Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Judge Pamela Ki Mai Chen to a federal court in New York, meaning that there are now a whopping five openly gay judges on the federal bench. Four of these five are Obama appointees, and the fifth, Clinton appointee Deborah Batts, recently took a kind of partial retirement for older judges. As a result, of the nearly 800 men and women who currently serve as active Article III judges in the United States courts, just 4 are openly gay, and none of these serve on courts of appeal or on the Supreme Court.

LGBT representation in Congress is slightly, but only slightly, better. Currently, just over 1 percent of House seats are filled by openly gay lawmakers, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is the first openly gay senator in American history. She’s now been a senator for just over two months.

All of this is a long way of saying that a brief House Republicans recently filed in the Supreme Court claiming that the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act should not be struck down on constitutional grounds because “gays and lesbians are one of the most influential, best-connected, best-funded, and best organized interest groups in modern politics” is comically ridiculous. LGBT Americans have indeed made significant strides in recent years, and President Obama deserves praise for doing more to diversify the judiciary than any other president in history, but five openly gay judges and a senator is a far cry from being one of the “most influential” group in the nation.

In the wake of the announcement that Florida Atlantic University would name its football stadium after private prison corporation GEO Group for a hefty price, an executive at the company is disseminating false and misleading information about the firm’s practices and documented abuses at its facilities.

In both a statement to reporters and an op-ed, GEO Vice President for Corporate Relations Pablo Paez has falsely claimed that horrific abuses at a GEO juvenile detention facility in Mississippi described by the Department of Justice as “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls” occurred before GEO took control of the prison, even though both DOJ and court documents clearly show otherwise. ACLU National Prison Project Staff Attorney Carl Takei explains in a column:

Last week, [Paez] e-mailed a statement to reporters decrying the news coverage as “unfair,” particularly with regard to Walnut Grove. He wrote:

“For instance, a number of media reports cite problems at a facility formerly operated by GEO in Mississippi, the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, quoting a report by the Department of Justice issued in November 2010. What those media reports fail to disclose is that our company only assumed management of the facility in late August 2010, and the findings related to problems that preceded GEO’s involvement at the facility, when it was operated by [a] different private operator.”

What’s stunning about this statement is that the timeline it describes is simply false. In fact, the DOJ issued its report condemning GEO in March 2012, almost two years after GEO’s August 2010 takeover of Walnut Grove (the prison was part of the spoils of GEO’s merger with fellow prison operator Cornell Companies). The DOJ report pointedly noted: “Following GEO and Cornell’s merger, key personnel, policies and training at WGYCF [Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility] did not change substantially, despite GEO’s claim that it made corrective reforms to reflect the GEO philosophy.” Additionally, GEO’s statement completely ignores the March 26, 2012 federal court order in a lawsuit against Walnut Grove, which noted that only days before the court’s ruling, the “facility remained so understaffed that a teenage offender was brutally attacked by several other offenders while only one staffer was on site.”

A longer excerpt from Paez’s statement was published by the Broward Palm Beach New Times, and Paez made a similar false statement in a column in the Palm Beach Post, writing, “our company only assumed management of the facility in late 2010, and the challenges at the facility preceded GEO’s involvement.”

For more on why this is blatantly false, the ACLU has a timeline of events that even more clearly articulates GEO’s involvement in what a federal judge called “a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.” In that scathing consent decree, which resulted from a lawsuit by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center, U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves described the conditions this way:

Those allegations … far exceeded mere breaches of the United States Constitution; the investigation uncovered pervasive violations of state and federal civil and criminal law and a wholesale lack of accountability by prison officials. For example, staff of the WGYCF and those responsible for overseeing and supervising the youth engaged in sexual relationships with the youth; they exploited them by selling drugs in the facility; and the youth, “handcuffed and defenseless[,] have been kicked, punched, and beaten all over their bodies.” They are frequently subjected to chemical restraints for the most insignificant of infractions and are denied necessary medical care.

What’s more, Judge Carlton A. Reeves pointed out that GEO Group made absolutely no effort to remedy this behavior, even in the face of a known DOJ investigation and ongoing litigation. Reeves continued:

Those youth, some of whom are mere children, are at risk every minute, every hour, every day. Without Court intervention, they will continue to suffer unconstitutional harms, some of which are due to aberrant and criminal behavior. Nothing has curtailed actions of the staff and indifference of management officials to the constant violations, even though the parties and their experts have been monitoring, investigating and conducting on-site visits constantly since before the lawsuit was filed and during the pendency of this action. Moreover, the fact that the DOJ dared to begin its investigation in October 2010 has not caused the defendants to transform the facility into one that complies with the United States Constitution. But even more astounding is the fact that the notice of the fairness hearing itself did not cause the defendants to change course. The testimony established that only two days before the hearing, the facility remained so understaffed that a teenage offender was brutally attacked by several other offenders while only one staffer was on site. As of the date of the hearing, according to testimony, management has done nothing to address staffing issues. WGYCF has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the offenders at substantial ongoing risk.

