On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

The order is brief, and it mostly deals with the most significant issue in this case in just a single paragraph — holding that a for-profit corporate employer can claim that its religious liberties were somehow violated:

[T]he government’s primary argument is that because K & L Contractors is a secular, for‐profit enterprise, no rights under RFRA are implicated at all. This ignores that Cyril and Jane Korte are also plaintiffs. Together they own nearly 88% of K & L Contractors. It is a family‐run business, and they manage the company in accordance with their religious beliefs. This includes the health plan that the company sponsors and funds for the benefit of its nonunion workforce. That the Kortes operate their business in the corporate form is not dispositive of their claim. See generally Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). The contraception mandate applies to K & L Contractors as an employer of more than 50 employees, and the Kortes would have to violate their religious beliefs to operate their company in compliance with it.

As a matter of current law, this decision is wrong. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Lee established — with no justice in dissent — that religious liberty does not allow an employer to “impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees,” such as by forcing employees to give up their own rights because of the employer’s objections to birth control.

Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit’s citation to Citizens United is an ominous sign. Lee was decided at a time when the Court understood that corporations should not be allowed to buy and sell elections. That time has passed, and the precedents protecting against corporate election-buying were overruled in Citizens United. It is not difficult to imagine the same five justices who tossed out longstanding precedent in Citizens United doing the same in a case involving whether employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

It is likely that we will know soon whether those five justices are prepared to do so. The Seventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with a decision out of the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court typically agrees to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree.

President Obama reiterated his call for comprehensive immigration reform during an interview on Meet The Press, claiming that the effort will be a top goal in his second term. “Fixing our broken immigration is a top priority. I will introduce legislation in the first year to get that done,” Obama said.

Administration officials have hinted that Obama will “begin an all-out drive for comprehensive immigration reform, including seeking a path to citizenship” for 11 million undocumented immigrants, after Congress addresses the fiscal cliff.

The Obama administration’s “social media blitz” will start in January and is expected “to tap the same organizations and unions that helped get a record number of Latino voters to reelect the president.” Cabinet secretaries and lawmakers from both parties are already holding initial meetings to iron out the details of the proposal and Obama will to push for a broad bill.

For weeks, Democratic senators have been crafting a filibuster reform package that, if it resembles the reforms embraced by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), will include reforms that prevent the minority from imposing hours of needless delay every time a new nominee is confirmed, and which will also include the so-called “talking filibuster” that requires supporters of a filibuster to speak on the floor in order to maintain it.

Opponents of reform have now offered a counterproposal — and, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), it essentially amounts to doing nothing:

Alexander, emerging from a bipartisan meeting of reform opponents held this morning in Kyl’s office, said that the proposal would limit the use of the filibuster in some cases, such as on a motion to proceed to debate, and also include provisions allowing for amendments for the minority.

“We have so many new members of the Senate, about half of the senators have never seen the Senate work properly because they’ve only been here five or six years,” Alexander said. “So we’re trying to get back to the days when the motion to proceed wasn’t used to block so many bills and when the majority leader allowed senators to offer almost any amendment. Most of that has to be established by practice, by good behavior, rather than by changing the rules.”

By limiting filibusters on motions to proceed, this proposal will restrict the minority from effectively filibustering the same bill twice, but it does nothing to prevent the minority from filibustering any bill they can filibuster now. It also does nothing to prevent widespread obstruction of judicial and other nominees. And it does nothing to discourage senators from filibustering routine bills or uncontroversial nominees simply to delay or to gain leverage. If this counterproposal passes in lieu of the more meaningful proposals endorsed by Sen. Reid and others, it will mean that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will remain the king of the Senate, and senators in the majority will still need to beg his permission in order to accomplish anything.

And any senator who votes in favor of this counterproposal and against the more substantial proposals on the table is voting to give McConnell that power.

Merging an environment of state budget cuts with calls for heavily arming schools, Arizona Attorney-General Tom Horne has suggested arming school principals or “another designee.”

On Friday, the National Rifle Association in a press conference called for there to be armed police officers in every school to prevent attacks along the lines of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT, rather than stricter gun control. With state budgets hurting, however, Horne noted that “school resource officers,” members of the police force specially trained to handle instances of juvenile law, emergency response, and student counseling, are on the decline in Arizona schools.

