Two national law enforcement organizations representing black and Latino police officers announced their support yesterday for the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in Colorado.

The endorsements by Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and the National Latino Officers Association of Amendment 64, which proposes to regulate marijuana like alcohol, were accompanied by a letter signed by law enforcement officials from around Colorado:

As police officers, judges, prosecutors, corrections officials and others who have labored to enforce the laws that seek to prohibit marijuana use, and who have witnessed the abysmal failure of this current criminalization approach, we stand together in calling for new laws that will effectively regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. […]

As law enforcement professionals, we especially want voters to understand that responsible regulation will allow us to do our jobs more effectively and safely. When we change our marijuana laws, police officers will no longer have to waste time on low-level marijuana arrests. As public safety is our primary concern, we look forward to the passage of this initiative, which will allow our criminal justice system to focus on protecting the public from violent crime. […]

Controlling marijuana through a regulated system will fundamentally assist in keeping the substance away from juveniles. Illegal dealers have no incentive to check IDs or avoid selling to juveniles, but under state regulation for adult use, licensed marijuana entities will face penalties and consequences that will effectively deter underage sales. Indeed, a recent study from Columbia University shows that teens currently find it easier to purchase illegal marijuana than age-regulated alcohol.

Other groups that have already endorsed the initiative include the Colorado/Montana/Wyoming NAACP Conference, the Colorado Democratic Party and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. Initiatives to legalize marijuana are also on the November ballot in Washington and Oregon.

In a recent poll by the Denver Post, more than half of likely voters said they support the measure. But opposition to the bill is mounting, now that a group funded primarily by strip-mall magnate Melvin Sembler, who was the fundraising chair for Mitt Romney in 2008, has launched a campaign to drive down support for the measure. Sembler and his wife Betty once oversaw a chain of drug abuse treatment centers for teens, at which allegations have emerged of beatings, rape and psychological abuse.

For nearly two years, House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) has tried to exploit the tragedy of a series of botched gun stings that led to a federal law enforcement agent’s death in order to score political points against Attorney General Eric Holder. The gun stings that are the focus of Issa’s witchhunt against Holder began when George W. Bush was president and Holder was an attorney in private practice. Nevertheless, Issa eventually forced the House Republican leadership to hold a contempt of Congress vote against Holder, although the leaders buried that vote on the same day that the Affordable Care Act was upheld in a likely attempt to prevent Issa’s witchhunt from receiving much media coverage.

After numerous hearings and, of course, the contempt vote, the Department of Justice’s inspector general released a 471 page report that cleared Holder of any wrongdoing. And yet Issa still plans to continue his crusade against the now-exonerated cabinet official:

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is vowing to continue pursuing Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt of Congress citation in court and said the report is all the more reason to continue his own probe with new zeal.

Issa will “absolutely” continue pursuing the civil lawsuit attempting to compel Holder to hand over more documents about the gun-running investigation, spokesman Frederick Hill said.

Hill said the findings of the IG report and some of its loose ends “only enhances the importance of the House moving forward in its civil action against President [Barack Obama's] flawed claim of executive privilege.”

The same categories of documents being sought in the suit, which were at the heart of the contempt citation, were reviewed by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Obama did not assert executive privilege to prevent him from obtaining the documents

As ThinkProgess explained last February, Issa’s continued efforts to politicize this tragedy come at a very real cost: “When Issa drags Holder before a House committee for four hours to be nothing more than a pawn in an elaborate game set up to embarrass President Obama, that means many more hours — most likely days — that Holder and other key Justice Department officials must spent prepping for their role in Issa’s withhunt. Every minute they spend preparing for this witchhunt is a minute they cannot spend ensuring that the law is fairly enforced, that national security officials in DOJ have the tools they need to operate, or that dangerous criminals are tracked down and prosecuted.”

This week’s Inspector General report was no whitewash. It recommended discipline against 14 DOJ officials and found “a pattern of serious failures” associated with the gun stings. In other words, it proves that Holder’s Justice Department is fully capable of examining its own dirty laundry and determining which officials need to be disciplined or removed because they performed their job poorly. Issa’s witchhunt does little more than distract from this important effort.

Earlier this week, every single sitting Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice rejected a lower court decision allowing that state’s voter ID law to take effect. Four justices joined a majority opinion requiring the lower court judge to look at the case again due to concerns that voters were unable to obtain the IDs they were supposed to have easy access to as a matter of law, and two more justices joined a dissent arguing that the law should simply be suspended right away. Three of the justices in the majority were Republicans.

Nevertheless, a Tea Party group is now threatening to exact revenge upon the state supreme court for refusing to uphold a law that prevents many low-income, student and minority voters from casting a ballot:

A Philadelphia-area tea party group says it will work to defeat two state Supreme Court justices next year if the state’s new voter identification law isn’t in effect for the Nov. 6 election.

The Independence Hall Tea Party on Thursday also criticized the court’s decision to send a legal challenge to the law back for a lower court review.

It called the decision “a cowardly move” to “punt the ball.”

Chief Justice Ronald Castille, a Republican, and Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, are each finishing a 10-year term in January 2014.

These kinds of campaigns of vengeance against justices who place the law ahead of conservative’s policy preferences are increasingly common. Two years ago, a Florida Tea Party group launched a similar revenge campaign after the Florida Supreme Court kept an unconstitutional ballot initiative attempting to nullify the Affordable Care Act off the state ballot. Similarly, anti-gay groups poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a successful effort to remove three Iowa supreme court justices because they had the audacity to recognize that the state’s constitution does not permit discrimination against gay couples.

As a recent Center for American Progress report explains, corporate interest groups have also spent big money to stack state judiciaries with friendly judges and justices. In one of the most egregious cases, a West Virginia coal baron spent $3 million to buy a seat on the state supreme court for a justice who later went on to strike down a $50 million verdict against his company, although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the bought-and-paid-for justice should have recused himself.