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 Scalia & Senator Kennedy: Kinda the same

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)