Students at a high school in Illinois experienced a uniquely terrifying school shooting drill on Wednesday. Instead of conducting a regular school lockdown, Cary-Grove High School administrators simulated gunfire by shooting off blanks in the hallways while students locked their classroom doors, pulled the curtains, and hid.

The drill, understandably, upset some parents in the area, who received a letter ahead of time telling them what their children would be experiencing:

The simulation will take approximately 15-20 minutes, during which time teachers will secure their rooms, draw curtains, and keep their students from traveling throughout the building. Please note that we will be firing blanks in the hallway in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound of gunfire. Our school resource officer and other members of the Cary Police Department will assist us in sweeping the building to ensure that all students are in a secure location during the drill. At the conclusion of the drill, we will take some time to process what occurred and then we will return to our normal classroom routine.

I encourage you to discuss the drill with your student both before it happens and after. These drills help our students and staff to be prepared should a crisis occur, but it may cause some students to have an emotional reaction.

Schools and parents have gone to exceedingly extreme lengths, in the wake of the horrific killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, to come up with ways to prepare for school gun violence. A school district in Texas is considering allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons; parents have been purchasing bulletproof backpacks for their kids to take to school; the South Carolina legislature is even considering making a gun training class for high schoolers; and some parents even packed a gun for their sixth-grader to bring to class.

Justice Antonin Scalia is easily the Supreme Court’s most strident conservative. He defends torture and finds little wrong with executing the innocent. He once argued that the Constitution does not protect women from gender discrimination (although he’s since backed off this statement somewhat). Scalia compared same-sex attraction to murder. He believes our immigration law should look to antebellum laws excluding “freed blacks” from southern states for guidance. And he spent the much of the Supreme Court arguments on the Affordable Care Act parroting conservative talking points against health reform.

Yet, according to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), Scalia’s really just a squishy liberal:

At the annual gathering of the conservative National Review Institute, held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, Cuccinelli appeared on a panel discussing the topic, “Does the Constitution Have a Future?” During the session, he criticized President Obama, suggesting the president had a malleable vision of the meaning of sin and of the Constitution.

“And really the way to fight back, given the governmental structure we have, the primary way is to get good judges who don’t accept what is wrong as right after a while,” Cuccinelli said, according to a video clip of the discussion. “Justice Scalia is in this category: ‘Well, we’ve been doing it wrong for a while, so now it’s part of the Constitution.’ I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that. And that needs to be reflected in the judges selected by the president, not this president, but the president generally, and approved by the Senate. They need to take that a lot more seriously than they do.”

To explain this a bit, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, conservative justices created new, artificial limits on the federal government’s power — such as saying that the Constitution did not permit Congress to regulate manufacturing, mining or agriculture. They then wielded these extra-constitutional limits to strike down basic workplace protections such as child labor laws or laws protecting the right to organize. The Supreme Court abandoned this misreading of the Constitution in the 1930s, and Justice Clarence Thomas is the only member of the current Court who embraces this misreading. Justice Scalia repeatedly refused to join opinions by Thomas pining for the days when manufacturing was considered immune to federal regulation and national child labor laws were considered unconstitutional.

Cuccinelli disagrees with Scalia on this point. He’s claimed that “[w]e want judges who will do nothing but apply the law as it was written and originally understood.” And, in one of his briefs challenging the Affordable Care Act, he tipped his hand to indicate a broader agenda to return to the days when child labor laws were tossed out because they exceeded Congress’ constitutional authority to “regulate commerce.” Cuccinelli’s brief embraces Thomas’ view that “the founding generation distinguished between commerce on the one hand, and manufacturing or agriculture on the other, as distinct things.”

Of course, Cuccinelli’s understanding of the Constitution’s history is dubious at best, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Cuccinelli thinks judges are bound by the founders’ understanding of the Constitution, and he also agrees with Justice Thomas that the founders would not have approved of child labor laws.

And so Justice Scalia is a villain, because he won’t join Thomas’ noble crusade against the most basic labor protections.

Police are reporting that a 14-year-old student was shot in the back of the neck at Price Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday afternoon and is awake and breathing. One teacher was also injured from being trampled after the shot was fired. At least one suspect is in police custody.

Parents are not being allowed to come to the school at this time and the kids are not able to leave. Early reports suggest that the shooting was a result of an altercation between students from another school.

The New York Police Department last month arrested and detained in handcuffs a seven-year-old boy over accusations that he stole $5 from a fellow elementary school student four days earlier. The December 4 incident came to light after Wilson Reyes’ parents filed a $250 million lawsuit against the NYPD, alleging the boy was verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed.

His parents snapped a photo of the boy handcuffed to a wall at the police precinct, which was published on the front page of the New York Post. The details of the incident are in dispute, including how long Reyes was detained, whether he actually stole the $5 and whether he physically assaulted the other boy in the incident. But reports confirm that charges were filed against the boy for robbery and weren’t dropped until December 26. Unnamed law enforcement sources said they treated the incident like any involving a juvenile:

We responded to a 911 call of a robbery and assault . . . Eventually, [Wilson] was taken back to the precinct and placed in the juvenile room.

He was charged with robbery. The allegation was that he punched the kid and took his money. He took the money forcibly.

The kid came into the precinct a little bit after 3 p.m., and he was out by 7:45 p.m. . . . That’s standard for a juvenile arrest.

The alleged victim, a classmate who says he is frequently bullied by Reyes, told the New York Daily News that Reyes punched the boy and stole $5 as he was walking home from school on November 30, four days before police arrested him in a classroom in the Bronx. School officials told the Post the incident occurred off grounds and it is unclear whether the school solicited police intervention.

But whether or not Reyes was a “bully” does not explain why police allegedly pulled a seven-year-old boy out of class, let alone handcuffed him to a wall, days after the altercation was over and done with. The criminalization of young children, particularly as an alternative means of school discipline, is an alarming trend that disproportionately funnels minority students into the criminal justice system.

The NYPD has been under fire for harsh policing tactics, particularly regarding stop-and-frisks in the Bronx. These police stops were applied so aggressively and disproportionately in 2011 that there were more stops of young black men than the total number of young black men in the city.

Recognizing these trends, the city’s Public Advocate condemned the incident, saying:

Seven-year-olds don’t belong in handcuffs. As a parent, I wouldn’t stand for this in one of my kids’ schools. Our school system’s overreliance on the NYPD as a disciplinary tool traumatizes our young people, sows distrust in our communities and drains vital City resources away from responding to genuine crimes. This has to stop.

A tough-on-crime prosecutor turned federal judge who last year blasted prosecutors’ abuse of draconian mandatory minimum sentences has now issued a damning judicial indictment of another aspect of the harsh U.S. drug sentencing scheme.

In an opinion declining to rely upon federal drug sentence guidelines, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson calls the guidelines for drug crimes “deeply and structurally flawed,” subjecting “low-level offenders” to “prison terms more suitable for a drug boss.”

Over twenty-five years of application experience have demonstrated the perverse outcomes generated by the Guidelines ranges for drug trafficking offenses. … [S]entencing judges have routinely departed from these Guidelines, which have never been the “heartlands” that the original Commission aspired to create. Despite these consistent departures, federal drug sentencing has contributed to the national crisis of mass incarceration.

Gleeson, who in 1992 led the team of prosecutors that sent John J. Gotti to life in prison, issued an opinion last May blasting federal mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders that “distort the sentencing process and mandate unjust sentences.” Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, he lamented, “An addict who is paid $300 to stand at the entrance to a pier and watch for the police while a boatload of cocaine is offloaded” … “qualifies for kingpin treatment”. In this week’s opinion, he points out that even those who manage to escape mandatory minimum sentences don’t fare much better under the alternative federal sentencing scheme for drug crimes, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

Defendant Ysidro Diaz, who was a “run-of-the-mill, low-level participant in a drug distribution offense,” narrowly escaped a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years because he satisfied all five requirements for “safety valve relief.” Instead, Gleeson was tasked with looking to U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which recommended 8-10 years in prison, even though Diaz had no prior convictions.

