Along the U.S. border with Mexico, the number of people stopped while crossing the border illegally has decreased, and there are more “boots on the ground” along the border than ever before in the nation’s history. Net undocumented migration is at or below zero, while annual deportations are at a historic high.

But that is not enough for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who said after November’s election that “[t]he border was never secured.” Instead of looking to these the statistics, she said the border is secure only when people who live on the border think it is secure:

On Monday, pushed for what she would consider secure, Brewer said a starting point would be to make the entire border as secure as the Yuma sector.

The Yuma sector, which covers about 126 miles from the west end of Pima County to the Imperial Sand Dunes in California, had about 5,800 apprehensions in a 10-month period ending last July 31. By comparison, the 262-mile Tucson sector, which covers the balance of Arizona had more than 105,000.

“I think that would be a goal,” Brewer said Monday. But the governor said the real test is whether those along the border feel secure.

“We can talk to the people that are affected personally by the border,” she said. “And when they say that border is secure, then I think that we can rest peacefully.”

The problem with Brewer’s idea is that more resources than ever are already available for border security. The U.S. spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement in the 2012 fiscal year, which is more than every other federal law enforcement agency combined, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute. Instead of continuing to toss more money at border security, the U.S. needs a permanent fix to the nation’s immigration system, including a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here.

The Voting Rights Act forbids state laws that place a heavier burden on minority voters than on other members of the electorate. Additionally, Section 5 of the law requires many parts of the country to “preclear” new voting rules with DOJ or a federal court in order to ensure that they do not violate the Voting Rights Act’s protections for minority voters. The Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to Section 5.

Last week, the state of Texas submitted an amicus brief calling up the justices to strike down this landmark voting rights law. Ironically, however, the brief does far more to explain why Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is still necessary. Texas’ primary argument is that the nation’s most important voting rights law must be gutted because it prevents the state from enacting a law that suppresses the minority vote:

The preclearance proceedings involving Texas’s voter-identification law illustrate the enormous burdens of the section 5 regime. Section 5 has empowered the Department of Justice to thwart the implementation of a constitutional voter-identification measure with abusive and heavy-handed tactics.

DOJ’s actions during the preclearance process indicate that the Department has not heeded this Court’s decision in Northwest Austin and leave no doubt that DOJ will continue to enforce section 5 in a manner that aggravates rather than mitigates the “federalism costs” imposed by the preclearance regime. The only way for this Court to alleviate these unwarranted and burdensome federalism costs is to declare the reauthorization of section 5 unconstitutional.

Voter ID laws serve no valid purpose. Although their supporters claim they are needed to combat in person voter fraud, the reality is that such fraud is virtually non-existent. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls — one study determined that just 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of in-person fraud. By contrast, voter ID laws do have a major impact on minority voters in particular. Even conservative estimates suggest that voter ID prevents 2 to 3 percent of registered voters from casting a ballot, and racial minorities are disproportionately more likely to be included among the disenfranchised.

In other words, voter ID is exactly the sort of thing the Voting Rights Act was enacted to prevent.

In the United States, ten states plus the District of Columbia allow voters to register to vote on election day — effectively removing the registration requirement as an obstacle to the fundamental right to vote. In the overwhelming majority of states, however, activists and political campaigns often have to race to register voters before a deadline. And conservative politicians have even raised artificial barriers to registration in an effort to reduce the franchise.

It does not have to be this way, however. To the contrary, a constitutional court in Hungary just struck down the conservative government’s attempt to impose an American-style voter registration system on its electorate:

[Prime Minister Viktor] Orban’s Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance approved a new voting system in November in one of the most hotly contested steps of a flurry of reforms that included a new constitution and a swathe of laws that critics say entrench Fidesz’s power.

“Mindful of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court has established that for those with Hungarian residency the registration requirement represents an undue restriction on voting rights and is therefore unconstitutional,” the court said in a statement.

It added that voter registration for Hungarians outside the borders was justified.

The changes would have required 8 million domestic voters to register in person or online at least two weeks before elections in 2014. Voters currently only have to turn up at polling stations on election day to be identified from an existing state-run database and cast their vote.

