Former George W. Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told CNN Friday he believes federal law making marijuana illegal is a “mistake,” although he quickly backtracked claiming that marijuana legalization could impose health care costs outside of states where it is legalized. Addressing questions from CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield about how the federal government will respond to laws in Washington and Colorado that legalize and regulate marijuana, Gonzales noted that current Department of Justice officials are tasked with carrying out the federal Controlled Substances Act, regardless of their personal views. But, he added:

You ask me whether I have personal views about it, I certainly do. But as a general matter, it does represent the will of the people through the actions by Congress. I personally believe it’s a mistake.

I certainly, being a former state official of Texas, I certainly believe in the rights of states to make these kinds of decisions for their own people.

Watch it:

Later in the interview, Gonzales backed off his initial comment, explaining that while he believes in states’ right to enact marijuana legislation, he worries about the unavoidable interstate health care costs that would result from “prolonged marijuana use”:

From my own perspective, if in fact the people in Colorado and Washington state, they want to smoke marijuana and it doesn’t affect me, as a general matter I’d say OK, again putting aside the fact that there’s a federal law.

The concern that I have is that there are many reports that say that prolonged marijuana use results in long-term health care issues. And to the extent that someone smokes marijuana in Washington state and they do it for a number of years and they develop medical problems and so they need some kind of unique extraordinary health care and somehow my tax dollars that I pay to the federal government find their way into the state of Washington state to help pay for the health care, I have no interest in my tax dollars being used to subsidize marijuana use in a different state. And so if we could keep that conduct within the parameters of that state, I think it makes a much stronger argument for respecting the decision and the will of the people in those states but I don’t think you can do that.

Gonzales is right that the market for health care often crosses state lines – the costs of health care in Colorado can impact Americans throughout the country. Indeed, this fact explains why the Affordable Care Act is constitutional under the Commerce Clause – a controversy the loyal Republican declined to weigh in on before the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision upholding the law.

More fundamentally, though, Gonzales’ policy argument assumes not only that marijuana has more long-term health effects than any of a host of other activities not subject to federal prohibition, from drinking alcohol to consuming sweets, but also that prohibition is an effective mechanism for curbing health care concerns. More than 40 years after President Nixon launched the War on Drugs, drug abuse has remained stable, while the profits from this industry are funneled into illicit cartel and gang activity. It is because this approach has failed so miserably at addressing public health and safety goals that the Washington and Colorado laws were proposed.

A Florida court has ruled for the second time that the state Department of Corrections improperly circumvented the legislative process to privatize prison health care. Last October, some state legislators had attempted to privatize the state’s prison health care by folding the funding into budget proviso language. That attempt was held unconstitutional by a Florida judge, who said the legislature could only do so through a separate bill. The legislature then proposed a separate bill in February 2012 that, unsurprisingly, could not garner enough votes to pass.

But that failure wouldn’t satisfy legislators bent on outsourcing the state’s prison health care to private corporations. This time, they were able to include in the legislature-reviewed appropriations bill funding for private prisons in one South Florida region. Seeking to also privatize prison health care in three other regions, the Department of Corrections sought additional funding from the state’s Legislative Budget Commission rather than the full legislature. The LBC granted funds for all four regions and increased the budget from 41 million to 58 million — a move also struck down by Leon County Judge Jackie Fulford:

Whether to privatize some or all of the state’s prison operations is a significant policy decision. Under existing law, the legislature weighs in on this policy decision through its appropriations power. Where, as here, there is no specific appropriation for privatizing health services in Regions I, II or III, it cannot be said that such a significant action has been approved or authorized. [...]

Authorizing and funding privatizing health care services in Florida’s prisons is the prerogative of the full legislature and not that of the Legislative Budget Commission.

Even at the time of the vote, some members of the Legislative Budget Commission questioned the legality of expanding funding for private prison health care. But the state nonetheless entered into a contract with Corizon Healthcare to serve those three regions, and forged ahead with notices to nearly 2,000 state workers who would be laid off as a result of the move.

Privatization of health care for nearly 100,000 inmates was billed as a way to cut costs, in part because prison officials anticipated the private companies would offer less benefits to their workers. But studies in other states have shown that private prisons actually cost the state more, while enabling “inhumane” conditions and prompting allegations of preventable deaths. Privatization of the prison system has also incentivized private corporations to lobby for policies that incarcerate more Americans. The United States already has the world’s highest incarceration rate.

