Six years ago, a federal district court determined that tobacco companies “‘knew there was a consensus in the scientific community that smoking caused lung cancer and other diseases’ by at least January 1964,” and that they nonetheless engaged in a campaign to “mislead the public about the health consequences of smoking.” In that 2006 order, the court indicated that the tobacco industry would be required to publish several “corrective statements” explaining the truth to the public.

Half a dozen years and three trips to the court of appeals later, the district court finally issued an order yesterday laying out the corrective statements the tobacco companies are required to publish. The statements consist of five sets of bullet points, each presaged by a statement that “A Federal Court has ruled that the Defendant tobacco companies deliberately deceived the American public . . . and has ordered those companies to make this statement. Here is the truth[.]” The bullet points include a long list of statements outlining dangers of smoking that, for years, the tobacco industry tried to cover up:

• Smoking kills, on average, 1200 Americans. Every day.
• Secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans each year.
• More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined.
• Smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, acute myeloid leukemia, and cancer of the mouth, esophagus, larynx, lung, stomach, kidney, bladder, and pancreas.
• Smoking also causes reduced fertility, low birth weight in newborns, and cancer of the cervix and uterus.
• Defendant tobacco companies intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive.
• Cigarette companies control the impact and delivery of nicotine in many ways, including designing filters and selecting cigarette paper to maximize the ingestion of nicotine, adding ammonia to make the cigarette taste less harsh, and controlling the physical and chemical make-up of the tobacco blend.
• When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain – that’s why quitting is so hard.

Under the court’s order, these statements will be “published in newspapers and disseminated ‘through television, advertisements, onserts, in retail displays, and on [tobacco companies'] corporate websites.’” The order will appeal to the severely conservative United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a court that includes two judges that recently suggested all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect, so there is no small amount of risk that the tobacco companies will escape having to comply with yesterday’s order. The court of appeals previously affirmed the district court’s approach to this case, however, so a tobacco industry victory is less likely than the D.C. Circuit’s pro-corporate record might suggest.

Earlier today, the White House released a statement indicating that “the President supports Senator Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process.” To date, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has kept the details of his plans to reform the filibuster vague. He does endorse eliminating filibusters on the “motion to proceed,” a minor tweak that would take away the minority’s power to filibuster the same bill twice before it can receive a vote. And Reid also endorses some form of “talking filibuster” that will require at least one senator to speak in defense of a filibuster on the Senate floor in order to maintain their obstruction — an idea that could achieve meaningful change if it includes a proposal by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to require a minimum number of senators to be on the Senate floor at all times in order to maintain a filibuster. Until Reid releases more details about whether his plans include the Merkley proposal or something similarly significant, however, it is difficult to assess whether his efforts will end Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s six year reign as master of Senate obstructionism.

Last January, however, Reid supported a very significant proposal by President Obama that would achieve far more to enable the Senate to function in the next two years than the two most widely discussed reforms. In his State of the Union Address this year, the president proposed changing the Senate’s rules to ensure that all presidential nominees receive an up or down vote in the Senate:

Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days. A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything, even routine business, passed through the Senate. Neither party has been blameless in these tactics. Now, both parties should put an end to it. For starters, I ask the senate to pass a simple rule that all judicial and public servant nominations receive an up or down vote within 90 days.

Watch it:

Reid indicated his support for this proposal shortly after President Obama suggested it, although with the caveat that he wanted to keep the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.

The reality is that Republicans control the House — and, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, will likely continue to do so for the near future. So any filibuster reform that prevents obstruction of legislation is unlikely to accomplish much so long as Republicans can still dominate the legislative process in the other half of Congress. For this reason, President Obama’s proposal is the most important and most significant filibuster reform proposal suggested to date. It will clear the Senate to conduct the one kind of business it can perform without asking Speaker John Boehner’s permission — confirming nominees — and eliminate the silly charade that allows Senate Republicans to declare Nobel Prize winning economists unqualified to set economic policy and top legal scholars unsuited to be judges.

Obama’s decision to support Reid is significant, but the far more important question is whether Reid still supports Obama’s plan to end minority obstruction of the confirmation process — and whether Reid will include the Obama plan in his filibuster reform package in January.

Gun sales reached an all-time high on a record Black Friday shopping day, fresh off an election where conservatives claimed Obama harbors a secret plot to take away guns.

Firearm dealers swamped the FBI with 155,000 required background checks on Friday, 20 percent more than last year. The reasons why, dealers say, include a growing number of women buyers, as well as fears — promoted by the NRA during the campaign — that Obama may call for stricter gun laws in his second term, such as a renewed assault weapon ban. Though the NRA feared the same during Obama’s first term, he has yet to take action after several mass shootings. Obama has even weakened some gun regulation.

Ohio, one of the epicenters of cruel “puppy mill” style dog breeders, passed a landmark bill on Tuesday restricting the ability of breeders to mistreat the dogs they are raising for sale. Because Ohio had virtually no legal oversight of breeders, it became “one of the biggest unregulated states” for puppy mills, understood as breeders who keep their dogs in confined, unsanitary, and cruel conditions until they’re sold as a strategy for maximizing profit. The new Ohio law, among other provisions, “requires state licensing and inspection of breeders who annually sell 60 dogs or at least nine litters; authorizes Ohio’s agriculture director to specify standards of care; and denies licensing to anyone convicted of animal cruelty in the last 20 years.”