Automatic or mandatory voter registration systems are increasingly common in modern democracies. They are now the rule in Australia, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Admittedly, such a system would be more difficult to implement in the United States, where voter rolls are maintained by many state governments rather than one central government, but same day registration achieves many of the benefits of automatic registration by similarly ensuring that registration will not be an obstacle to voting.

Two years ago, Reagan-appointed Chief Judge Royce Lamberth suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in a sweeping opinion that even invalidated funding permitted under President George W. Bush’s policies. Despite the fact that the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations all agreed that Judge Lamberth misinterpreted federal law, Lamberth relied on a federal law forbidding funding of “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed” to hold that federal spending not only cannot fund the destruction of a new embryo, it also cannot fund research that builds on past research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo.

Lamberth’s decision was eventually reversed by a conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court held, correctly, that even though Lamberth might have proposed a plausible reading of federal law, longstanding Supreme Court precedent generally requires courts to defer to an agency’s reading of a statute. As the appeals court explained, “the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an [embryonic stem cell] from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an [embryonic stem cell] will be used.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced it would not hear this case, effectively killing this challenge to stem cell research.

This is an important victory for science, and it is just as much a victory for judicial restraint. As the near-success of the Affordable Care Act lawsuits demonstrate, conservative judges and justices are increasingly willing to substitute their policy preferences for the law, even when they must rely on legal theories that, in the words of one of the nation’s most conservative judges, have no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” The requirement that judges defer to agencies in interpreting ambiguous statutes is an important check on the judiciary’s ability to impose their policy views on the nation. Agency leaders change with each presidential election; judges do not. And so the power to interpret a genuinely ambiguous statute should rest with officials whose legitimacy flows more closely from the will of the people.

Last month, a California judge rejected a landlord’s move to evict the nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary for engaging in a business that is legal under state law. Now, a federal judge has also barred the landlord’s attempt to halt the dispensary’s operations.

In the ongoing federal-local battle over state laws that legalize medical marijuana, the court ruling is the latest victory for Harborside Health Center, a 100-plus-employee operation that Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker has praised for providing “access to safe, affordable and effective medicine.” While the Obama administration initially said it would not target medical marijuana dispensaries in compliance with state law, it has since fluctuated on this position, and pursued increasingly vigorous crackdowns. To shut down Harborside, the federal government filed a civil action to seize the Oakland and San Jose, Calif. properties Harborside leases for its dispensaries. The owners of the two properties attempted to skirt the federal case by moving to evict Harborside or cease its marijuana distribution. One county judge rejected the move, while another has allowed eviction proceedings to move forward. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James held Monday that the federal Controlled Substances Act cannot be enforced by private parties like these landlords:

As Harborside points out, courts have consistently held that there is no private right of action under the CSA to force compliance. […]

Moreover, while the Court understands Claimants’ concern over the potential forfeiture of their properties, Rule G(7)(a) is not a means to sever business relationships when they suddenly prove risky or to demonstrate cooperation with the Government.

The landlords and the Department of Justice will now litigate between themselves over the move to seize the properties where Harborside is housed. The city of Oakland also filed an unprecedented, affirmative lawsuit to halt federal government crackdowns of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. The city alleges that the federal government exceeded its authority with its civil forfeiture action by acting contrary to earlier statements and actions that indicated it would not crack down on those dispensaries in compliance with state medical marijuana laws, now in 18 states.

The litigation raises the question of how the federal government will handle Washington and Colorado’s new laws to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana. In the first comment on the measures, President Obama said recreational users are not a “high priority.” He did not, however, refer to marijuana sellers and suppliers, which would be the likely subjects of any federal crackdown.

In the wake of the crackdown, landlords have been unwilling to rent to several other dispensaries that were approved for operation in Oakland.

On Monday, ThinkProgress reported about a Mexican restaurant in West Columbia, South Carolina whose employees wear T-shirts (pictured below) showing a wooden trap with tacos as bait and the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

Now, Taco Cid issued an equally offensive response on its website, flagged by the Palmetto Public Record. The eatery defended the shirts as “witty and comical,” arguing that “Taco Cid and it’s [sic] employees are not racist.” The restaurant insists that the shirts, which show a pair of tacos under a trap and singles out “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” contain “NO racial nor hate remarks towards any specific ethnic group.”

