A federal appeals court on Tuesday invalidated Virginia’s law prohibiting anal and oral sex, citing the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas that held Texas’ anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the state’s provision banning “crimes against nature,” which include “’carnal knowledge’ by one person of another by the anus or the mouth” “cannot be squared with Lawrence.” The 2003 high court decision held that “statutes criminalizing private acts of consensual sodomy between adults are inconsistent with the protections of liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.

Fourteen states still have sodomy laws on the books, including Texas – the state whose law was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence. While Texas notes the Lawrence decision in its penal code, it takes a full act of the legislature to repeal a statute, and the legislature’s supermajority has not let the repeal come to a vote. Four other states only criminalize sodomy if you’re gay. Although most of these statutes are rarely if ever enforced, affirmative attempts to formally repeal them have faced Republican resistance.

The legal challenge in this case involved a man accused of criminal solicitation of a minor who argued that the underlying “crimes against nature” statute on which the prosecution was based was unconstitutional. The dissenting judge, an Obama appointee, argued that the law should not be invalidated as applied to this particular defendant because Lawrence only applied to two consenting adults.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) called a new federal law cracking down on the illegal sale of weapons to criminals “a solution in search of a problem.” His colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee appear to agree, as all but one Republican voted against sending the bill out of committee.

But at least one group of gun enthusiasts doesn’t share the Senate Republican view of gun trafficking: the people who sell them.

The evidence for this claim comes from a new study by Professor Garen Wintemute at the University of California of Davis, provided to ThinkProgress by the author on Monday. Wintemute surveyed 591 federally licensed gun retailers and pawnbrokers, all of whom sold over fifty guns per year, and asked them a series of questions concerning their views on gun trafficking and its criminal punishment. Contrary to what one might expect, gun retailers favor significantly harsher penalties for individuals who serve as “straw purchasers” for traffickers or people prohibited from owning guns, as well as fellow retailers who knowingly sell to them:

Of these same respondents, 478 (88.0%) recommended a specific sentence for an individual convicted of buying 50 firearms for a trafficking operation. The median period of incarceration was again 10 years (IQR 5–20 years); the median fine was again $50 000 (IQR $10 000–$100 000). Median recommendations were unchanged for 382 (79.9%) respondents recommending both incarceration and a fine. Younger respondents recommended longer terms and larger fines for both retailers and buyers, and respondents with higher frequencies of attempted straw purchases and denied sales recommended larger fines…

Perhaps 5–10% of firearms trafficking operations involve illegal sales knowingly made by a retail licensee. Respondents saw this as a serious crime motivated by desire for personal gain that merited, when 50 guns were involved, a 10-year term of incarceration and a $100 000 fine. Current federal sentencing guidelines are more
lenient, recommending incarceration for at most 5.25–6.5 years in such cases and a fine of $12 500–$125 000.

While retailers recommend a ten year sentence for straw purchasers, current federal laws mean that they face somewhere between no jail time and five years. Together with their support for stricter penalties on crooked retailers, these findings suggest that the people who have the most experience with straw purchasers (roughly 70 percent of retailers reported an attempted straw purchase; 10 percent said it happened monthly) believe that we need to levy stronger criminal penalties against these types of criminals.
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A 6-month-old baby in Chicago named Jonylah Watkins died early Tuesday after she was shot five times, in an apparent flare-up of gang violence. Her father, the intended target of the shooting, is in critical condition.

After a gunman opened fire on the father and daughter Monday night, surgeons operated on Jonylah for five hours. She died early Tuesday morning. The gunman, ABC reports, is still at large:

“This is another tragedy, because no child, certainly not an infant, should be a victim of gang violence,” McCarthy said at a press conference today. “Although there are a lot of angles that we’re pursuing, there are very strong gang overtones to this particular event.”

McCarthy emphasized that the shooting was a targeted incident, saying: “It was very clear that whoever was doing this was firing at [Jonathan Watkins].”

Police have a video of the vehicle, but with Watkins in critical condition they do not have a good cooperating witness, McCarthy said.

