Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

The one silver lining in this arrangement was that the Senate continued to confirm district court judges, the lowest rank of federal judge who enjoys lifetime tenure. Now, however, even the slow trickle of new district court confirmations appears to be on the brink of shutting down. Earlier today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked an effort to confirm 17 district judges, 14 of whom cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee via voice vote — a process normally limited to the most uncontroversial nominees. McConnell instead floated the possibility that the senate might confirm just two more nominees at some point in the future.

As Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) explained, this kind of obstruction is nothing new. According to Reid, two-thirds of the trial judges that were actually confirmed this year were nonetheless subject to a filibuster:

Historically the Senate has considered district court nominees as late as October in presidential election years. In the past five presidential election years, Democrats have never blocked a district court nominee from receiving a vote on the Senate floor. Never. But our Republican colleagues are setting new standards for obstruction. Not only in all the legislation, but in judges. Of the 28 district court nominees we’ve considered this year, I’ve filed cloture nineteen times. In other words, we’ve had to break a Republican filibuster on 67 percent of the district judges we’ve considered and confirmed. President Obama’s district court nominees have been forced to wait 300 percent more than President Bush’s nominees. Three times more.

Watch it:

In January, when newly-elected senators take their seats, a brief window will open up that will enable Reid to abolish or reform the filibuster with a simple majority vote. If he remains Majority Leader when that happens, it will be his best opportunity to end this kind of obstructionism forever.

An initiative to repeal the two-month-old ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles garnered enough verified signatures this week to force a vote on the issue, reaffirming the strong popular support for legalizing medical marijuana.

Officials told the Los Angeles Times last month that the immediate effect of certifying the referendum would be suspension of the ban, but just as the announcement came, the city attorney’s office pledged to continue cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries. Although marijuana is prohibited under federal law, California passed a ballot initiative in 1996 to allow physicians to recommend marijuana to their patients for medical purposes. Since then, over 1,000 medical marijuana shops have sprung up across L.A., and the city council claims the sheer number of dispensaries has made them impossible to effectively regulate.

Also compromising the state law allowing medical marijuana are federal efforts to crack down on marijuana dispensaries, including the largest dispensary, Harborside Health Center, with locations in Oakland and San Jose, California.

Now that opponents of the ban have gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, the city council can choose to proceed in one of three ways: it can repeal the ordinance or replace it with a different version, call a special election to vote on the issue, or put the measure on the March 5 ballot, when residents will vote on city officials.

Proponents of medical marijuana are holding protests today at 15 “Obama for America” offices in 8 states, seeking to elevate Obama’s harsh stance on medical marijuana as a campaign issue. According to Americans for Safe Access, the Obama Department of Justice has sought to enforce federal drug law by conducting more than 200 raids on medical marijuana businesses, even in states where these facilities are legal, and even as beneficiaries of medical marijuana have highlighted the needless harm imposed when dispensaries are shut down.

GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has flip-flopped on support for medical marijuana, saying it’s up to the states to decide, before later changing his position to say that he “agrees with Mitt Romney that marijuana should never be legalized.” Romney has promised to fight marijuana legalization “tooth and nail.”

The Sheriff’s statements frequently assume that Latinos in Alamance County are undocumented immigrants and are involved in criminal activity. For example, in one widely publicized statement, in the course of discussing undocumented immigrants, Sheriff Johnson suggested that anyone of Mexican national origin was inherently suspicious, saying: ‘Their values are a lot different — their morals — than what we have here. In Mexico, there’s nothing wrong with having sex with a 12-, 13- year old girl. … They do a lot of drinking down in Mexico.” The Sheriff also uses derogatory epithets — such as the phrase “taco eaters” — when referring to Latinos in speaking with his staff, and his command staff tolerates the use of derogatory racial and ethnic epithets by ACSO deputies and correctional officers. Further, the Sheriff and other ACSO command staff have explicitly directed deputies to target Latinos during enforcement actions.

A group of conservative politicians and officials is joining the call to abolish the death penalty in Montana, citing exorbitant costs and a recent court decision that found the state’s lethal injection procedure unconstitutional.

“The ruling shines a bright light on the ineffectiveness and inefficiencies associated with capital punishment,” said Steve Dogiakos, director of Montana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. “Couple that with strong conservative leadership on the issue, and we are optimistic that we will abolish the death penalty in 2013.”

In 2009 and again in 2011, the state legislature took up measures to abolish the death penalty, which were passed by the Senate, but never made it out of the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee. The state legislature can once again consider the issue in 2013, and complying with the court’s ruling on execution protocol will likely also require action by the legislature.

The court ruling by Montana District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock halted executions until the state fixes several procedural issues, including designating someone with more medical training to determine whether the inmate being executed is unconscious, and requiring the person who administers the injection to have experience with IVs.

Rather than pass a limited bill to comply with this ruling, Montana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is urging the legislature to use this as an opportunity to eliminate the death penalty entirely, given that past efforts to “fix” the death penalty have failed.

As the conservative political group points out on its website, conservatives around the country have expressed concern about capital punishment, including Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TEX) and columnist George Will.

No comprehensive study has been conducted on the costs of Montana’s death penalty, but the sponsors of the 2011 abolition bill estimated that capital punishment costs six to seven times more than life in prison without parol, while previous studies in other states have estimated that the death penalty costs up to ten times more than life sentences. A new study in California, where a proposal to eliminate the death penalty is on the ballot this November, found that capital punishment would cost the state between $5.4 and $7.7 billion more between now and 2050 than if those in death row were sentenced to life in prison without parole. The study cited the costs of individual appeals and lethal injection litigation, as well higher incarceration costs due to increased security and other requirements.

MQ-9 Reaper Drone (Photo: Senior Airman Larry E. Reid Jr./USAF)

• A federal appeals court in Washington hears arguments today on whether the CIA was entitled to withhold documents about drone strikes used to carry out targeted killings. The ACLU requested the records under the Freedom of Information Act.
• The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the map of congressional districts that was drawn by the D.C. District Court, which found that Texas’ own map diluted the voting power of blacks and Latinos in violation of the Voting Rights Act. A Hispanic civil rights group argued the new map was also discriminatory.
• A Texas state court temporarily halted an order to purge presumably dead voters from the registration rolls. And a Florida judge declined to throw out a challenge to that state’s voter purge.
• Federal officials are taking over the social services programs in Spirit Lake Sioux tribe in North Dakota, aiming to curb the disproportionately high rate of sex offenders and to address reported failure to investigate dozens of cases of child sex abuse, including rape.
• Which right is mentioned most often in the U.S. Constitution? Garrett Epps has the answer.