The solution then, to Horne, is to model schools after the post-2001 mandate that airline pilots be armed in plane cabins. In proposing that only principals be armed, Horne believes he is taking a moderate stance:

“This proposal presents a golden mean between two extremes,” Horne said. “One extreme is to allow all teachers to bring guns to school, which could create more dangers than it prevents. The other extreme is to do nothing, which everyone will regret if a preventable incident like Newtown would occur in the future.”

The first extreme Horne lists is actually the preference of several conservatives who want to see more arms in school. Among those are Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell who wants to up the number of weapons in schools, Texas Governor Rick Perry who advocates concealed-weapons on school grounds, and members of the Oklahoma state legislature who want teachers to bring whatever guns they want. In proposing arming principals, Horne both manages to go beyond the position of the NRA’s call for more police officers in schools and point out the struggles that local budgets are undergoing as state and federal government budgets are cut.

Thousands of Los Angeles’ citizens lined parking lots yesterday in a chance to exchange their guns for groceries in a city-organized buyback program. The event, normally an annual Mother’s Day event, was pushed up to Wednesday by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT.

City officials offered up to $100 in gift cards to a local grocery chain for rifles, handguns, and shotguns, with assault weapons fetching more, up to $200 in cards. Despite moving the date, turnout was extremely high, with the two parking lots where the buybacks took place finding themselves overcrowded at times by eager sellers. In fact, the city found itself surpassing last year’s total of 1,673 guns by yesterday afternoon:

Many came bearing more than one gun. They pulled 22 pistols from the trunk of one white Honda, a haul that earned the driver $1,000.

Two men in a pickup truck with two children in the back seat handed over a rifle, a pistol and a MAC-12, altered with a silencer.

While the majority of the guns retrieved were handguns and other small-scale weapons, at least “a few dozen” assault weapons were taken off the streets as well. One of the first guns purchased in the buyback was a Bushmaster rifle of the same model as those used in the Conneticut shooting and a planned attack in New York where two firefighters were targeted and killed.

Since its inauguration in 2009, the gun buyback program has purchased over 8,000 guns from L.A. citizens, according to Mayor Villaraigosa. While gun buyback programs are not the most effective way to lower gun violence, they do reduce the supply of firearms in a community. Several other communities will be running their own in the near future, including Newtown’s neighboring city Bridgeport.

The past two years have not been kind to voting rights. Across the country, the Tea Party wave of 2010 led to new restrictive voting measures, including photo identification requirements and cuts in early voting. In total, these changes had the potential to disenfranchise more than 5 million Americans.

However, with progressive victories in the 2012 election and a renewed awareness of the need to protect the ballot box, 2013 could be a banner year for voting rights.

Rather than continuing to solely play defense, the Center for American Progress has released a report detailing 11 pieces of state legislation that voting rights advocates can use to go on offense in 2013:

1. Online voter registration. Less than 63 percent of Americans aged 18-34 were registered to vote in 2009, yet a Nielsen survey found that these young citizens were by far the most electronically connected, with 88 percent having an Internet connection at home. Modernizing the voter-registration process and allowing people to register online would be a boon for the overall number of voters in our country.

2. Election Day registration. Most states bar their residents from registering in the weeks just before an election—at a time when media coverage is at a fever pitch and less-engaged citizens are just starting to tune in. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, stop allowing people to register 30 days before an election. Election Day registration eliminates that barrier, helping a significant number of Americans vote. In 2008 alone, more than 1 million individuals registered on Election Day in these states. Studies have found that Election Day registration boosts turnout on average by 7-percentage points to 14-percentage points.

3. Require public schools to help register voters. Young Americans continue to vote at far lower rates than the rest of the citizenry. This year, for instance, only half of the voting-eligible population between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a ballot, compared to more than two-thirds of senior citizens. One simple way to encourage students to vote is for states to require that public schools provide voter-registration services.

4. Expand early voting. Early voting is one of the most important realms of voting rights over the past decade. It offers citizens more flexibility to vote at their convenience—not everyone can take off an hour or two from work on the first Tuesday of November—and allows election officials to spread the process of counting ballots over a number of days or weeks, rather than getting inundated all at once. It’s also a major boon for minority turnout. Many African American churches, for instance, participate in a “souls to the polls” voting drive on the Sunday before Election Day helping boost black early voting rates. Currently, 16 states don’t offer early voting.
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In a controversial diatribe on Friday, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, blamed lax security, natural disasters, and, most of all, violent video games for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT that claimed 27 lives. Despite the NRA’s public condemnation of violent entertainment, the New York Times explains, the gun industry is closely entwined with the gaming industry.