While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that judges could no longer be obligated to follow these guidelines, Gleeson points out that they have nonetheless contributed to exponential increases in sentence length and an accompanying spike in federal incarceration for drug crimes:

Perhaps the best indication that the Guidelines ranges for drug trafficking offenses are excessively severe is the dramatic impact they have had on the federal prison population despite the fact that judges so frequently sentence well below them. […]

In less than a decade, from 1985 to 1991, the length of federal drug trafficking sentences increased by over two-and-a-half times. Sentences for drug trafficking were “elevated above almost every serious crime except murder.” The increase in sentence length for drug offenders “was the single greatest contributor to growth in the federal prison population between 1998 and 2010.”

We must never lose sight of the fact that real people are at the receiving end of these sentences. Incarceration is often necessary, but the unnecessarily punitive extra months and years the drug trafficking offense guideline advises us to dish out matter: children grow up; loved ones drift away; employment opportunities fade; parents die.

Of course, it’s not just long sentences that have overwhelmed federal prisons with drug offenders. Criminalization of nonviolent drug offenses, and frequent prosecution of offenders are just as fundamental. But disproportionate punishment implicates fundamental due process principles and has even been found to violate the Eighth Amendment, which is probably why Gleeson is one of several federal judges who have been uncharacteristically vocal in pleading with both prosecutors and lawmakers for immediate sentencing reform.

(HT Sentencing Law and Policy)

On Thursday, members of the Wyoming state House gave initial approval to a bill that would nullify any gun laws passed by the U.S. Congress pertaining to extended magazine clips or semi-automatic weapons. The move is not only unconstitutional, but it is thus far unnecessary: Congress has yet to pass any new gun laws for Wyoming to attempt to nullify.

Under the Constitution, states are not permitted to pass laws meant to supersede federal legislation. But state Rep. Kendell Kroeker (R) argued that since Congress has not yet passed any gun laws, the nullification measure did not violate the Constitution. “It is clearly a different case than trying to nullify something that’s already in existence,” Kroeker said.

But his colleagues apparently tried to keep the representative in check, with one pointing out, “If we want to make a statement we can do it, but let’s not let’s not pretend that it’s consistent with the Constitution, because it’s not.”

The bill was also amended to make it a misdemeanor charge for a federal employee to attempt to enforce federal gun laws in Wyoming. That’s actually an improvement from the original bill, which called for felony charges. It will now go to the Wyoming Senate where, with a 23-7 Republican majority, it will likely enjoy broad support.

By the last day of the 112th Congress, legislators figured out a way to avert the fiscal cliff, but they hadn’t fulfilled their other responsibility: To reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. The bill had been caught up in partisan bickering for months, and, thanks to Republican resistance to provisions protecting LGBT, undocumented, and Native American victims, a final version was never passed.

Another push for the reauthorization of VAWA is expected to hit the Senate floor next week. And while there will still be arguments over the protection of some of those groups, thanks to the immigration reform efforts by President Obama and the so-called ‘gang of eight,’ undocumented women might not be among them.

One of the largest sticking points for Republicans about the Senate’s latest version of VAWA was that it included an expansion of the ‘U-Visa’ system — visas extended to people who are undocumented, but have been victims of crimes, including rape, stalking, and domestic abuse. Congress has previously capped U-visas at 10,000 a year; Republicans did not want to expand the system, since it provides a pathway to legal status for women who sought one.

The reasons for such visas are clear — if women fear that they will be deported from the country, or that police will feel no need to help them since they are not legally in the country, they are far, far less likely to report crimes committed against them. The low cap on U-visas (which the government hit before the end of year several times) acted as another deterrent for reporting crimes.

Now that the President and members of Congress are suggesting a measure that would give green cards to all undocumented people who qualify, U-visas will be rendered a moot point. Victims of domestic violence will be able to call the police without fear of deportation. That means that women who, as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) put it, are “living in the shadows” will be able to come forward and report the crimes committed against them.

Of course, this does nothing to help protect the LGBT or Native American victims who still go without protection. Nor does it help to get VAWA, finally, renewed. But bringing undocumented people into the fold — letting them be the Americans they have wanted to be for so long — will help shine a light on crimes that have gone under-reported and victims that have gone without help.