Chicago has experienced tragic and harrowing gun violence in the last year, with hundreds of young people killed or injured in gang-related crossfire. The common misconception about gangs is that they are voluntary groups in which people in the city enlist. That’s not the case; rather, kids are basically assigned a gang to be in, based on where they live. Unfortunately, the violence persists.

In January, public attention turned toward the problem when 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was killed in a case of mistaken identity, just days after her performance at President Obama’s second inauguration. Just last month, an 18-year old mother of an infant was also killed, hours after she traveled to watch the President discuss gun violence in his home city.

There’s no easy answer for how to deal with the horrific murder rate, and the rampant gang-related violence, plaguing the city. But there are opportunities for legislators to confront the issue as they engage in discussions about gun violence prevention legislation and economic justice.

A bill that would expand background checks to almost all gun purchases was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday without the support of a single Republican. Currently, background checks are required for licensed dealers, but not for private gun sales, a workaround that allows unmonitored gun purchases by those with violent criminal histories. Bloomberg reports:

New York Senator Charles Schumer, the background-check bill’s author, defended the measure shortly before the vote, directing his remarks to the eight Republican panel members who were unified in opposing it.

“It’s sad” Schumer said. “Right after Newtown there was a view that maybe the right place we could all come together on was background checks.” Gun crimes have greatly declined since enactment of the 1993 Brady Law that created a national background-check system, he said. “All we’re doing is extending the success of the Brady Law to the areas it doesn’t cover.”

The complexity of the debate on Capitol Hill reflects the influence of the National Rifle Association, a lobby group for gun owners and manufacturers. The NRA, which claims more than 4 million members, has led opposition to any limitations on the ownership of firearms, including expanded background checks.

Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the Judiciary panel’s top Republican, said the background-check bill won’t be effective in curbing gun violence because criminals won’t submit to them.

Despite NRA opposition, some 91 percent of Americans support universal background checks – polling that is reflected in increased Republican support. But even those like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-TX) who have said they support background checks withheld support from Schumer’s bill over requirements to keep records of private transactions – a provision that Schumer said has been incorporated in gun legislation since the Brady Bill in 1993. The hope is that senators will be able to come to a compromise before a full Senate vote.

The vote follows Judiciary Committee approval of another measure last week intended to reduce gun trafficking that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) called a “solution in search of a problem.” Another proposal by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines was postponed until Thursday.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

Sen. Jon Tester’s Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, S. 375, is the rare proposal that would both increase transparency and reduce federal spending. But despite bipartisan support and no obvious opposition, an identical bill died in the last Congress without ever coming up for a vote in a Senate paralyzed by GOP minority obstruction.

An arcane law still allows Senators and Senate candidates to file their campaign finance disclosure statements on paper with the Secretary of the Senate — unlike presidential candidates and campaigns for the House of Representatives — rather than electronically. As a result, those filings are less easily searchable for citizens and require additional processing by the Secretary’s office and the Federal Election Commission. According to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who backed the bill in 2012, the inefficiency costs taxpayers an estimated $430,000 annually.

“This common-sense bill allows folks to know right away who’s funding political campaigns and reflects the accountability and transparency Montanans expect from our elected officials and candidates for public office,” Tester explained in a press release announcing the 2013 version of the bill. “It’s 2013 and high-time for the Senate to bring its campaign finance reporting into the 21st century.” The bill has already attracted 28 co-sponsors, including five Republicans.

At a Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing last year, Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the bill a “no-brainer.” Then-Ranking Member Alexander endorsed it and said it “would fix an obvious problem,” noting that the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) had blocked similar efforts in the past. But, despite his support, Alexander warned that unless Senators be given free reign to attach amendments dealing with “other problems in our current system Members might like to address,” it might not see the light of day for five years.

Due to the Senate’s rules, even non-controversial proposals and appointees can take days of the Senate’s floor time — and members of the minority can block votes on legislation they support unless they are allowed to propose unrelated measures. Though 71 Senators ultimately voted for cloture last month on the nomination of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the Republican minority filibustered the nomination and tied up the Senate for days. The watered-down filibuster reforms agreed to in January did little to address these problems.

As such, even important and non-controversial legislation like Tester’s Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act often fall by the wayside, as happened in 2012.