Even though he once supported the idea of having a Wisconsin version of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) said this week that he hopes state legislators avoid passing a harmful state immigration measure this year:

“I think that would be a huge distraction for us in the state,” he said. “There’s our niche and our priorities. I don’t think that falls into one of those priorities, so I would certainly hope that the legislature didn’t spend time focusing on that, instead focused on the economy.”

Walker declined, however, to say whether he would veto an immigration bill.

“I’d push to make sure it wouldn’t come up,” he said.

Two years ago as a gubernatorial candidate, Walker said he would sign a version of Arizona’s SB 1070, which aimed to make the state so hostile to undocumented immigrants that they self-deport. “The federal government has failed to secure the border, and states have a right to protect their law-abiding, legal citizens,” Walker said in a May 2010 statement. “The 10th Amendment gives states the right to act as Arizona has with the immigration law.”

But after a Supreme Court ruling struck down much of Arizona’s law and mass deportation policies have harmed state economies, Walker has backed away from his previous statements.

Walker is also one of several Republicans backing away from anti-immigrant measures after Latino voters, who strongly oppose the laws, overwhelmingly backed President Obama in November’s election. Six percent of Wisconsin’s population is Latino, but that number is growing nationally. Even conservative radio host Sean Hannity said he had “evolved” on immigration after the election. “It’s simple to me to fix it,” Hannity said. “I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here — you don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on.”

For the third time in as many years, Missouri lawmakers have proposed legislation to require voter ID in the Show Me State.

This week, state Sen. Will Kraus (R) pre-filed SJR 6, a constitutional amendment which would require a voter ”to identify himself or herself as a United States Citizen and a resident of the state by producing valid, government-issued photo identification.” It would face a voter referendum if approved.

A similar measure passed the legislature earlier this year, but was struck down by a state judge before it reached the ballot because of problems with the ballot language. Republicans tried to enact voter ID in 2011 as well, but the bill was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon (D). Nixon cannot veto constitutional amendment language, however, like Kraus has proposed.

In 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down an earlier voter ID law in a 6-1 vote because it violated the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. Kraus’s bill, however, would amend the state constitution to permit a voter ID requirement.

If the bill up passing, a quarter of a million Missourians could be disenfranchised. A 2009 study by Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) identified 230,000 registered voters who may not have the necessary government-issued photo ID.

An Ohio Senate subcommittee has agreed to hear the case for making drug tests mandatory for welfare recipients, reports the Columbus Dispatch. The bill was introduced over a year ago, but now contains revisions including $100,000 allotted to rehab and treatment programs. Another provision modifies the original requirement by only testing people who admit on the application that they have used illegal drugs. Applicants must pass the drug test before they can receive benefits.

Sen. Tim Schaffer (R-OH) sponsored the bill, claiming that he actually intends to help Ohioans with drug problems:

Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster, said the legislation would help alleviate drug use among low-income Ohioans and ensure that public-assistance dollars are used to help families through hard times, not to support drug habits. “If they need help, they will get it,” Schaffer said.
[...]
“It is our hope this pilot program will break generational drug usage and end the death by drug abuse for too many of our citizens. They deserve more from us than a generic handout. They need our assistance in getting their lives on track for both them and their dependents,” Crawford County Commissioner Jenny Vermillion testified before the Senate Committee.

In fact, the welfare drug test has been a popular policy among Republican lawmakers who would like to undermine welfare programs and cut down on eligible recipients. Ohio Democrats responded to last year’s proposal for a welfare drug test with their own legislation that would require the state’s elected officials to also submit to a drug test.

Florida, another state that implemented the mandatory drug test, saved nothing on welfare benefits and failed to reduce the number of applications in the law’s brief four-month life span. Only 108 people tested positive for drugs out of 4,086 applicants. The Florida experiment only served to prove that welfare recipients are actually less likely to abuse drugs than the general public.

Despite the evidence, the welfare drug test has gained traction in several Republican-dominated state legislatures, including Kansas and Virginia. Virginia’s proposal failed last year when it was determined that the drug tests would cost the state $1.5 million to administer the tests and save only $229,000 in benefits stripped from recipients who tested positive. The costly requirement serves only to stigmatize welfare recipients and perpetuate the misguided stereotype that low-income Americans are irresponsible drug addicts. Ohio’s bill could also expose the state to expensive lawsuits, as mandatory drug testing has been struck down time and again in the courts.