Last week, House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) introduced the Tax Code Termination Act, which would abolish the entire federal tax code in 2018, with exceptions for Social Security and Medicare taxes — and replace it with, well, nothing. Goodlatte’s bill does offer some vague principles that should guide Congress in enacting a replacement tax system, but it does nothing to actually replace the massive amount of federal revenues it will eliminate.

In addition to cutting off about 60 percent of federal revenues, the bill includes an unconstitutional provision providing that the end of the tax code cannot be delayed except by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. The Constitution does not permit a past Congress to tie the hands of a future Congress, so this provision making it functionally impossible for future congresses to delay the end of most federal revenue is unconstitutional.

Goodlatte believes that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, so it is both unsurprising that the House Judiciary Chair is too unfamiliar with the Constitution to draft a constitutional tax bill and ironic that his bill actually permits taxes for the two programs he thinks are unconstitutional.

Sixty-nine members of Congress co-sponsored Goodlatte’s unconstitutional proposal to bankrupt the federal government.

(HT: Blue Virginia)

A new report by Mother Jones reveals that James B. Taylor, a prominent conservative movement leader and board member for the Young America’s Foundation, once served as vice president of a white supremacist group.

Taylor’s bio notes that he is “chairman of World Youth Crusade [for Freedom] and former executive director and chief of staff of Young America’s Foundation.” It also includes that he was once public relations director for the anti-labor union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. It does not mention, however, that he also served as vice president of the National Policy Institute, a tax-exempt group than aims to be the lobby for “White Americans—our country’s historic majority and founding population—the people that bears the unique heritage of Europe, Christianity, cultural excellence, and the scientific awakening.” During Taylor’s time with the group, the white-nationalist foundation, founded in 2005 by right-wing publisher William Regnery, published a report arguing that “integration and the civil rights movement led directly to the destruction of great cities; and to millions of whites suffering terrible injustices, including assault, robbery, rape and murder, and losing everything they had through the ensuing destruction of their neighborhoods and their property values.”

Taylor did not respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment, but when asked about his connection to the National Policy Institute by a local newspaper last August, defended the mission of the group, saying: “You’ve got the NAACP and B’nai B’rith. Why not something for white people?”

The Young America Foundation, on whose nine-member board of directors Taylor sits, is a powerful force in the conservative movement. The group runs the Ronald Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara, CA, helped create the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and operates a center aimed at teaching journalists “the values of balanced, responsible, and accurate reporting.” Twice-defeated former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) and former Attorney General Edwin Meese (R) are both affiliated with the organization.

As chairman of the World Youth Crusade for Freedom, which claims to “promote education and research in public policy and understanding by future world leaders,” Taylor received $18,000 in salary in 2010, out of the $23,191 the group took in in total revenue. In 2010, he was paid $22,000 out of the group’s $31,129 raised.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Taylor was a 2012 contributor to Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA). Barletta has come under fire for racist comments of his own — announcing this week that he will oppose immigration reform because Latinos are uneducated leeches who will never vote Republican anyway. The donation record identifies Taylor’s current occupation as “editor” for Tea Party Express, a key force in the Tea Party movement.

A newly elected Ohio Supreme Court justice who achieved the unlikely feat of ousting an incumbent without accepting any campaign contributions is not wasting any time in asserting his opposition to the death penalty. In an order this week setting an execution date for a convicted murderer, Judge William O’Neill issued a strong dissent blasting capital punishment as “inherently cruel and unusual,” even in the most egregious cases:

Without expressing an opinion as to appellant’s guilt or innocence, however, I would hold that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 9 of the Ohio Constitution. The death penalty is inherently both cruel and unusual and therefore is unconstitutional.

Capital punishment dates back to the days when decapitations, hangings, and brandings were also the norm. Surely, our society has evolved since those barbaric days. The United States is one of just a few civilized countries that still permit state executions.