In one recent example of this relationship, the gaming company behind the Medal of Honor series launched a promotional website with links to the catalogs of two major gun manufacturers:

Links on the Medal of Honor site allowed visitors to click through on the Web sites of the game’s partners and peruse their catalogs.

“It was almost like a virtual showroom for guns,” said Ryan Smith, who contributes to the Gameological Society, an online gaming magazine. After Mr. Smith and other gaming enthusiasts criticized the site, Electronic Arts disabled the links, saying it had been unaware of them.

Gun manufacturers also grant video game companies licenses to depict real makes and models of weapons. Though these games are now taking heat from the gun lobby for encouraging violent behavior, they continue to serve as a valuable marketing tool for the industry.

The NRA’s scapegoating of virtual reality seems to be an attempt to deflect calls for more robust gun safety measures. Despite the NRA’s claims, there is no correlation between violent video games and violent behavior in real life. There is, however, ample evidence that societies with more guns have more gun violence.

The United Nations voted late Christmas Eve to once again take up a global arms trade treaty in March. The treaty would regulate global weapons exports and have no effect on domestic gun laws. Still, the US failed to ratify it in July, mainly due to conspiracy theories advanced by conservatives, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and the National Rifle Association that suggested the U.N. would revoke American gun rights.

Member states will try to negotiate an agreement at a conference from March 18-28. But American resistance to the treaty has little basis in fact. NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre claimed in July that the U.N. was infringing on Americans’ right to bear arms and refused to support any treaty involving civilian gun ownership.

Far from touching Second Amendment rights, the treaty seeks to control the $60 billion illicit weapons trade that has helped along some of the worst human rights violations in history, and continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. The Associated Press explains:

Many countries, including the United States, control arms exports but there has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime.

The treaty also specifically acknowledges that domestic constitutional protections for arms owners would be unchanged.

Shortly after the arms trade treaty failed, Congress also refused to ratify a U.N. treaty affirming equal rights for people with disabilities. That treaty was blocked because some Republicans falsely claimed that it would revoke parental rights over children with disabilities.

On December 12, 2012, the family of shooting victim Jitka Vesel sued the online gun market Armslist.com for the wrongful death of their loved one, who had been shot about 12 times in a parking lot in Illinois, by a gunman who had illegally obtained his weapon on the website.

Vesel’s brother hopes that lawmakers — like those named to the President’s gun violence prevention task force, created in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary — will address illegal online gun sales as they talk about measures to curb gun killings. Armslist does not require its buyers or sellers to give identification, and is not legally required to administer background checks:

“Armslist matches buyers and sellers solely based on Armslist’s mandatory drop-down menus that steer illegal buyers to illegal sellers,” Vesely said. “Armslist’s development of content thus materially contributes to the illegality of the gun sales it promotes.”

Jitka Vesel, 36, was shot 11 to 12 times by Smirnov in the parking lot of the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Brook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Smirnov, a Canadian resident, had stalked her after she rebuffed his romantic overtures, according to Vesely. Smirnov, now serving a life prison sentence without parole, paid an extra $200 for the gun that had been listed for $400 because he couldn’t buy it legally, according to the complaint.

Background checks have indeed been part of the post-Newtown conversation about needed gun control measures; the President’s spokesperson floated the idea of closing the so-called ‘gun show loophole,’ which allows private sellers to distribute firearms without any checks on the purchaser. The Brady Campaign has found that, in some studies, “63 percent of private sellers sold guns to purchasers who stated they probably could not pass a background check.” Few lawmakers have addressed the idea of online black markets for gun sales, or websites like Armslist.com that do not have proper protections to ensure guns are not being sold to criminals.

Flawed federal laws also limit the ability of Vesel’s relatives to acquire evidence against Armslist in their civil suit. Several federal laws, known collectively as the Tiahrt Amendments, prevent trace data linking guns used in crime to previous owners and sellers from being used in civil proceedings.

Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a strong ally of the National Rifle Association and its legislative priorities, told CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday that she could support tighter regulations of high-capacity magazines in the aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

“You know, I think we ought to be looking at where the real danger is, like those large clips, I think that does need to be looked at,” Hutchison, who is retiring from the Senate, said. She added, “it’s the semi-automatics and those large magazines that can be fired off very quickly. You do have to pull the trigger each time, but it’s very quick.” Watch it:

Hutchison urged lawmakers to talk to real hunters who “say what is a sporting rifle capability that continues this for” and also address some of the violence in American culture.

The NRA has taken any discussion of gun control off the table, arguing that government should instead station armed security guards in schools, limit cultural violence, repair the mental health system, and get tough on crime. Though group endorsed Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in his gubernatorial primary against Hutchision in 2010, the Texas chapter of the organization gave her an A+ rating, noting that it is the policy of the group to endorse incumbents.

During Sunday’s Meet the Press, the National Rifle Association’s Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre sat down with host David Gregory and defended his organization’s universally panned call for armed guards to be stationed at every school in the country.

The NRA’s tone-deaf press conference on Friday has been widely criticized by all corners of the political arena, and several commentators were quick to point out that armed guards stationed at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech and Fort Hood in Texas were all unable to prevent mass shootings. But LaPierre dismissed those cases on Sunday, and said that lawmakers should be willing to try anything that might work. Anything, noted David Gregory, so long as it doesn’t involve guns and ammunition:

GREGORY:This is a matter of logic, Mr. LaPierre, because anybody watching this is going to say ‘hey wait a minute. I just heard Mr. LaPierre say that the standard is we should try anything that might reduce the violence. And you’re telling me that it’s not a matter of common sense that if you don’t have an ability to shoot off 30 rounds without reloading, that just possibly you could reduce the loss of life? Would Adam Lanza have been able to shoot as many kids if he didn’t have as much ammunition?’

LAPIERRE: I don’t buy your argument for a minute.

Watch it:

NRA-ally and former Congressman Asa Hutchison was equally dismissive of a debate on gun control during an interview on ABC’s This Week. “I would make the point when it comes to more restrictions on firearms in our society…I think that is really the wrong debate to have,” he said on Sunday. Hutchison has been selected by the NRA to head their campaign to put a gun in every school

But the debate is coming. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has already promised to introduce a bill that will limit one’s ability to own assault weapons and high-capacity clips like the ones used by the shooters at Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colorado this year, but LaPierre called it “a phony piece of legislation” and said that it was “all built on lies.”

The NRA has been busy in the last few days putting out fires, and has watched as several staunch pro-gun lawmakers — like Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democratic Senator Mark Warner — have announced that they would be open to a conversation on additional regulations on the industry. And even the organization’s 4 million members are in favor of stricter regulations on who can own and purchase guns.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) refused to answer questions about any specific gun control legislation he would consider supporting in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting. Host Chris Wallace referenced the suggestion made by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre that schools need more armed guards and also President Obama’s call for more gun control, but all Barrasso could offer is that he is a “strong supporter of our Second Amendment rights.”

In fact, he suggested he might not support any relevant national legislation because “Washington is not necessarily the place” to find “real solutions”:

BARRASSO: We are, the people of Wyoming and me personally, still absolutely committed to find real solutions that work so nothing like this tragedy ever happens again… I think decisions about schools ought to be made at the local level. I would not want a national effort to say you have to do this in schools. I think local education decisions are best made at the local level. You know, we’re going to have a very spirited discussion in Congress, in the beginning of next year. We need to look at all of the issues, because what Wayne LaPierre and what the President of the United States agree on is that in this country, we have a culture of violence. [...]

I’m a strong supporter of our Second Amendment rights. I want to find real solutions. I want to find real solutions that work and Washington is not necessarily the place that you’re going to find those solutions. They will be found in our families and in our faith and communities and medicine and health care.

Watch it:

Barrasso claimed that health care is part of the solution to the “culture of violence,” but he has led the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The American Psychiatric Association has said the law is crucial to extending mental health parity throughout the health care system and expanding access to mental health services to prevent tragedies like the Newtown shooting in the future. He also has supported decreased funding for health programs.

The NRA endorsed Barrasso this year, awarding him with an “A” rating for his support of their positions.

