A federal district judge rejected this weekend a racially charged challenge to a Louisiana Supreme Court justice’s seniority that has threatened Justice Bernette Johnson’s path to becoming the court’s first black chief justice.

Johnson, who was appointed to the court as part of a settlement over civil rights violations under the Voting Rights Act, has been serving on the court longer than any other judge, and was prepared under the state’s seniority system to take on the court’s top spot when Chief Justice Catherine Kimball retires. An eighth seat was initially added to the court to address racial disparities. Even today, Johnson is the only black Supreme Court justice in a state in which nearly one third of residents are black. But because the state Constitution capped the number of justices at seven, Johnson was appointed to the appellate court, though she served as a member of the high court for her entire tenure.

When Kimball announced she would retire, some of Johnson’s colleagues alleged that because Johnson was initially appointed as a judge on the state’s appellate court and was only later elected directly to the Supreme Court, her first years serving on the court did not count towards her seniority. But Johnson sued in federal court, seeking enforcement of the initial consent decree. District Judge Susie Morgan sided with Johnson, finding that the consent judgment calls for her six years serving the court as an eighth member “to be credited to her for all purposes under Louisiana law.” Morgan also rejected arguments that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the issue.

The ruling is subject to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, should Johnson’s fellow justices choose to escalate their efforts to disqualify Justice Johnson from her court’s center chair.

In advance of his speech yesterday at the Democratic National Convention touting how President Obama’s policies have improved the lives of younger voters, the Obama campaign released video of actor-turned-former-White-House-staffer Kal Penn reprising his role as Kumar Patel from the Harold & Kumar movies. The video prompted Yahoo News reporter Chris Moody to ask Penn about the Obama Administration’s marijuana policy. Unfortunately, Penn’s answer was not particularly well-informed:

PENN: I think that the president’s been pretty consistent with that. He’s not in favor of legalization, we should be open about something like that. But what the president has done is take a really smart look at the Department of Justice and said, given the fact that the federal government has limited resources, we should be allocating them toward violent criminals and not towards non-violent criminals. We can see that not just in things like marijuana but in things like immigration reform where he’s going after and deporting violent criminals and making sure that if you’re a Dream Act eligible student that you know that you can apply for your deferred status. Wherever the federal government has an appropriate role, I think the president’s been very consistent in that. That’s something that I think folks should know.

There was a time when Penn’s statement was correct. In 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued what is now commonly referred to as the “Ogden Memo.” In it, Ogden announced that federal prosecutors “should not focus federal resources . . . on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” Thus, if a state permits individuals to grow their own marijuana for personal medical use, DOJ would not prosecute them. The memo also announced that federal officials should not focus on people who provide marijuana to patients in compliance with state law — prosecuting “those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”

Less than two years later, however, DOJ significantly walked back the Ogden Memo. A 2011 directive from new Deputy Attorney General James Cole reiterated that “it is likely not an efficient use of federal resources to focus enforcement efforts on individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or their caregivers,” but it also defined “caregiver” narrowly to exclude “commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana.” In the wake of the Cole Memo, several United States Attorneys offices brought federal law to bear against marijuana dispensaries — even dispensaries in full compliance with state law.

Even if it were desirable for every medical marijuana patient in the country to grow their own cannabis at home, for many patients it is simply not practical. Dispensaries, many of which are non-profit co-ops, are the only feasible option for many patients to obtain treatment prescribed to them by a physician and authorized by state law. These patients no doubt wish they lived in the world Penn described, but they do not anymore.

Last week, the Republican Party released a party platform which treats the Constitution as if it were a manifesto composed by Paul Ryan himself. The GOP platform would declare Medicaid unconstitutional. It inflates the Second Amendment into a license to obtain weapons of mass murder. It lavishes love on Citizens United, hates on Roe v. Wade, and tells gay Americans they can forget about that whole “equal protection of the laws” thing. Oh, and just in case there are any judges out there who can tell the difference between the Constitution and a Tea Party pamphlet, the GOP platform floats impeachment as the solution. Altogether, the GOP platform devotes six pages to its abomination of the Constitution.