To date, 17 states and the District of Columbia have eliminated the death penalty altogether. It is clear that the death penalty is becoming increasingly rare both around the world and in America. By definition it is unusual. […]

Additionally, death, even by lethal injection, is a cruel punishment. One need only look at the recent Ohio case of Romell Broom for a demonstration of that proposition. Although the executioners spent over two hours attempting to find a vein through which to administer the lethal injection, they ultimately failed. Subsequently, the governor granted a one-week reprieve. Broom remains on death row today. A more chilling definition of cruel is hard to imagine.

The time to end this outdated form of punishment in Ohio has arrived. While I recognize that capital punishment is the law of the land, I cannot participate in what I consider to be a violation of the Constitution I have sworn to uphold. I must respectfully dissent.

Conceding that this particular case involved a “horrific act deserving of the strongest punishment possible” — the kidnapping and stabbing of a child — O’Neill makes the point that even the most compelling cases do not merit a punishment that violates the U.S. Constitution. In so doing, he does not even touch upon the other compelling rationales for abolishing the death penalty – its arbitrary and racially discriminatory imposition, and the alarming frequency of wrongful convictions. It is because there are so many reasons to oppose the punishment that the consensus against it is increasingly overwhelming.

In addition to being an experienced appeals court judge, O’Neill is also a registered nurse who worked in a pediatric emergency department during his campaign, lending particular credence to his analysis of lethal injections as inherently cruel.

O’Neill proved during his judicial campaign that he is not afraid to speak truth to power. He ran on a platform that “money and judges don’t mix,” and responded to a request from the state’s bar association that he refrain from making “statements that impugn the court’s integrity and imply that justice is for sale” by saying, “I am not implying that justice is for sale. I am stating it as a matter of fact.”

(HT: Death Penalty Information Center)

Montana State Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R) is sponsoring a bill to allow defendants to “bargain with the court” to receive “corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration.” The bill would apply to not just misdemeanor crimes, but also felonies — though the bill requires that the “exact nature of the corporal punishment to be imposed” be “commensurate with the severity, nature, and degree of the harm caused by the offender.”

John S. Adams, who covers the Montana legislature for the Great Falls Tribune, wrote : “The measure is already raising eyebrows and is sure to catch the attention of those on the lookout for ‘bat crap crazy’ legislation this session. Republican leadership has been doing its best to tamp down any potential bills the other side might use to embarrass the GOP as they work to craft a budget. This one apparently didn’t get tamped.”

Then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) observed, in a 2011 interview, that some Montana legislators “draft bills just to get an effect from the people,” but “unfortunately, it kind of makes some of them look bat-crap crazy.”

O’Neil, a long-time state lawmaker, has been the subject of controversy in the past: last November he requested to receive his legislative salary in gold and silver, incorrectly interpreting a provision of the U.S. Constitution that prevents states from minting their own paper currency. More recently, he said that the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy “came at an opportune time” for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), she has been working on an assault weapons ban for years.

During Wednesday morning’s hearing on gun violence legislation, a Republican witness made a curious assertion: gun regulation was a bad idea because women need guns.

Gayle Trotter, a senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, was brought on to testify against gun regulation on the grounds that women were weaker than violent male criminals and hence needed guns to level the playing field in a confrontation:

Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice. The guns are accurate. They have good handling. They’re light. They’re easy for women to hold. And most importantly, their appearance. An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon. And the peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals. If we ban these types of assault weapons, you are putting women at a great disadvantage, more so than men, because they do not have the same type of physical strength and opportunity to defend themselves

The real problem women face with respect to guns is domestic violence.

Researchers estimate that roughly half to two thirds of people killed by domestic abusers were killed by a gun, many of whom were also substance abusers. Another study found that “domestic violence assaults involving a firearm are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons or bodily force,” while a third, according the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, concluded that “abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser owns a firearm.”

Federal background checks disqualify people with domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns. But since right now, forty percent of gun sales happen privately, without required background checks, it’s very easy for abusers to get access to firearms.