The senate’s leading proponents of gun safety rejected the National Rifle Association’s push for more firearms in schools in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting, calling the announcement a ploy to distract from the ongoing debate about limiting assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

“The NRA’s blanket call to arm our schools is really nothing more than a distraction. It’s a delay tactic,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said at a press conference Friday. “It’s a distraction from the availability of military style assault weapons…It is a distraction from the prevalence of large ammunition feeding devices that allow shooters to expel 20, 30, 60, 100 and even more bullets. And it’s a distraction from how easy it is to purchase weapons at gun shows, with no background checks at all.”

Responding to the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, Feinstein, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), said that one-third of the nation’s 99,000 schools already employ armed security and admitted that any decisions about expanding the use of guns should be made by local authorities. But guards, Feinstein argued, are typically unable to stop assailants armed with weapons that are capable of shooting many rounds of bullets.

She read from a police report on the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, detailing the unsuccessful attempts of two armed officers to derail one of the shooters, Eric Harris:

FEINSTEIN: Jefferson Country Sheriffs Deputy Neil Gardner, the school’s Community Resource Officer, seeing Harris walking with his gun, kneeled over the top of his car and fired four shots. He was 60 yards from the gunman. Harris spun hard to the right and Gardner momentarily thought he had hit him. Seconds later, Harris began shooting again at the Deputy. After the exchange of gunfire, Harris ran back into the building. Gardner was able to get on the police radio and call for assistance from another Sheriffs unit. ‘Shots in the building, I need someone in the south lot with me.’ Later, another officer shot back at Harris as the student shot out a window. Again, according to the Sheriffs transcript. Harris, leaning out of a broken window, on the set of double doors into the school began shooting a rifle. Jefferson County Deputy Paul Smoker fires three rounds at him and the gunman disappears from the window. Smoker continues to hear gunfire from inside the building as more students flee from the school.

Watch it:

Smoker later explained why police were unable to stop the shooters: “There was an unknown inside a school. We didn’t know who the ‘bad guy’ was but we soon realized the sophistication of their weapons. These were big bombs. Big guns. We didn’t have a clue who ‘they’ were.” Harris and Dylan Klebold were armed with 12-gauge Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun, a Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9 mm carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines, a 9 mm Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun with one 52-, one 32-, and one 28-round magazine and a 12-gauge Stevens 311D double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.

Feinstein has pledged to introduce legislation banning the sale, importation, and possession of assault weapons. It will also outlaw big clips, drums, or strips of big bullets. The measure would require registration of existing assault weapons.

According to anti-feminist Charlotte Allen, a male janitor or “even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys” would have made all the difference in the Newtown massacre, simply because they are male. National Review published Allen’s controversial piece on Wednesday, where she attributed the massacre to Sandy Hook’s female staff and its “feminized setting.”

On Friday, Allen responded to her storm of critics, including National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who characterized her piece as “somewhat perverse.” Allen described her latest experience examining Sandy Hook’s staff page as a “depressing [...] sea of women’s names,” while she mocked the school’s anti-bullying resources and a society that encourages boys to use Easy Bake Ovens too:

No, I was not blaming any of the 26 victims or the parents who enrolled their kids at Sandy Hook. I am, however, blaming our culture that denies, dismisses, and denigrates the masculine traits—including size, strength, male aggression and a male facility for strategic thinking–that until recently have been viewed as essential for building a society and protecting its weaker members. We now have Hanna Rosin at Slate urging parents to buy their little boys Easy Bake ovens so they’ll be more like little girls. Women are less aggressive by instinct, and they are typically trained to be nice

I am also responding to David Weigel, who told me I gotten my facts wrong: that there are actually two men, a custodian and a fourth-grade teacher, on Sandy Hook’s 52-person staff. He’s right, and I stand corrected. This does help prove my point, though: just two adult men in a building containing 500 people — and it’s not clear that both of them were at work that day. Indeed, a visit to Sandy Hook’s staff website is a depressing experience, the sea of women’s names. Why aren’t there more men? Perhaps not enough want the job? But why? Because they are tacitly discouraged from careers in elementary education? It’s certainly not the money, because union rules typically require kindergarten teachers and high-school chemistry teachers to be paid on exactly the same salary scale.