This is the case from which Paez is now attempting to distance GEO, even though its connection to the facility is memorialized in both official court documents and the DOJ’s report. And it’s not an isolated incident. GEO Group and its subsidiary GEO Care have faced fines for “serious shortcomings in patient care” at its mental health facilities and has been the subject of numerous reports of juvenile abuse, deaths, and riots. Paez also claims GEO Group doesn’t engage in lobbying, even though GEO and its fellow private prison corporations have spent millions on campaign donations and professional lobbying firms. But then again, GEO officials are no strangers to misrepresentations. Last year, GEO Group Senior Vice President of Project Development Thomas Wierdsma testified under oath that lying to a federal agency would be just fine.

As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, many on both sides of the aisle are speaking out in defense of the law. But just seven years after joining in the Senate’s 98-0 vote to reauthorize the law, two Senate Republicans are refusing to say whether they think the law they voted for passes constitutional muster.

On Tuesday, Talking Points Memo’s Sahil Kapur asked Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) whether they think the Supreme Court should uphold the Voting Rights Act — which both voted to reauthorize in July 2006. Graham reportedly responded, “Uhh.. [long pause] I haven’t even thought about it.” Inhofe, according to Kapur, responded: “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll let someone else answer that.”

There are many reasons why 48 years after its original passage, the Voting Rights Act is still needed. But the case was perhaps best made by Graham himself in a 2006 press release:

South Carolina has come a long way in the past few decades and we have a lot to be proud of. But just like every other part of the country, we still have a ways to go. I hope twenty-five years from now it can be said that there will be no need for a Voting Rights Act because things have continued to change for the better. If we continue making progress like we have in the past twenty-five years, we can make it happen.

All Senators take an oath that they will “support and defend the Constitution.” The 15th Amendment to that Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to ensure that citizens’ “right to vote shall not be denied or abridged” based on race or color. By voting for the 2006 legislation, Graham and Inhofe already put themselves on record as believing this was constitutional.

Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) introduced a bill in the House Friday that would require states that want to receive full funding for welfare assistance to force its citizens to waive their Fourth Amendment rights and submit to random drug testing. In a press release, Fincher describes the Welfare Integrity Act of 2013:

The bill requires each state participating in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to certify that applicants and current recipients are being randomly test for illegal drug use. In order to pass constitutional muster, the bill requires states to provide a consent and waiver form, where applicants are given the choice to waive their Fourth Amendment Rights and submit to a random drug test. If welfare beneficiaries fail a drug test or are arrested on a drug related offense, they will be unable to receive the benefit and cannot reapply for one year. Further, the legislation requires states that receive funding from the TANF program to certify that there is a program in place to test 20% of applicants and recipients for illegal drugs. States that do not comply would forfeit 10% of their TANF funding.

A federal appeals court has already blocked Florida’s mandatory drug-testing law, making it clear a blanket testing of public assistance applicants is likely unconstitutional. “The simple fact of seeking public assistance does not deprive a TANF applicant of the same constitutional protection from unreasonable searches that all other citizens enjoy,” the court held.

In a remarkable acknowledgment of the constitutional problems with the bill, the text of Fincher’s legislation actually calls for states to require citizens to “sign a waiver of constitutional rights with respect to testing.” Fincher suggests in his press release that the waiver is not forced because applicants can opt not to apply for benefits, but the federal appeals court made clear in its recent decision that a coerced waiver violates “the well settled doctrine of ‘unconstitutional conditions,’ the government may not require a person to give up a constitutional right . . . in exchange for a discretionary benefit conferred by the government where the benefit sought has little or no relationship to [the right].” The bill, then, would seek to require every state that wants to maintain its current level of funding to pass its own unconstitutional law.

As the Huffington Post points out, the bill is unlikely to succeed. Similar legislation introduced in 2011 “garned just seven cosponsors and failed to clear a committee.” But state bills that impose drug testing on applicants and beneficiaries are seeing increasing success, and at least seven states have already passed legislation requiring some form of drug testing for public assistance applicants or recipients. Mitt Romney even endorsed the idea during his presidential campaign.

Attempts by Maryland Republicans to water down the state’s proposed death penalty repeal were defeated late Monday night. The Senate voted down 8 amendments to keep the death penalty in place for some people, including cop-killers and inmates who kill correctional officers while in prison. The repeal could get a full vote as early as today and head to the House of Delegates for debate next week.

Though Maryland has only executed 5 people since 1978, Republican lawmakers fought long into the evening to maintain exceptions to the repeal:

Republicans and Democrats offered heart-wrenching examples of murderers without remorse and officers who left behind widows and children. “But I’ve got to say, the death penalty was in place when those murders took place,” Raskin said. “It did not stop those murders.”