In an exchange during today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on guns, a Republican witness attempted to defend allowing civilians to own 33-round or even potentially 100-round magazines. Capt. Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), explained in very personal terms why these magazines should be banned:

The shooter in Tuscon showed up with two 33-round magazines, one of which was in his 9mm. He unloaded the contents of that magazine in 15 seconds — very quickly. It all happened very, very fast. The first bullet went into Gabby’s head. Bullet number 13 went into a 9 year-old girl named Christina Taylor Greene, who was very interested in democracy and our government, and really deserved a full life committed to advancing those ideas. If [the shooter] had a 10-round magazine? Well, let me back up.

When he tried to reload one 33-round magazine with another 33-round magazine, he dropped it, and a woman named Patricia Maisch grabbed it, and it gave bystanders time to tackle him. I contend if that same thing had happened when he was trying to reload one 10-round magazine with another 10-round magazine, meaning he did not have access to a high capacity magazine, and the same thing happened, Christina Taylor Greene would be alive today. I certainly am willing to give up my ability to own a high-capacity magazine to bring that young woman back.

Watch it:

Two weeks ago, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus called upon “states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” to consider a Republican plan to rig future presidential races. Under the GOP plan, these blue states would stop awarding electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, and instead would award them one-by-one to the winner of each congressional district. Because these districts are highly gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the election-rigging plan ensures that Republicans will win the overwhelming majority of the electoral votes in these blue states regardless of how the people of those states cast their votes.

Six states potentially fit Priebus’ description of a blue state that is currently controlled by Republicans — Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. To date, senior Republicans in four of these states have either voted down the plan or indicated that it will not be taken up in the first place, and the governor of a fifth state has expressed concerns about the plan:

• Florida: Florida is the least blue of the six states where the GOP plan could be enacted, so it is unsurprising that top Florida Republicans appear cold to the plan. Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) compared the plan to rigging a football game, and state Senate President Don Gaetz (R) supports abolishing the Electoral College altogether.
• Virginia: Yesterday, a Virginia state senate committee voted to kill the election-rigging plan by an overwhelming 11-4 vote. Four Republicans opposed rigging the Electoral College.
• Ohio: Many of the most senior Republicans in Ohio, including Gov. John Kasich, state Senate President Keith Faber and House Speaker William G. Batchelder all said this week that they will not pursue the election-rigging plan, and Batchelder added that he “is not supportive of such a move.”
• Michigan: In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) said that he is “very skeptical” of the election-rigging plan and would oppose taking it up at least until right before the next redistricting.
• Wisconsin: The election-rigging plan is decidedly not dead in Wisconsin, but Gov. Scott Walker (R) said earlier this week that he has “real concern” that it could diminish the relevance of Wisconsin in presidential races.

So the Republican Plan is officially dead in one state and lacks the support of essential lawmakers in three states. Of the two states where it is decidedly still alive — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the top Republican in one of those states says he has concerns about the plan. Nevertheless, supporters of democracy should not break out the champagne yet because there are three reasons to be frightened that the plan could reemerge.

The first is that the plan is still alive and well in Pennsylvania, which has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every single election for more than two decades. Both Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) support rigging the Electoral College.
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As the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on gun safety in the aftermath of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, local authorities are reporting three shots fired at an office complex in Phoenix, Arizona. There could be as many as four victims. At least one woman has been loaded into an ambulance.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has been among the Senate’s most vocal backers of draconian budget cuts and has opposed increasing funds to put more police officers on the streets, said Wednesday that he will oppose gun violence prevention legislation because budget cuts will mean inadequate police forces to protect the public.

Graham told Baltimore Chief of Police James Johnson and former naval Captain Mark Kelly (husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords) that he planned to oppose the gun violence measures because people will need high-capacity magazines to compensate for the police response times these austerity measures will force:

GRAHAM: The point is, we have different perspectives on this. The reason I will oppose the legislation, Chief Johnston, is because i respect what your do as a lot — what you do as a law-enforcement officer. Has your budget been cut?

JOHNSON: Yes.

GRAHAM: Do you think it be cut in the future?

JOHNSON: I am optimistic that it is not.