But it also goes on to articulate a false political argument, claiming that undocumented workers cause everyone to “pay more in taxes in support of their illegal activities.” In 2010 alone, unauthorized immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes and pump billions in purchasing power into the economy. This output and spending generates jobs and opportunity.

Taco Cid finished the rambling statement with a plea for those who are offended by its views not to come enjoy their tacos: “If you do not agree with our views on ILLEGAL immigrants, please do not visit our establishment.”

See the full statement below:

Judging by the Taco Cid’s reviews on Yelp, many people are taking the restaurant up on their plea to stay away if they don’t agree with the racist shirts. Nine of the ten reviews gave Taco Cid one star, in large part due to the shirts. “Racist shirts and the food sucks, too,” wrote Corvus S. User K.G. followed up with, “The racism’s world class! Awareness of tax policy, immigration law, and social justice is disappointing, along with an embarrassing level of self-awareness.”

Texas state Rep. Bill Zedler (R) has earned a reputation as a fringe extremist even in the conservative state legislature. But Zedler has outdone himself with his latest bill, which would regulate “sexually oriented” businesses, in part by requiring strippers to obtain and wear a license to work.

Licensing requirements for strip clubs and performers exist in many cities and in the state of Alabama. Usually, these laws require a background check and registration with the Labor Department. However, Zedler’s bill goes further, mandating that exotic dancers would need to “conspicuously display” the license while working. They could only obtain the license after completing a training program on human trafficking:

To get that license, they would have to meet a variety of requirements, including being at least 18 and completing a course about human trafficking. No one convicted of crimes such as prostitution, obscenity, public lewdness or sexual assault would be eligible for a license. [...] Many details about the license would be left to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

But the bill states that anyone who receives a license would have to wear it while doing their job — including dancers.

“They could wear it around the neck … or on their shoes … or attached to a head band,” Zedler suggested.

Furthermore, the license would display the woman’s real name, exposing her to harassment, stalking, and stigma in her daily life. Zedler admitted that making a stripper wear her real name could be dangerous and suggested that they may be allowed to cover that part of the license.

Zedler’s bill is similar to a city ordinance already enacted in Houston. Exotic dancers in Houston have to display a license while stripping, a rule upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts. Since the license requirements went into effect in 2004, strippers are bearing the brunt of the city’s budget troubles. Licenses in Houston now cost $250, up from $60. On top of the city fees, clubs themselves often charge their employees an additional fee of up to $80 a time slot. Police have also used the ordinance as an excuse to raid the clubs and arrest strippers — mostly leaving their employers alone.

Zedler contends that his bill is meant to guard against human trafficking, a legitimate problem in the industry, and deter minors from getting involved in “drugs, prostitution and that kind of thing.” However, his license requirements place the burden squarely on the women on the stage, not on the companies and clubs reaping far bigger profits than their employees. Several topless dancers recently sued Dallas strip clubs in federal court for denying their workers any wages at all. Many other clubs classify their employees as “independent contractors” in order to avoid minimum wage laws and labor standards. If Zedler really does want to “clean up the profession,” as he claims, he should tighten scrutiny on the clubs themselves, rather than further penalize the women in the profession.

In November, ThinkProgress exclusively reported that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization” with an official address in Warrenton, VA, has never registered as a charitable organization with the Commonwealth of Virginia, as appears was legally required. Following this report, Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services sent a letter to Crossroads GPS warning them of their legal obligation.

The letter, sent on December 20, 2012, notes that, “in accordance with § 57-49 of the Code of Virginia, [Crossroads GPS] should register with our office.” It states that Virginia law requires “all organizations that intend to solicit for a charitable purpose in Virginia to register or apply for an exemption from annual registration, if applicable, prior to any charitable solicitation activity in Virginia.”

Read the letter:

Charitable groups that raise any money in Virginia are required to pay an annual fee ($325 for groups raising over $1 million annually), provide basic information about their operations, and sign statements affirming that no funds “have been or will knowingly be used, directly or indirectly, to benefit or provide support, in cash or in kind, to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities, or the family members of any terrorist.”

A Department spokeswoman told ThinkProgress in November that should Crossroads GPS ignore this letter, Virginia law “provides for both civil and criminal penalties” if the group can be shown to have made such solicitations.