Drug-sniffing dogs have been a staple of police work for years, particularly because courts have historically given police broad discretion to use the dogs. But two challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday are questioning the limits of dog sniffs, arguing that police have gone too far in allowing drug-sniffing dogs to go anywhere — even to private homes — and to justify anything — even a search of someone’s car.

In one of the two cases before the court, police used the “alert” that a dog gives when it detects drugs as the basis for conducting a warrantless search of a car during a traffic stop. The Supreme Court already held in 2005 that police could use a drug-sniffing dog during a traffic stop without any probable cause. In this case, police seek to take that a step further and allow that sniff alone to justify a subsequent search. Police have typically argued that the risks associated with drug dogs are small, because they are only sniffing for illegal substances, and are not revealing any other private information. But a drug sniff imposes new risks when it justifies a much broader search of a vehicle – particularly when that dog’s findings are not particularly reliable. As Justice David Souter pointed out in his dissent in the 2005 case, the olfactory skills of dogs are not as reliable as they are widely presumed to be:

The infallible dog … is a creature of legal fiction. Although the Supreme Court of Illinois did not get into the sniffing averages of drug dogs, their supposed infallibility is belied by judicial opinions describing well-trained animals sniffing and alerting with less than perfect accuracy, whether owing to errors by their handlers, the limitations of the dogs themselves, or even the pervasive contamination of currency by cocaine. … In practical terms, the evidence is clear that the dog that alerts hundreds of times will be wrong dozens of times.

Souter cites a range of cases showing that the false positive rates for drug dogs can be as high as 60 percent. What’s more, there are no national standards for acceptable success rates nor for what type of training is sufficient, leaving open the possibility that a drug-sniffing dog is sometimes just a cover for widespread searches that could not otherwise be justified by police.

In the second case the justices are considering, the issue is whether any probable cause is needed to justify a dog sniff search at the front door of a person’s private home. Although the dog is not permitted to go inside the home, the defendants argue that the dog sniff is an embarrassing privacy invasion at a particularly sacrosanct location. What’s more, if this type of police activity is justified without any reason for suspicion, what’s to stop police from just walking down streets and through apartment buildings with drug dogs in tow?

Taken together, these two cases demonstrate the magnitude of intervention that can be justified by the presence of drug dogs in the drastically unsuccessful War on Drugs. As a constitutional matter, a practice with such a high error rate should not alone be used to justify searches with no other suspicion requirement. But as a policy matter, what is alarming is that the War on Drugs is still being used to justify increasingly invasive policing.

New FBI statistics show that more people were arrested for drugs in 2011 than for anything else, including a large proportion for mere possession of marijuana. This War on Drugs has played a significant role in earning the United States the title of highest incarceration rate in the world, while exorbitant spending on this so-called war has hardly decreased drug use.

Our guest blogger is Daniella Gibbs Leger, Vice President for New American Communities Initiatives at the Center for American Progress.

Every election cycle is different, but there are a few tried and true tactics that get pulled out every year. One of the most annoying and cynical ones is the efforts by opponents of immigration reform to put a wedge between the African American community and Latinos. NumbersUSA is an anti-immigrant group that has a history of producing racist ads aimed at causing controversy and division. They are fond of running ads portraying black people as hostile to immigration because, as their story goes, immigrants take away jobs from black people. Their goal is to pull African American support away from pro-immigration candidates and ballot initiatives like the Maryland DREAM Act.

Groups like NumbersUSA don’t let little things like the facts get in their way. For one, there is strong support for immigrants within the African American community. Earlier this year, a coalition of prominent African American clergy from across the country who supported immigration reform joined with Hispanic clergy to push for reform. In April, the NAACP and other African American groups teamed with immigration activists to not only commemorate the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, but also to speak out against Alabama’s severe, anti-immigrant HB56 law. In Maryland, 70 percent of African Americans voters support the “Dream Act.” And across the country, Black legislators have led the fight against harsh Arizona-style bills. Civil Rights leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus have stood firmly on the side of pro-immigrant groups because they understand the pain of discrimination and that racism and injustice must be fought no matter where it is found.

Second, immigration is a net positive on our economy. In just one example, if Congress actually passed the DREAM Act, the qualified undocumented immigrants who became legal residents could actually pursue higher education, get higher salaries, spend more and pay more taxes. The economic impact of this alone with be $329 billion and 1.4 million new jobs by 2030.

