At the DNC Thursday night, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) recounted his fight for voting rights, the progress made, and the continued threat to ensuring the right to vote for all Americans. Lewis, who still bears scars from beatings in his struggle for racial equality told the DNC audience “we have come too far together to ever turn back.” Yet he warned that Republican-led voter suppression laws are taking America back in that direction:

Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back? Or do you want to keep America moving forward? My dear friends, your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union. Not too long ago, people stood in unmovable lines. They had to pass a so-called literacy test, pay a poll tax. On one occasion, a man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion, one was asked to count the jelly beans in a jar—all to keep them from casting their ballots.

Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state.” That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not just.

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Courts recently struck down a series of voter suppression tactics spearheaded by Republicans in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. Republicans defend many of these tactics as necessary to fight “voter fraud,” but the kinds of voter fraud addressed by the GOP’s favorite tactics are less common than people getting struck by lightning.

The University of Oregon is initiating mandatory random drug testing of all of its student athletes this fall. The new temporary policy, which will be reviewed by the university following a public hearing next month, was spurred by an article in ESPN The Magazine that reported high rates of marijuana use on the school’s football team.

Under the new rule, the university may test for both recreational and performance-enhancing drugs, with the following parameters:

Now, all student-athletes are subject to “unannounced random drug testing throughout the entire year, including summer sessions,” according to the proposed changes. A random number system is being used to select student-athletes, who will receive “little or no notice” about a test. […]

The athletic department will continue to test for illicit substances and performance-enhancing drugs. Tests will be done “through independent laboratory analysis of urine or oral fluid samples,” according to the proposal.

The department’s penalty system for a failed drug test remains the same.

The failed test for illicit drugs results in mandatory counseling, substance abuse education and psychological evaluation. A second failed test results in the player signing a behavioral modification contract. A third failed test results in suspension for 50 percent of the season. A fourth failed test results in dismissal from the team and forfeiture of scholarship.

If made permanent, the policy would replace the school’s current approach of testing only “on the basis of individualized reasonable suspicion” – language that mirrors the constitutional requirement for conducting a “search” under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Typically, the Constitution only permits searches when there is at least “individualized reasonable suspicion” that a particular person is engaged in wrongdoing. Only under special circumstances are states exempt from this requirement, and it is not clear that any such circumstance applies here.

While the Supreme Court upheld mandatory drug testing for high school athletes, who are deemed children subject to protection by the schools, and for those whose jobs pose a significant threat to public safety, it has not recognized a similar exception for adult students. And although college officials may disagree about whether recreational marijuana use is beneficial to college athletes, it is difficult to imagine what sort of imminent public safety threat it poses.

Just last year, a Missouri federal judge blocked a policy that would have imposed mandatory drug testing on all college students at Linn State Technical College. That ruling came just a day after a federal judge in Florida blocked the state’s mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients — one of several decisions to strike down random drug testing in other contexts.

UO, however, would not be the first public university to implement such a policy. And the NCAA has its own drug-testing policy, which includes mandatory testing only at NCAA championship events and football games.

Students at Towson University are pushing for the right to create a “White Student Union” on campus to celebrate white culture and “create a safe space” for victimized white students, according to would-be founder Matthew Heimbach.

Heimbach used to be the president of Towson’s Youth for Western Civilization chapter, which was disbanded in March 2012 after members scrawled “White Pride” all over campus. He now insists that a White Student Union is not about white supremacy, but akin to a black student union or an LGBT group. Heimbach told the Towson newspaper that white students face discrimination at the university:

We essentially want to replicate what every student union does on campus. You have a Black student Union who promotes black heroes, we want to do the same thing. We’d also want to create a safe space for members who have filed hate/bias reports and who have had anti-white language used against them. Especially the female members who have heard ‘cracker’ and ‘honkie,’ and nothing has ever come of it. It’s a support network for a campus that is hostile toward white students.

Heimbach’s former club called itself a “right wing youth movement” fighting “radical multiculturism.” He claims 17 students have approached him with interest in a White Student Union, and he has met with the Student Government Association adviser about the club’s potential.

One of the few silver linings on the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United was its holding that — although corporations are now free to spend as much money as they want to elect their preferred candidates — such spending could still be subject to disclosure laws so long as those laws bear a “substantial relation” to “‘providing the electorate with information’ about the sources of election-related spending.” The most Republican federal court of appeals in the country just wiped away much of this silver lining, however, striking down a Minnesota law requiring corporations seeking to buy elections to register their political fund and make regular public disclosures of its activities.

In an opinion joined by six of the court’s Republican appointees, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit effectively reduced the Supreme Court’s endorsement of disclosure laws into a ban on disclosure rules that corporations might find inconvenient:

Perhaps most onerous is the ongoing reporting requirement. Once initiated, the requirement is potentially perpetual regardless of whether the association ever again makes an independent expenditure. The reporting requirements apparently end only if the association dissolves the political fund. To dissolve the political fund, the association must first settle the political fund’s debts, dispose of its assets valued in excess of $100—including physical assets and credit balances—and file a termination report with the Board. Of course, the association’s constitutional right to speak through independent expenditures dissolves with the political fund. To speak again, the association must initiate the bureaucratic process again.

Under Minnesota’s regulatory regime, an association is compelled to decide whether exercising its constitutional right is worth the time and expense of entering a long-term morass of regulatory red tape.

The plaintiffs in this case were represented by GOP anti-campaign finance crusader James Bopp, who frequently represents anti-abortion and anti-gay groups. One of the likely consequences of Bopp’s victory is that corporate donors seeking to promote an anti-gay ballot initiative seeking to write marriage discrimination into the Minnesota constitution will not be subject to disclosure.

Five judges, including three Republicans, dissented from this expansion of Citizens United. In the Citizens United opinion itself, only Justice Thomas broke with the Court’s endorsement of disclosure laws. Thomas also believes that national child labor laws are unconstitutional.

Thirty-six years after then-candidate Jimmy Carter campaigned on the decriminalization of marijuana, federal drug policy hasn’t softened much at all, to the dismay of former Carter drug policy advisor Dr. Peter Bourne.

In a rare interview, he says the Obama administration’s approach to marijuana is “totally insane.” He thinks “they should be bolder,” urging Congress to decriminalize and considering an executive order if necessary. Currently, what they’re doing—raiding medical-marijuana dispensaries, defending pot’s classification as a drug as bad as meth—“doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Bourne, who calls himself the original “drug czar,” also says the federal government should take a hands-off approach in the states, where he is heartened by a burst of progress. Current polling in Colorado and Washington suggests that ballot initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana may succeed, while 17 states support medical marijuana, and 12 “now treat a personal stash like a minor traffic offense.”