Rather that try to get a floor vote on small proposals like this, often the best hope is to attach them to larger bills. A spokeswoman for Sen. Tester told ThinkProgress that he hopes to include the bill as part of the FY 2014 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill.

The growing list of supporters of S. 375 includes Senators Max Baucus (D-MT), Mark Begich (D-AK), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Al Franken (D-VA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Johnny Isakson (D-GA), Angus King (I-ME), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Jon Tester (D-MT), Mark Udall (D-CO), Tom Udall (D-NM), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Less than two months after the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit invalidated President Obama’s January 2012 recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, 87 companies and several unions have cited the decision in pending actions before the NLRB, challenging its authority to rule in their pending cases.

This is in addition to dozens of separate challenges in federal court to already-decided rulings, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the litany of challenges is already putting significant strain on the NLRB, previewing the chaos that is only likely to build every month that this decision stands:

The companies are attempting to do a variety of things, including overturn or block union elections, undo penalties they were ordered to pay to fired workers and halt subpoenas. Employers also argue that at least 10 NLRB regional directors are illegitimate because they were installed by invalid Obama labor-board appointees, and say regional decisions should be voided, too.

The surge of challenges tied to the court ruling is overwhelming the NLRB, a federal agency that referees disputes between companies and employees. Working through them is delaying resolution of cases alleging unfair labor practices, including whether workers can fairly hold union elections, said Lafe Solomon, the agency’s acting general counsel.

“It’s already having a huge impact,” Mr. Solomon said. “At every stage…we’re seeing attacks” citing the appeals court decision. The board contends these challenges lack merit since it believes Mr. Obama installed the members legitimately.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The January 25 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit invalidated the recess appointments in a sweeping and radical ruling whose reasoning would also have blocked hundreds of presidential recess appointments going back more than a century. A recent Congressional Research Service memo lists at least 652 recess appointments that would have been prevented by the ruling just since 1981. But what the legal memo doesn’t get into is that many of these recess appointments are still in effect, and would also be subject to court challenge if this decision stands.

To understand what that means, consider the implications for just the NLRB. An upheld D.C. Circuit decision would immediately call into question some 600 NLRB rulings. Its reasoning would also subject to challenge Obama’s similar 2010 appointments to the NLRB, which would subject to challenge some 1,400 rulings, according to a former Republican member. On top of that, companies are already launching challenges to the NLRB’s regional rulings, on the theory that invalidly appointed NLRB members did not have the authority to install those regional directors. Upending each of these rulings would not just unsettle established decisions; it would also roll back protections for countless of workers at each of the companies questioning these rulings.

Outside of the NLRB, the implications are no less dramatic. Most coverage has noted that the ruling would inevitably lead to a challenge to the concurrent 2012 recess appointment of Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which could invalidate all sorts of CFPB action for which a director was required. (On Tuesday, a top House member even questioned whether it should keep funding the CFPB in light of the ruling.) But consider that there are still other Obama recess appointees whose status would be called into question by this decision. At the same time as Obama appointed NLRB members in 2010, he also appointed three members to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a body that was also operating short of its three-member quorum at the time. Case law is not as clear about whether a quorum is required for all EEOC action as it is for NLRB action. But there is reason to believe that EEOC action would at the very least be challenged by a D.C. Circuit precedent.

If reason prevails, the chaos from the D.C. Circuit’s decision will never get this far, because it will be overturned at least in part by the D.C. Circuit on rehearing or the U.S. Supreme Court. But nothing is certain on a court with at least two judges who have suggested all labor, business and Wall Street regulation is unconstitutional. And even in the short-term, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is making sure that businesses leverage this decision as much as possible to skirt workers’ rights and inundate the NLRB.

A bill requiring background checks for all gun sales passed the Colorado Senate 19-16 yesterday on an almost entirely party-line vote. One Democrat, state Sen. Lois Tochtrop, crossed over to oppose the bill. It now moves to the Colorado House, where Democrats enjoy a 37-28 majority.

Although the vote in the state senate was relatively close, few Americans oppose universal background checks. Indeed, a recent poll found that just 8 percent of the nation agrees with the National Rifle Association’s opposition to these checks — a position that is less popular than communism, polygamy or human cloning according to other polls: