Two years ago, when Senate Republicans needed to fill a vacant seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, they tapped Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — a senator who believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. This year, they needed to fill two seats on the Senate body responsible for overseeing the Constitution. Once again, Senate Republicans chose to fill these seats with senators who believe the Constitution in nothing more than a block of clay that can be formed into whatever the Tea Party wants it to say.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is no stranger to conspiracy theories; he published an article last year claiming that the United Nations and George Soros are at the head of a global conspiracy to eliminate the game of golf. (Seriously. We aren’t making this up.) So his understanding of the Constitution is similarly idiosyncratic. As head of a conservative think tank’s Tenth Amendment project, Cruz co-authored an unconstitutional plan to nullify the Affordable Care Act — claiming that two states can ignore the Constitution and federal law simply by joining together in such lawlessness.

Cruz is among the most skilled attorneys in the country, but he devoted his outsized talents to reshaping the Constitution into his own far right image. His first campaign ad touted his successful work to help Texas kill a Mexican national in violation of America’s treaty obligations, and he believed in using lawsuits to tear down the health care safety net long before the Affordable Care Act’s opponents brought a completely meritless legal theory to the Supreme Court and nearly convinced the entire conservative bloc to sign onto it in its entirety. Cruz’s campaign touted his attempt to “to strike down portions of the Medicare Prescription Drug program as an unconstitutional intrusion in the sovereign authority of the States.” Although Cruz is more careful in his rhetoric than Sen. Lee, perhaps the most damning aspect of Cruz’s record is the staunch opponent of national child labor laws and Medicare’s endorsement of Cruz’s constitutional vision. In Lee’s words, “Ted is one of our nation’s leading defenders of the Tenth Amendment. He is a champion for limiting the power, size, and spending of the federal government.”

Cruz is joined on the Judiciary Committee by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who actually thinks his own election to the Senate should be unconstitutional. Flake endorsed repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, which replaced a system that led to “rampant and blatant corruption, letting corporations and other moneyed interests effectively buy U.S. Senators,” with our current system — electing senators.

Like Cruz, Flake also embraced rethinking the Tenth Amendment as a tool to impose Tea Party values on the country long before the Tea Party even existed. In 2000, Flake signed a position statement claiming that the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, in addition to the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, “should be abolished, per the tenth amendment of the US Constitution.” For the record, nothing in the Tenth Amendment renders any of these things unconstitutional.

In yet another case, DNA evidence has suggested the innocence of a man who has spent 11 years and counting in maximum security prison for a serious crime. Joseph Buffey, like some 10 percent of the hundreds of individuals exonerated by DNA testing, pleaded guilty in a rape and robbery case that DNA evidence links to another individual. Buffey was persuaded to take a plea by his lawyer, who said he wrongly assumed Buffey had committed the crime, and thought a defendant as young as 19 would get no more than a 10-year sentence. Buffey was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

But what’s most confounding about Buffey’s case is that it took 18 months of litigation by the nation’s top wrongful conviction lawyers to even secure the DNA testing. From the New York Times:

The Innocence Project lawyers got involved in this case after Mr. Buffey sent them a letter a few years ago. When they ran the test on the victim’s rape kit in the spring of 2011 and it showed that it was not Mr. Buffey’s DNA present at the crime scene, they asked to run the results through the West Virginia database of felons to see if another match existed. The judge approved, but the prosecutor refused, saying that the laboratory that had done the testing was not certified by the state. The judge then said he did not have the authority to order the state to violate its own rules.

The Innocence Project offered to run the test again through a certified lab. But the prosecutor turned down the request, saying there was “no good reason to do so” and adding, “the state does not believe such testing will or can prove the defendant’s innocence after his guilty plea.”

The judge ordered the test to go forward. The state again resisted but a month ago backed down.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of defendants are persuaded to take guilty pleas in a system increasingly designed to incentivize deals over trial. And most defendants don’t have the advantage of leading experts on wrongful conviction to litigate an appeal on their behalf. But even those like Duffey who do face immense obstacles to even access available DNA evidence. In a disheartening 2009 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a defendant who was willing to pay for a DNA test at his own expense was not entitled to the test. Allowing William Osburne to prove his potential innocence, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said, risks “unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.”

The prosecutor in Buffey’s case expressed a similar attitude, saying that even DNA evidence linked to another individual and not Buffey “only tells us that someone else took part.” The victim’s testimony that there was only one attacker casts serious doubt on Romano’s assertion. But whether or not he is right should not have any bearing on a prosecutor’s willingness to provide the defendant, the judge and the jury with definitive, scientific information like DNA evidence.

In a system that study after study has shown is fraught with bias and error, DNA evidence should be a welcome bastion of accuracy. But because it is the government that investigates crimes, the prosecutors are the gatekeepers to evidence that should be equally available to both parties. And while some individual prosecutors are supportive of greater DNA access, law enforcers have an institutional interest in winning their cases. Only nine states have laws granting defense lawyers access to a national DNA database. As National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Steven Benjamin said, “Juries expect the defense to be able to prove that if your client didn’t do it, who did? Science doesn’t belong to the government, but they act like it does.”

A Republican congressman lambasted the push for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, stating on Friday that if lawmakers wanted to ban assault weapons, they would have to outlaw “hammers” and “machetes” as well.

Appearing on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told guest host Larry O’Connor that he “refuse[s] to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon,” said the Texas congressman. “It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes.”

O’CONNOR: I want to ask you a question about one of your colleagues, Rep. Peter King in New York. He’s a very passionate guy, a great defender, he’s a great patriot. But he’s on board with this assault weapons ban. He was actually on MSNBC yesterday, openly saying, “I don’t understand why anybody would need an assault weapon.” I personally get nervous whenever a politician is asking me as a citizen why I need my right, but can you answer that question for your colleague? He might need some help here. Why would anyone need an assault weapon as they’re defining it?

GOHMERT: I refuse to play the game of “assault weapon.” That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers.

Listen to it:

According to the FBI, in 2010, there were 8,775 people who were murdered with guns, compared to 540 people who were killed with blunt objects, a small minority of which were people armed with hammers. The exponentially-higher number of people killed by guns also includes many innocent people killed by indiscriminate gunfire, such as drive-by shootings. After all, there are no “drive-by hammerings.”

Still, hammers are not the only “weapon” that conservatives are equating with firearms in an attempt to undermine any gun control legislation. A state representative in New Hampshire, warned of another deadly weapon: credit cards. “Anything can be used as a deadly weapon, said Rep. Dan Dumaine (R). “A credit card can be used to cut somebody’s throat.”

When Secretary of State Matt Schultz attempted to purge voters from the rolls in advance of the November 2012 election, a county judge temporarily blocked the move, finding that the rules issued by Schultz created fear and uncertainty and could deter legitimate voters. But that risk of voter suppression hasn’t stopped Schultz from proposing a new slightly tweaked rule to remove registered voters in the name of alleged voter fraud.

The rule would allow Schultz’s office to challenge the legitimacy of registered voters who are listed as noncitizens in the Department of Transportation database. Citing a DOT list of some 3,000 registered voters labeled noncitizens, Schultz said, “I have to do something. I can’t just sit back and do nothing when we know people are taking advantage of the system.”

But Schultz’s testimony just last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee shows that he doesn’t know people are taking advantage of the system. When probed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) for evidence of voter fraud, Schultz cited just six arrests — not convictions – out of 1.6 million votes cast. And this was after a special agent was designated to specifically target voter fraud.

As for the list of 3,000 people, that claim was easily dismissed by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund’s Nina Perales during the same hearing:

Secretary Schultz … said he had identified 3,500 noncitizens using the driver’s license rolls. He did not. He identified 3,500 people who were noncitizens at the time that they obtained their driver’s licenses. And we know that since that time and before they registered to vote, the overwhelming majority and perhaps all of them have become naturalized citizens. So at this point, anyone who undertakes to accuse people of non-citizenship based on driver’s licenses should be on notice that this is not correct and should not be done. It’s fundamentally unfair.

Attempts to prove voter fraud nationwide have fallen similarly short, with less than 20 instances of fraud charges offered in most states. Florida GOP officials have even publicly admitted voter suppression was the goal of that state’s aggressive and inaccurate purge.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are also arguing that Schultz cannot implement a purge without going through the state legislature. The ruling that blocked Schultz’s last attempt said that, at the very least, Schultz should have gone through the proper rulemaking procedure that allows for public input instead of going forward on his own. Schultz is now going through that procedure, but the court could still hold this process insufficient.

A state senator in Indiana introduced a bill on Thursday that would give public school districts the authority to mandate daily recitations of the Lord’s Prayer in public classrooms.

The bill, introduced on the first day of the new legislative session by Republican Senator Dennis Krause, outlines Kruse’s reasoning for requiring school prayer:

“In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.”

Kruse’s bill would unquestionably run afoul of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that mandating school prayer is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Even fellow Republicans in the Indiana senate don’t think much of Kruse’s bill, with Republican Senate President Pro Tempore assigning it to a committee often considered a graveyard for legislation according to the Indianapolis Star.

This is not the first time Sen. Dennis Kruse, a Republican who also happens to chair the Senate education committee, has tried to inject Christianity into public schools. Last year, he led a push to introduce creationism into the science curriculum, and when that failed he tried to pass a bill that would have required teachers to provide “some kind of research to support that what they are teaching is true or not true.”

Despite the clear violation of the First Amendment, conservatives have taken a renewed interest in school prayer after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Several prominent conservatives, including Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, used the deaths of 27 people — including 20 elementary school students — as an opportunity to blame the lack of religion in schools for gun violence.

The Iowa transportation department announced late last month that it will not issue driver’s licenses to young undocumented immigrants who benefit from deferred action, which allows them to legally remain in the U.S. temporarily. About 5,000 undocumented immigrants are eligible for deferred action in Iowa, and at least one person, Omar Del Jesus Mex Valle, had received his license after being granted deferred action in October.

Valle told the Des Moines Register that he received his license within a week after finding out he had been granted deferred action. “I hope they don’t take it from me. I need it to go to my job, and to do stuff for my family,” he said.

Paul Trombino, Iowa transportation director, said department officials will inform anyone with deferred action status who received a license that their license is no longer valid.

Iowa is one of six states to prevent deferred action beneficiaries from receiving driver’s licenses. Seventeen states, including California and Illinois, have said that undocumented immigrants with temporary legal status from the program can apply for driver’s licenses, and three states — Washington, New Mexico and Utah — do not require proof of citizenship to receive a driver’s license.

So far, the ACLU has filed lawsuits against Arizona and Michigan from blocking young undocumented immigrants who have been granted temporary legal status from being issued driver’s licenses. Randall Wilson, Iowa ACLU’s legal director, said he was surprised by the state’s decision. “These people have been granted status to stay in the United States for a period of time, and whether you want to call it illegal, legal or indeterminate, it doesn’t matter,” Wilson told the Des Moines Register. “They are here, so this issue needs to be addressed, either legislatively or in the courts.”

A California appeals court, relying on an outdated statute that prohibits someone from pretending to be someone’s husband but not their boyfriend in order to obtain sex, overturned a man’s conviction for rape because the woman he had sex with was unmarried. Under California law, rape occurs when a woman consents to sex “under the belief that the person committing the act is her husband, and this belief is induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the accused.”

Although the facts of the case are somewhat in dispute, the man admits to having sex with the woman while she slept, and the woman accuses him of sneaking into her bedroom and pretending to be her boyfriend:

Jane asked Victor to spend the night, but he declined because he had something to do the next morning. They talked about having sex, but Victor did not have a condom and they never engaged in unprotected sex, so they decided not to. Eventually, Jane fell asleep while Victor was still there. Victor left sometime later. . . . According to Jane, she woke up to the sensation of having sex. She was in a different position on the bed, perpendicular to the position she had been in when she fell asleep. She was confused because she and Victor had agreed not to have sex that night. When light coming through a crack in the bedroom door illuminated the face of the person having sex with her, i.e., defendant, she realized it was not Victor and tried to push him away. Defendant grabbed her thighs and pushed his penis back into her vagina. She pushed him away again and began to cry and yell. Defendant left her room; Jane locked her door and called Victor, asking him to come back to her house.

While being detained in Deputy Peralta’s patrol car, defendant spoke to another deputy, Deputy Leyn. He admitted that he had gone into Jane‟s room while she was asleep. He said that he had kissed her and that she kissed him back, but he thought she might still be asleep. He pulled down her pajama bottoms, got on top of her, and started to have sex. He said she probably thought he was her boyfriend, and when she realized he was not, she started screaming. During a second interview with Deputy Leyn, defendant once again described what happened, including that Jane was asleep when he put his penis into her vagina, and wrote out a statement admitting that he kissed Jane and touched her vagina while she was asleep.

A jury convicted the defendant of rape, although it did not make clear whether he was convicted because he impersonated Jane’s boyfriend or because he had sex with a woman who could not consent to intercourse because she was asleep. Sex with an unconscious woman is rape in California when the accused rapist knows the woman is sleeping. Under the appeals court’s decision, however, obtaining consent to sex by pretending to be someone’s boyfriend is not. As the court explained, “we reluctantly hold that a person who accomplishes sexual intercourse by impersonating someone other than a married victim’s spouse is not guilty of the crime of rape of an unconscious person.”

The one silver lining to this decision is that the court did not end the case outright. The defendant will be retried and can be reconvicted if a new trial determines that he had sex with Jane while she was sleeping — a likely conclusion given the defendant’s admission that he did so.