The Democratic platform, by contrast, mentions the Constitution by name just five times — once to endorse a constitutional amendment permitting campaign finance reform, twice to tout the party’s support of faith-based initiatives, once to promise judicial appointees who show “faithfulness to our law and our Constitution,” and once to state that our homeland security policy “must always be in line with our Constitution.” There’s also an endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment — an important symbolic goal, but, thanks to the good work of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one that would provide women with few rights they do not already enjoy under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. There’s an endorsement of Roe. And there’s a statement that Democrats “will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.” Where the GOP platform lays out a comprehensive rewrite of America’s most important document, casting aside the founders’ vision for a meaner society in which powerful interest groups can flourish, the Democratic platform barely mentions the document at all — and when it does it normally only does so in passing.

A little more than two years ago, Republican lawmakers filed a series of lawsuits challenging President Obama’s signature health care law. The lawsuits were widely mocked, even by leading conservative legal scholars, and for good reason. In the words of one leading conservative judge, the legal assault on health reform had no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.”

Then Republicans bombarded the cable news shows with talking heads denouncing the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality. Op-ed pages swelled with peons to the GOP’s fake constitution. Candidates praised the lawsuits on the campaign trail. And Democratic officials were virtually silent on the law’s constitutionality in response. Within just a couple of years, the GOP’s PR blitz turned a joke of a legal argument into one four Supreme Court justices were willing to sign their name to — and a fifth agreed to almost in its entirety.

The Democratic platform’s near silence on the Constitution shows that Democrats still have not learned their lesson. If one party touts nonsense, and the other is silent, then nonsense will begin to sound reasonable to American voters who have no other alternative.

As a stark reminder of the dominance Republicans have achieved in election spending since the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United, two anti-Obama groups spent a combined total of about $10 million per week to buy the White House for Mitt Romney during the later part of last month. The Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and Romney super PAC Restore Our Future spent about $23.4 million during the second half of August — outspending pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action nearly 10 to 1.

This flood of Republican spending matches the post-Citizens United trend of increased Republican dominance of the airwaves:

The state of Virginia has unusually lax laws governing permits to carry a concealed firearm. Moreover, eight states allow persons with a Virginia permit to carry a concealed firearm even if they do not have a permit from their home state. As a result, “Virginia State Police issued 1,632 concealed-carry permits to nonresidents through the first half of 2012, topping the previous year’s total of 1,321 nonresident permits.”

Indeed, Virginia’s laws are so lax that companies which offer legally-mandated training to concealed carry permit holders have begun advertising Virginia classes to out-of-state customers, emphasizing how easy their training is to complete:

Their home states may impose more stringent requirements, he tells prospects, but they can get a Virginia permit simply by paying $39.99, reading five chapters about firearms and correctly answering 15 of 20 true-or-false questions on a quiz. The customer receives a certificate to be mailed along with other application materials to the Virginia State Police. After passing a criminal background check, the applicant receives a permit to carry a concealed weapon in his or her home state and 26 others that have reciprocity agreements with Virginia.

Customers can take the test up to four times if they have trouble passing, the man in the video says, adding: “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
Sample questions on the website seem to bear that out. . . .

A competing online training course offered by the Concealed Carry Institute at www.concealed-carry.net also concludes with a 20-question quiz, mixing true-false with multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank formats. The institute says more than 99.9 percent of customers pass the test the first time they take it.

One of the NRA’s top priorities in Congress is a bill that would force nearly every state to honor concealed carry permits issued in the bearer’s home state, no matter how lax that state’s laws may be.

A coalition of religious and conservative organizations filed a lawsuit attempting to stop a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana before it comes to a vote in November. The Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values, which filed the lawsuit in the state Supreme Court on Friday, includes Larry Page of the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council, Jerry Cox of the Family Council Action Committee, Bill Wheeler and Alan Talburt of Families First Foundation, and Bob Hester of the Arkansas Family Coalition.

In August, medical marijuana legalization advocates turned in a petition with 74,000 signatures, well over the number required to get the issue on the ballot. Now, opponents of the initiative are calling it “bad law based on bad science” and “one hundred percent illegal.”

Medical marijuana has been legalized in 17 states and the District of Columbia, but Arkansas is the first Southern state to push the issue. Many medical groups have called for an easing of marijuana restrictions, which are currently hindering research into its therapeutic value. The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have called for a federal review of its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no health benefits.