Another depressing page on the Sandy Hook website is the “Safe Schools Climate” page. It’s a page of links to “anti-bullying” resources. Yes, the Sandy Hook staff’s idea of a “safe school” was a school where kids didn’t say mean things about each other on Facebook! The Sandy Hook massacre was a tragedy, but it was at least in part a tragedy of the collision between feminist delusions and reality.

As Dave Weigel points out (in “The Stupidest Thing Anyone Has Written About Sandy Hook”), Allen gets many basic facts of the scene wrong, though she claims even her errors “help prove my point.”

The day after the election last month, ThinkProgress took a preliminary tally of the total number of votes cast for candidates for the House of Representatives. We found that, despite the fact that Republicans won a commanding majority of the seats, the American people cast more than half-a-million votes for Democrats. This number was based on early tallies, however, and it was especially likely to undercount many West Coast states that had less time to count ballots.

More than a month after the election, the Democrats’ popular vote lead expanded significantly. Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.

This disparity between the will of the American people and the actual outcome of the election did not happen by accident — it is largely the product of massive gerrymandering by Republican state officials. President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. Obama won Virginia, and Democrats took 3 of 11 House seats. Obama won Ohio, but Democrats carried only 4 of 16 seats in Ohio’s House delegation. In state after state after state, Republicans used their unconstitutional ability to gerrymander Democratic votes into meaninglessness — and they were able to do so because the conservatives on the Supreme Court refuse to do anything about it.

In just a few weeks, a misguided package of spending cuts and middle class tax hikes threatens to drag America back into recession. Just over a month after that, America risks defaulting on its debt — potentially plunging us into depression. And even if these immediate threats are averted, it could come at a very high price. In an attempt to strike a deal with recalcitrant Republicans, President Obama recently offered to take future Social Security benefits away from seniors. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner can’t even manage the right flank of his caucus enough to hold a purely cosmetic vote intended to counter the — now entirely justified — view that Republicans care primarily about protecting millionaires from paying taxes. Because of the Republican Party’s apparently inability to negotiate in good faith in order to avert catastrophe, America now faces the very real possibility of an economic collapse once the debt ceiling comes due early next year.

All of these risks would evaporate completely if the divided 113th Congress bore any resemblance to the unified government the American people voted for.

After remaining completely silent in the week following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the National Rifle Association (NRA) held a press conference in Washington D.C. on Friday to call for more guns in schools and blame the media for glorifying violence, while demonizing gun owners.

Below are the 10 craziest statements from NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s prepared remarks:

1) Gun-free schools zones “tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”

2) “There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

3) “[V]iolent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.”

4) “We need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work —and by that I mean armed security.”

5) “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away … or a minute away?”

6) “And throughout it all, too many in our national media … their corporate owners … and their stockholders … act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators.”

7) “Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’ that are aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.”

8) “In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.”

9) “Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?”

10) “Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?”

(Greg Noth assisted in compiling the quotes for this post.)

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest gun advocates lobby, attributed the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to “school free zones,” arguing that “genuine monsters” are attracted to schools because its administrators and teachers are not armed. “Politicians pass laws for gun free school zones, they issue press releases bragging about them,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said. “And, in doing so, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre declared and urged Congress to “act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.” The lobby will create a “National School Shield Program” that will help schools respond to attacks, led by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR).

In a news conference repeatedly interrupted by protesters blaming the NRA for “killing our kids,” LaPierre shoveled out blame far and wide, going after reporters for glorifying killers like Adam Lanza, violent movies, video games, and music videos. He tore into gun safety advocates for exploiting the tragedy for “political gain,” targeted President Obama for underfunding police initiatives in schools, and said that the media demonized “local gun owners” and spread “misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next violence is a new cycle away.” “Add another hurricane, terrorist attack, or some other natural of man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization,” he said.

Only gun owners and gun lobbyists — who have spent years easing gun regulations across the country — were spared any responsibility.

In the wake of reports about the infrequent and discriminatory use of the presidential clemency power, the Department of Justice’s watchdog agency has determined that the U.S. Pardon Attorney withheld relevant information in recommending against a shorter prison sentence for one prominent applicant.

Clarence Aaron, whose triple life sentence for his ancillary role in a drug deal has become emblematic of unjust drug sentencing, was denied requests for a shorter sentence twice. After Aaron’s case was highlighted in an extensive series on the president’s scant use of his constitutional power to both revoke convictions (a pardon), and to shorten sentences (a commutation), the Justice Department’s Inspector General said it would review the decision-making process.