Since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced last month that eliminating the ability of residents to register on Election Day would be a top priority for his administration next year, opposition to the plan has sprung up across the state.

Immediately after Walker made public his desire to scrap Election Day Registration, which has been in place in the Badger State since the 1970s, he ran into unexpected opposition from the election clerks he claimed would benefit. “There’s no way we’d be in favor of that,” said Diane Hermann-Brown, communications chairwoman of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, noting that eliminating Election Day Registration would make their jobs more difficult.

Citizens have also begun to organize and rally against Walker’s plan to suppress the vote, including a large rally in Milwaukee this week featuring election officials, lawmakers, and other community figures. Neil Abrecht, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission, summed up what is so troubling about the proposal in his speech:

“Same day registration has been occurring in the State of Wisconsin for the last 36 years. The practice of administering this process is tightly woven into our election worker training and our Election Day procedures. A change to this practice would have tremendous ramifications to voters, particularly students, renters, and people in poverty; and would create confusion, frustration, and a disillusionment with the democratic process at our voting sites. There are numerous other opportunities to improve election systems and increase the efficiency of voting sites. I would hope that anyone interested in changing this state’s election laws would look at those opportunities before implementing a change that would reduce voter access to the ballot and actually create, not alleviate, a burden to election workers,” said Neil Albrecht, who is the executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.

Nearly 1 in 5 Milwaukee voters registered on Election Day this year. Statewide, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites were only able to vote because of Election Day Registration, leading to an astronomical 70.1 percent turnout rate. This was the fourth highest level in state history, according to the Government Accountability Board.

Wisconsin Republicans are exploring other avenues to make voting more difficult as well. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) wants to eliminate the Government Accountability Board, which has been lauded as a “model for nonpartisan election administration,” and replace it with political appointees. In addition, House Speaker-elect Robin Vos (R) has professed his desire to alter the constitution to allow voter suppression after a state judge ruled that the state’s voter ID law was an unconstitutional violation of the right to vote.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that he was “wrong” to oppose filibuster reform in 2011, he named two senators as “prophetic” advocates of reform, Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). These two senators will now play a key role in shaping the filibuster reform package that Senate Democrats ultimately bring to the Senate floor next month. In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Sen. Merkley laid out what he believes that package will include and what he hopes to add to it. His remarks should give progressives hope.

Merkley began the interview by endorsing two reforms that it was already clear would be included in the reform package this January: eliminating the minority’s ability to filibuster the same bill more than once and requiring a senator to speak on the floor in order to maintain a filibuster. Reid already publicly endorsed both of these proposals. Yet, as ThinkProgress has explained, they are not sufficient in and of themselves to prevent widespread obstructionism.

Sen. Merkley, however, listed several other reforms he would like to include in the final package that, together with the two Reid has already endorsed, add up to something quite meaningful. Under current Senate rules, the minority can force up to 30 hours of floor time to be wasted even after a supermajority of the Senate votes to break a filibuster on a nominee. And while 30 hours may not seem like a lot, when they are multiplied across the hundreds of nominees a president must confirm, these 30 hours enables the minority to literally force the Senate to waste years of precious work time doing nothing but confirming judges and executive branch officials. These 30 hours are likely the single greatest tool an obstructionist minority possess, and Senate Republicans wielded this tool to great effect in order to block President Obama’s nominees.

Merkley called for eliminating this opportunity for obstruction completely:

Two years ago, the package that Tom Udall and I put together included reducing those 30 hours to 2 hours, so people could make a final comment as their colleagues were about to vote. And something like that is appropriate. I think it could even be appropriate to go to zero hours, and here’s why: it takes two days for a cloture petition to “ripen.” What that means is that, by the time you file it, and its all public, you have to wait until the day after an intervening day. And so there’s plenty of time for people to make their final case once that petition is there. So if you reduce it to zero hours, you can have a series of cloture petitions and a series of votes that no one could basically — on a Thursday night or a Friday night you could go through a whole series of judges.

Watch it:

This is a serious proposal, and it would do more to restore the Senate’s ability to function than anything else that has been seriously discussed since the election. So long as John Boehner controls the House, there is little the Senate can do to pass legislation over Republican objections. Merkley’s proposal to eliminate these 30 hours of delay, however, would completely strip away one of the current minority’s favorite tactics — filibustering nominees they don’t even oppose.

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