These reforms are badly needed: a recent puppy mill case involving 241 dogs has resulted in 723 counts of animal cruelty because “dogs and pups [were] living in horrid conditions and many were sick, emaciated and had visible infections and sores.” In another November case, a breeder released 34 dogs “matted with urine, feces and fleas [whose] nails were curled under the pads of feet…Many have severe dental disease and 17 have eye infections.” The tighter licensing and inspection provisions are expected to prevent many dogs from ever having to endure these conditions by making it harder for abusive breeders to hide cruel practices.

The new legislation isn’t everything proponents of strict animal welfare protections could hope for. Animal advocates worry that the veterinarians conducting the inspections could be on a puppy mill payroll and that the minimum size for cages, six inches from nose and tail, are still much too small. And Ohio law still has serious deficiencies with respect to the treatment of animals. But the law is generally considered to be a step in the right direction in limiting the puppy mill epidemic.

The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller held that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to carry a firearm under certain circumstances, but this right is far from unlimited. As Heller explained, “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,” or laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” are entirely consistent with the Constitution. Similarly, although Heller established a robust right to gun possession within the confines of the home, it also permitted a wide range of firearm regulation beyond the home’s four walls.

In an opinion upholding a New York law that prevents most people from obtaining a concealed firearm license unless they can demonstrate “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession,” the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit explained that lawmakers’ power to regulate guns outside the home remains quite robust:

New York’s licensing scheme affects the ability to carry handguns only in public, while the District of Columbia ban [in Heller]applied in the home “where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.” This is a critical difference. The state’s ability to regulate firearms and, for that matter, conduct, is qualitatively different in public than in the home. Heller reinforces this view. In striking D.C.’s handgun ban, the Court stressed that banning usable handguns in the home is a “policy choice[]” that is “off the table,” but that a variety of other regulatory options remain available, including categorical bans on firearm possession in certain public locations . . . .

[W]hile the state’s ability to regulate firearms is circumscribed in the home, “outside the home, firearm rights have always been more limited, because public safety
interests often outweigh individual interests in self-defense.” There is a longstanding tradition of states regulating firearm possession and use in public because of the dangers posed to public safety. During the Founding Era, for instance, many states prohibited the use of firearms on certain occasions and in certain locations.

Though the Second Circuit opinion clearly indicates that firearm regulation outside the home will be subject to more rigorous judicial scrutiny than ordinary economic regulations, it also makes clear that lawmakers have a great deal of discretion in enacting gun laws provided that those laws do not intrude on the core right to self-defense in the home.

After sending poll-watchers to record any suspicious activity at polling locations on Election Day, Tea Party group True the Vote is apparently having some trouble proving their allegedly widespread reports of voter fraud in the presidential election. According to their newsletter, the organization is “still collecting reports of election fraud and process failure” and is waiting for local election officials to respond to their requests for data. While they wait, True the Vote is switching gears to attack a 30-year-old agreement by the Republican and Democratic National Committees meant to stop the Republican Party from caging African American voters.

In a post-election webinar, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, reported a meeting with RNC chair Reince Priebus in which he explained the RNC could not directly do anything to combat voter fraud because of this agreement. In 1982, the RNC and the New Jersey Republican State Committee agreed not to pursue “ballot security activities” in minority districts, or to target suspected voter fraud based on racial or ethnic criteria. This agreement was necessary because the RNC was caught compiling lists of mostly Black and Latino voters to challenge at the polls and hiring armed guards to police polling places. The consent decree has been employed many times since to protect minority votes. But True the Vote claims the consent decree “robs” poll watchers of their power:

First, the decree effectively robs poll watchers (and the ballot stakeholders that put them there) of their most important function: spotting and neutralizing attempted voter fraud.Indeed, poll watchers will mostly make note of procedural errors that could have negative impacts on voters. However, poll watchers also improve overall faith in the system when electors know that ALL of the rules are being enforced…The RNC is effectively jammed: choosing between developing a system that the federal court and the DNC agree would be flawless or spending time and energy on developing issue ideas or get out the vote efforts. Time and money being finite, the RNC picks GOTV over “Ballot Security.” [...] However, in this Decree comes opportunity. The RNC, DNC and federal courts have basically created a void where true, disinterested election integrity and ballot security can be created. The answer is in YOU. Should citizens fight to have the Decree overturned? No – such action only legitimizes the agreement. Federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in particular, empowers you to fight for clean registrations and fair elections in your own communities. Take this whole episode for what it is: an example of how the established political parties and governing interests jockey to consolidate power.

True the Vote is encouraging its volunteers to circumvent the consent decree while distancing itself from the legally-handicapped GOP. Yet the group had no problem coordinating with the GOP during the election, even providing poll watchers for Republican candidates. This coordination could prove complicated not only for True the Vote, which is currently under criminal investigation, but for the RNC. Brentin Mock at Colorlines notes that the RNC could have violated the consent decree through the actions of True the Vote and Tea Party surrogates. A Pittsburgh Tea Party group working for the local Republican Party actively trained poll watchers to target African American neighborhoods as “historical places of fraud” — closely resembling True the Vote language on minority communities. The RNC has not disavowed these surrogates.

Meanwhile, party members not constrained by the decree seem to be jumping at the chance to accuse minorities of voter fraud. Since the election, state-level GOP members have complained that the turnout of “people of color” and “dozens of black people” alone is cause for suspicion.