In its report released this week, the IG found that Pardon Attorney Ronald L. Rodgers did not clearly disclose that Aaron’s application for a shorter sentence was supported by both the judge who sentenced him and the U.S. attorney in the jurisdiction that prosecuted him. As with so many individuals convicted of drug crimes, the judge presiding over the case was powerless to shorten Rodgers’ sentence due to mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines. Kenneth Lee, who served as associate White House counsel then, said that if he had known the views of the prosecutor, he would have recommended Aaron’s immediate release. The report concluded that Rodgers engaged in “conduct that fell substantially short of the high standards expected of Department of Justice employees and the duty he owed the President of the United States.”

President Obama, whose office relies heavily on the Office of the Pardons Attorney for recommendations on clemency, has not pardoned a single person nor commuted a single sentence this year. In her latest report on this issue, ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer explains:

The pardons office has come under increased scrutiny in the last year since ProPublica and The Washington Post began reporting on race disparity in the selection of pardon recipients [2] and the handling of the Aaron case [3]. ProPublica’s study showed that white applicants have been nearly four times as likely as minorities to be pardoned. Aaron is African American. The review also showed that Obama has granted clemency at a lower rate than any modern president [4].

Rodgers, a career civil servant and former military judge, took over the pardons office in 2008. Despite calls for his resignation, he has remained in office. Nearly all pardon recipients are preselected by Rodgers and he personally reviews each application from federal inmates seeking early release. Under his leadership, denial recommendations have soared while pardons have been rarely granted.

The series initiated last year by Linzer shined light on an aspect of the justice system that typically receives scant attention outside of criminal justice circles. Linzer’s dogged investigatory work and her alarming findings about the numbers and types of people being denied clemency were the direct cause of the IG’s investigation, as were the White House’s request that the Pardon Attorney reconsider Aaron’s application and the DOJ’s call for a study of presidential pardons. The series demonstrates the power of journalist yeoman’s work to move the ball on little-noticed policy areas crucial to a just legal system. Its findings dictate even greater action, including fundamental reform to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

New data from the Death Penalty Information Center shows the number of death sentences handed down in 2012 is the lowest in two decades, indicating a decline in prosecutors’ support for the measure. Though 33 states have the death penalty, just four states were responsible for three-fourths of the executions carried out this year: Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

Five states have banned capital punishment in the last five years, and four states with the death penalty did not sentence anyone to death this year. Though Texas carried out the most executions in 2012 — 15 — it issued fewer death sentences for the eighth consecutive year, which suggests less executions will take place in the future.

According to the Center’s director, Richard C. Dieter, the most important reason for the falling rate “is lingering doubt about guilt.” Though there are no solid statistics on the number of innocent people who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in the late 1970s, there are instances in which inmates’ guilt was in serious question. Since 1989 more than 200 inmates have been exonerated through DNA evidence.

Another major factor is cost effectiveness. Putting convicted criminals to death is extremely expensive. For example, since 1978 California has executed just 13 people, but spent $4 billion to do it. Colorado has spent $18 million on one case since 1994.

However, though support for the controversial measure appears to be in decline both in the general public and prosecutors’ offices, the U.S. remains the only G7 country to execute its citizens. The United States — together with China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen — carried out the most executions in 2011.

– Greg Noth

Looking to continue the spread of voter suppression laws that have popped up over the past two years, lawmakers introduced voter ID legislation in three more states last week.

Legislators in Arkansas, Montana, and New York introduced separate bills to require voters to show certain forms of government-issued photo identification or be denied their right to vote.

Two of the bills — SB 2 in Arkansas and SB 100 in New York — are the strict form of voter ID, whereby voters who don’t have an acceptable form of photo ID are simply turned away from the polls. The bill in Montana — HB 108 — allows those voters who don’t have photo ID to cast a provisional ballot.

Approximately 1 in 10 citizens lack photo ID, putting them at risk of being disenfranchised. According to the Brennan Center, minorities, senior citizens, and poor voters tend to be hardest hit by new voter ID laws.

Still, voter rights advocates needn’t sound the alarm in these three states, yet. The voter ID bills face a tough legislative future. In both Arkansas and Montana, Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature, but Democrats still control the governor’s mansion. In New York, Democrats enjoy both the governorship and the state Assembly.