GRAHAM: Well I hope your right, but I can tell people throughout this land, because of the fiscal state of affairs we have, there will be less [SIC] police officers, not more, over the next decade. Response time are gonna be less, not more. So, Captain Kelly, I really do want to get guns out of the hands of the wrong people. I honest to god believe that if we arbitrarily “say nobody in this country can own a 10-round magazine in the future, the people who own them are the kind of people we’re trying to combat to begin with.” There can be a situation where a mother runs out of bullets because of something we do here.

Watch the video:

President Obama has proposed expanding the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which helps local governments hire police officers, but Republicans have opposed the effort.

Students in Missouri have no sexual education requirement, so there’s a good chance they don’t know how to properly protect themselves from STIs or unintended pregnancy. Soon, though, they may be able to protect themselves from guns.

Missouri state Senate is considering a bill that would require all first graders in the state to take a gun safety training course. Using a grant provided by the National Rifle Association, it would put a “National Rifle Association’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program” instructor in every first grade classroom.

The irony that there’s no requirement for students to learn about their bodies — but that there is one for deadly weapons — seems lost on the legislators proposing the measure, one of whom lamented, “I hate mandates as much as anyone, but some concerns and conditions rise to the level of needing a mandate”:

Sen. Dan Brown, R-Rolla, told the Senate General Laws Committee Tuesday that his bill was an effort to teach young children what to do if they come across an unsecured weapon.[...]

“I hate mandates as much as anyone, but some concerns and conditions rise to the level of needing a mandate,” Brown said.

Senators watched a brief segment of the training video during the hearing. The segment featured a cartoon eagle telling children to step away from an unsecured gun and immediately report it to an adult.

The measure would also require teachers to spend eight hours in a training course for how to respond to an armed assailant in the school. But the NRA will not foot the bill for the cost of substitute teachers on those days — despite the organizations stated focus on protecting the classroom.

And if the legislature is truly worried about protecting their students, sex education is a good place to start. Missouri’s young people suffer some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the country. Many of the schools run abstinence-only education, which is proven ineffective and likely to lead to more STIs and unintended pregnancies. It may not be as terrifying to a parent to imagine their child pregnant instead of shot, but it’s a much more likely possibility: In Missouri, 51 out of every 1,000 women have an unintended pregnancy, while there are 12.3 gun deaths per 100,00 people.

Less than two weeks ago, Hadiya Pendleton was leading her classmates in the King College Prep School Marching Band down Pennsylvania Avenue on the afternoon of President Obama’s second inauguration. It would be an opportunity of a lifetime for any 15 year old, but for Pendleton, it was her last. On Tuesday, she was gunned down in a park a few blocks from school on the South Side of Chicago, less than a mile from the first family’s home.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Pendleton and another classmate, a 16 year old boy, were both caught in the middle of a gang war. The boy was still in serious condition on Tuesday evening, but Pendleton did not survive:

Friends of the slain girl said King was dismissed early today because of exams, and students went to the park on Oakenwald–something they don’t usually do.

Friends said the girl was a majorette and a volleyball player, a friendly and sweet presence at King, one of the top 10 CPS selective enrollment schools. Pendleton performed with other King College students at President Barack Obama’s inaugural events.

In the last year, Chicago has endured a surge of gun-related murders, more than quadruple the number of homicides in New York City and 58 percent more than the number of U.S. soldiers shot and killed in Afghanistan. During the recent debate over gun control, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has sought to place his city at the front of the push for reform, instructing the city’s pension funds to divest from any gun manufacturer and supporting more gun buyback programs.

Later today, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is set to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and will reaffirm his organization’s opposition to universal background checks for persons who wish to purchase a firearm. According to a copy of LaPierre’s prepared remarks that was leaked on Tuesday, the NRA’s top executive will claim that “when it comes to the issue of background checks, let’s be honest – background checks will never be “universal” – because criminals will never submit to them.”

Meanwhile, the latest poll from Gallup shows that just 8 percent of the country agrees with the NRA on background checks. Other polls found a higher approval rating for polygamy (which 11 percent of respondents support), and Congress (9 percent). Additionally, polls have found more support for support Hugo Chavez (9 percent), human cloning (17 percent) and communism (9 percent) than the NRA’s position on this issue. Exactly the same percentage of people support the Panetta-Burns deficit reduction plan — which doesn’t exist.