does not appear in the bill’s text. The language of the bill quoted above creates a new homicide crime without any exceptions whatsoever. It is possible that a woman who obtained an abortion to save her life could invoke a provision of North Dakota law permitting self-defense to prevent “imminent unlawful bodily injury, sexual assault, or detention,” although even this is not certain because a life-threatening pregnancy is not “unlawful.”

Berg was quick to denounce the comments of a fellow Senate Candidate, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), when he claimed that a woman couldn’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” Berg called the statement “insulting and reprehensible,” and “condemn[ed] them in the strongest terms possible.” But the assertion that a rape victim should be put in jail for not wanting to carry the child of her rapist is equally abhorrent. It is also largely unpopular — though the country is often split on abortion rights, 75 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in the case of rape or incest.

On Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First” Tuesday, host Ainsley Earhardt accused Democrats of a “double standard” because they oppose voter ID laws but also are requiring IDs as one of the security measures in effect to protect the President’s safety at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

She said:

EARHARDT: Talk about a double standard. Some Democrats say it’s wrong for some to ask someone to show a photo ID before going to the voting booth to prevent voter fraud. But apparently it’s a-okay to ask for IDs to get inside the DNC. Journalists covering the convention have to show an ID not once, not twice, but three times. ID is required at the security entrance when receiving press credentials and also for credentials covering the events for the last night which is when President Obama will be speaking. Attorney General Eric Holder has sued to prevent states from implementing the id laws claiming they are unfair to minorities.

Watch the video:

In a short space, Fox News manages to mislead in several ways. First of all, it draws a false equivalence between the constitutionally protected right to vote and admission of journalists to a private political event. Second, it equates “some Democrats” who oppose voter suppression with the security team which is the U.S. Secret Service. In fact, the Secret Service also provides protection for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and no doubt insisted on the same security measures. Finally, it attempts to tie this all into Attorney General Holder, who is legally bound to enforce the Voting Rights Act which prohibits laws which might restrict the constitutionally protected right of minorities to vote, especially in areas with a history of racial discrimination.

Requiring photo ID at polling places would do virtually noting to protect against voter fraud, even if it were a real problem. But letting the Secret Service do its job to protect the presidential nominees used to be something even Fox News understood.