And third, while the Black unemployment rate is unacceptably high, it is not something that can be pinned on immigration. This isn’t something that just happened once immigration started picking up. Going back decades, Black unemployment has generally been about double that of the White population. If you look at the employment of Blacks and Whites on a graph, they will move up and down with each other, but they will never meet. It is undoubtedly true that some unscrupulous employers use the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants to undercut their existing workforce. But that is a problem addressed by enforcing labor laws against abusive employers and by reforming our immigration laws so that employers cannot lord immigration status over them.

It’s easy to point to high unemployment and the justified anxiety it creates and then launch into the blame game to further your political agenda. But if these groups were serious, we’d be having a real conversation about why African American unemployment is so high and what can be done about it. If conservative groups were really interested in bringing down the Black unemployment rate, they wouldn’t support cuts to programs that support job training or the candidates who propose them.

If there was one thing that really bothered me about the presidential debates, it was that none of them touched on the employment, wage and wealth gaps between people of color and Whites. As we race towards 2050 when there will be no clear ethnic majority in this nation, it is critical to ensure that the communities that are growing the fastest see their disparities dissipate. It’s not just beneficial to African Americans – it will help guarantee a prosperous America in the future. If NumbersUSA was really concerned about the plight of the African American worker, they would put their money into real advocacy and not racist ads. But don’t be fooled. They don’t care. They are only interested in fear mongering and pushing their anti-immigrant stance. They’re just hoping we don’t notice.

Before the Supreme Court largely upheld the Affordable Care Act against a legal challenge that had no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent,” right-wing lawmakers tried to undermine health reform through unconstitutional state laws or ballot initiatives claiming that parts of Obamacare simply did not apply in their state. The fact that these efforts violates the Constitution’s explicit text, which provides that duly enacted federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land” did not seem to bother them in the least.

Months after the Supreme Court turned away the spurious legal attacks on health reform, conservative Wyoming lawmakers are still pushing this unconstitutional effort to undermine it with a proposed state constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot next week. And their unconstitutional nullification amendment is unusually explicit about the direct conflict it presents with federal law & the Constitution:

No federal or state law, rule or administrative decision shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer or health care provider to participate in any health care system

Ultimately, these kinds of unconstitutional attacks on a entirely valid federal law are cruelest to the conservative voters who turn out to support them. If this initiative passes, many Wyomians will be left with the entirely false impression that they no longer have to comply with a federal law. Some of them may even break the law as a result. But their legal obligations under the Affordable Care Act will not change one bit, even if the proponents of this amendment deceive them into thinking they have.

Outside spending enabled by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision surpassed $840 million this election season, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Super PACs and nonprofits have lavished the bulk of these funds on Mitt Romney and Republican candidates.

Just 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 each comprised 60 percent of all the money collected by super PACs, with the top 149 donors raising $290 million. The money overwhelmingly went to produce negative ads, which ate up 88 percent of pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future’s funds, and 95 percent of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads expenditures. Pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, while far outspent by its right-wing counterparts, spent 100 percent of its $57 million on negative ads.

Nonprofit organizations also played a huge part, with GOP nonprofits outspending Democratic ones by more than 8 to 1. These nonprofits, which are allowed to keep their donors secret, injected more than $245 million in so-called “dark money” into the election.

Romney heavily drew from wealthy donors, while the Obama campaign has been buoyed by grassroots supporters. 34 percent of the Obama campaign’s donations came from individuals who gave $200 or less, while they donated just 18 percent of Romney’s funds.

But super PACs have helped the Romney campaign overcome Obama’s grassroots fundraising, as Brad Smith, Republican lawyer and former chairman of the FEC openly admitted:

[Super PACs] have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial.

Should Romney win the election, he will be deeply beholden to these large donors. A ThinkProgress analysis identified 8 of Romney’s most generous supporters, all of whom work in either finance or the energy industry.

Citizens United has also given Romney a boost by loosening up the rules preventing employers from directly talking to employees about politics. Many conservative groups and business owners are taking advantage of this new flexibility by pressuring employees into contributing to Romney’s campaign or warning them that their jobs are in jeopardy if Obama wins.