Other efforts to preserve Maryland’s already narrowly written death penalty law also failed as the discussion stretched late into the night. Senators unsuccessfully tried to carve out exemptions for contract killers, people who commit multiple murders, murders of children or murders committed during a kidnapping.

This is the second time Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has pushed for repeal, after his first effort failed in 2007. Maryland would be the 18th state to repeal the death penalty.

Maryland already in effect invalidated the death penalty since a judge overturned the rules for execution procedures in 2006. Still, 5 inmates remain on death row, in a “politically forged purgatory” for almost 30 years.

Maryland is following a national trend away from the death penalty; last year, judges issued the lowest number of death sentences in 20 years, while executions have declined. Despite this progress, the US is still the only G7 country where it is legal to execute citizens.

Capital punishment has fallen out of favor with both Democrats and Republicans nationally, due to mounting evidence that innocent people have been sentenced to death, and the escalating costs of housing death row inmates and pursuing extended legal battles.

Less than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed California health care constitutionally inadequate and subject to federal court supervision, California Gov. Jerry Brown recently declared that the prison emergency is “over” and that further improvements would “gold-plate our prisons.” What Brown didn’t highlight, however, are identified problems that have been correlated to a spate of prison suicides. The concerns were raised by a national expert on prison suicides, commissioned by the state but whose findings were mostly “buried” until the defendants in the ongoing court supervision of the state’s prisons uncovered them. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Lindsay Hayes, a national expert on suicide prevention in prisons, told corrections officials in 2011 that the state’s system of holding suicidal inmates for days in dim, dirty, airless cells with unsanitized mattresses on the floor was compounding the risk that they would take their own lives.

His report described in detail inmates being divested of their clothes and possessions and robed in a “safety smock.” Hayes concluded that such conditions encouraged prisoners to declare they were no longer suicidal just to escape the holding cells. Many of them took their own lives soon after.

The state asked Hayes to create a short version of his report that omitted his damaging findings, to give to a court monitor and lawyers for prisoners, the court documents show. Hayes complied, but when inmate attorneys obtained a complete copy, the state asked a U.S. District Court to order it destroyed. The judge refused.

The report says the state’s handling of suicidal inmates is “seemingly punitive” and “anti-therapeutic.” Hayes noted that guards, not mental health workers, dictate many of the conditions of suicide watches, such as whether to allow daily showers. Hayes alleged prison workers sometimes falsified watch logs showing how frequently those inmates were checked.

Brown’s lawyers had argued that Hayes was hired for internal use and that his report was not intended to be a part of the litigation. But the judge overseeing court monitoring ruled that whether or not Hayes’ findings were intended for litigation, the state was not entitled to have the documents destroyed, and that Hayes’ findings are both relevant to the ongoing assessment of prison conditions and admissible in court.

Setting aside whether the state should have voluntarily made Hayes’ complete findings available to the court or the defendants, what this report shows is that Gov. Brown withheld findings that don’t suit the state’s interests when he declared the prison emergency “over.” California is poised to miss the final court-imposed deadline for reducing prison overcrowding linked to poor health conditions, but contends the population reduction is no longer necessary.

On Monday, the Iowa state House moved out of subcommittee a bill that would make no-fault divorces illegal. That’s a huge relief for one state legislator, who fears that no-fault divorce will turn his 16-year-old granddaughter into a harlot.

State Representative Tedd Gassman (R) spoke emotionally about the legislation — which would require all parents of children under 18 to prove their spouse had committed a crime, abandoned the family, or committed adultery — saying that it related to the real-life scenario of his daughter’s divorce. That situation, he said, was at risk of turning his daughter into a hormonal trollop:

“This basically is an attempt on my part to keep fathers in the home,” Gassman said. “I sincerely believe that the family is the foundation of this nation and this nation will go the direction of our families. If our families break up, so will this nation.”[...]

Representative Gassman said the issue is “near and dear” to his heart because his daughter and son-in-law recently divorced, putting his granddaughter at risk.

“There’s a 16-year-old girl in this whole mix now. Guess what? What are the possibilities of her being more promiscuous?” Gassman said.

“What are the possibilities of all these other things surrounding her life that a 16-year-old girl, with hormones raging, can get herself into?”

No-fault divorces allow unhappy couples to put an end to their marriages, so it is not at all clear that they are worse for a child than continuing a marriage where parents resent the kid for keeping them together against their will. And while it does not address the problems with power and economic disparity (PDF) between high-earning male spouses and low-earning women, no-fault divorce is a quick solution for a victim of domestic violence to escape an otherwise dangerous situation. Additionally, one study showed that fewer women committed suicide or were murdered by intimate partners in states with more liberal divorce laws.