Pushback to state voter suppression campaigns has had a dramatic effect in curbing many of the worst new laws, and courts have played a particularly significant role, concludes a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice,

Since January 2011, at least 180 bills have been introduced in 41 states, but those numbers have been whittled down to 18 new laws and executive actions in 13 states that would make it harder for eligible citizens to vote this election cycle. Below are some of the major victories, from the Brennan Center’s report:

• Restrictive photo ID requirements have been blocked in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, and vetoed in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina;
• Punitive regulations of voter registration drives have been permanently blocked in Florida and vetoed in Michigan;
• Cutbacks to early voting have been blocked in Ohio and mitigated in Florida;
• A law that required documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote has been blocked in Arizona; and
• Laws that would have cut back on voter registration opportunities have been repealed in Maine and Ohio, and vetoed in Montana.

The courts played a particularly significant role in achieving this, with 11 court decisions in eight states that blocked or weakened these laws. The report explains:

Taken together, these decisions dismantle the bulk of the most restrictive new voting laws that would have been in place for the 2012 elections. The states that saw restrictive laws blocked or blunted by courts produce half the electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Without the courts, millions of citizens would have found it harder to vote. This dramatically underscores the importance of the courts in protecting Americans’ fundamental right to vote.

These decisions are noteworthy not only for their overall effect on voters but also for the sheer consistency of results. As noted, almost every court to have considered a law or policy making it harder to vote blocked or mitigated it. There are exceptions. Most notably, a federal appeals court allowed severe restrictions on voter registration drives in Texas to stand; a state appeals court upheld Tennessee’s voter ID law in October 2012. But voters have won the vast majority of cases, at least for now.

Unfortunately, many of these victories were temporary orders, or are subject to appellate review after the election. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has demonstrated hostility to voter protections — it upheld an Indiana voter ID law in 2008, holding that the state did not need to prove that voter fraud actually existed in order to justify imposing the photo ID burden on voting. The Tennessee Court of Appeals, one of the few courts not to strike down its state’s photo ID law, cited this decision in upholding the state’s law. And the Roberts Court is poised to hear two more cases this term could usher in more voter suppression.

Even in states like Pennsylvania, where the court ultimately blocked the photo ID law, misleading public education campaigns and confusion over shifting requirements have so riddled the system that it’s hard to know how many people will be deterred from visiting the polls.

The following are some of the primary legal restrictions to voting (as distinguished from informal suppression efforts) that remain in effect this election, or have already influenced this election season’s voting:

• Four states still have tighter rules for voter registration: Florida’s law was relaxed by a federal court, but this cannot take back the lost time to conduct voter registration drives. The other states are Texas, Illinois and Wisconsin.
• Five states have photo ID laws in effect, although the allowable forms of identification vary significantly. New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Virginia have laxer requirements that allow voters without ID to sign an affidavit or submit a provisional ballot. Tennessee and Kansas, however, are requiring government-issued photo ID at the ballot box. Tennessee’s law was recently upheld by a state appeals court, although the state held that library Ids were an acceptable form of identification.
• Florida, Iowa and South Dakota recently made it more difficult for citizens with past felon convictions to vote.
• Early voting opportunities have been reduced in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia, although the extent of the restrictions varies between the states.

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress reported on how the Romney campaign is training poll watchers to mislead voters in Wisconsin. Now, an election official in the Badger State has weighed in to criticize the Romney campaign’s practice of hiding their poll watchers’ affiliations and confirm that the materials they used in trainings are misleading.

Reid Magney, a spokesman for Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, spoke with the Washington Post about the story Tuesday and corrected the Romney campaign’s claims:

Pronouncing Election Day observers “the first line of defense” against illegal voting, the primer gives trainees some questionable advice. It says, for example, that convicted felons are ineligible to vote in Wisconsin. Not exactly true, according to Reid Magney, spokesman for the state’s Government Accountability Board, which administers elections. Felons who are out prison and have completed probation can vote, he said.

“Once you have completed the terms of your sentence your voting rights are restored in Wisconsin,” Magney said.

The materials cautioned observers not to assist voters, even though the law says voters can ask for help from anyone.

Magney also criticized the Romney campaign for instructing their poll watchers not to disclose any affiliation with the campaign when they sign in at the polls (they were told to list themselves as a “concerned citizen” instead). “We would hope that people would accurately represent who they are with,” he said, though he added that state would not card people as a means of enforcement.

The Obama campaign has sent a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen requesting he open an investigation into the trainings. “These acts of willful misinformation to individuals sent to polling locations to enforce the law raise serious concerns under Wisconsin law,” Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, wrote. “I ask that your office review this matter urgently, and take all necessary steps to protect the rights of our state’s voters.”