Earlier today, the Republican National Committee released a one minute video gloating that President Obama has experienced a “string of defeats” during the first 100 days of his second term. Of course, the reason for these “defeats” is that the GOP retains the power to unilaterally block progress in the Senate through filibusters, and they maintain control of the House despite losing the popular vote by nearly 1.4 million votes. So the GOP strategy seems to be to block Obama’s agenda, and then question his leadership because he can’t get his agenda passed.

This, of course, is merely a continuation of the GOP’s political strategy during the President’s first term. What is new, however, is that the RNC’s gloating video features this image:

That’s President Obama consoling Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed during the Newton massacre. Worse, this picture was taken shortly after a coalition of mostly Senate Republicans killed a bill that was intended to prevent more people from dying from gun violence. That’s what the Republican Party is gloating about when it brags that President Obama has experienced a “string of defeats.”

In New York City, marijuana is the most common reason for arrest, even though only possession of marijuana in public view is a crime. A dramatic spike in these arrests has accompanied the rise of the New York Police Department’s controversial stop and frisk tactic, and an equally controversial reported tactic of considering the marijuana in “public view” once a suspect is ordered by police to take it out of a pocket. Almost all of these cases end in plea deals, and most who are not charged with anything else plead guilty to a non-criminal violation such as disorderly conduct, even where the evidence would have shown that suspects did nothing wrong at all. Even these plea deals come only after arrestees have been detained, often for 8 hours or overnight in jail, and sacrificed an additional day to return to court.

But those who dare to actually defend the charge in court – particularly in the Bronx — find that there is no place in the legal system for misdemeanor due process. After a two-plus-year trek through the legal system with 54 clients who challenged their marijuana arrests in the Bronx, nonprofit Bronx Defenders found that prosecutors use chronic delay and mandatory court appearances to effectively kill every marijuana possession defense attempt. Rather than accept a plea deal, these defendants pled innocent. They showed up to court. And then they showed up again, waiting full days in court behind hundreds of other defendants before being told that the prosecutor was “not ready.” Since Bronx Defenders began this process in July 2011, not one of the 54 marijuana defendants had a suppression hearing – the initial hearing at which the prosecutors are tasked with producing physical evidence of the alleged crime. Courts so clogged with delayed cases that they have become little more than “plea bargaining mills,” as the New York Times puts it, treat misdemeanors as a particular afterthought, with threats of overly punishing sentences lorded over clients to extract a guilty plea and plow through overwhelming caseloads. As a result, a study released Wednesday concludes, it was “virtually impossible … to effectively litigate the constitutionality of street-level police behavior.” Take the story of 17-year-old Angel Cardona, whose name has been changed:

In the waning days of summer 2011, Angel Cardona … chatted with three friends—two female and one male—while waiting for a bus that would take him home for the night. Before the bus arrived, however, a marked police car pulled up to the bus stop. The officer in the passenger seat beckoned the teenagers over to the car and began to question the two young men in the group. A moment later the officers were standing on the sidewalk and Angel and his friends were lined up along a nearby railing and forced to assume the search position. One of the officers frisked Angel and then went through his pockets. The officer found a partially smoked marijuana cigarette in a small plastic box in Angel’s right front pants pocket. Angel was arrested and spent approximately 8 hours in police custody before being issued a desk appearance ticket.

Three months later, Angel and his mother, a home health aide who had taken the day off to accompany her son to court, arrived in Bronx Criminal Court for Angel’s arraignment. There they discovered that the police officer who had arrested Angel claimed, falsely, that he had seen Angel smoking marijuana on the sidewalk, resulting in a misdemeanor charge (simply carrying marijuana in one’s pocket is a non-criminal violation). […]

Almost 10 months later … Angel and his mother sat on a bench in the lower level of the Bronx Hall of Justice dejected, frustrated, and resigned to the realities of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor had not been ready for hearings or trial on either of the past two trial dates and had indicated that she would state “not ready” for a third consecutive time. At Angel’s first post-arraignment court appearance, the presiding judge had openly questioned Angel’s decision to request a trial and pressured him to accept the prosecutor’s offer. Angel stood his ground, and he and his mother made 3 more court appearances, missing school and work, respectively, on every court date. Each time, they waited for an opportunity to confront the officer who had unconstitutionally stopped, frisked, and searched Angel. But their patience (and Angel’s mother’s vacation days) had run out.

Rather than endure another 2-month adjournment on the potentially empty promise of a hearing, Angel accepted the prosecutor’s offer and pled guilty to disorderly conduct—392 days after his initial arrest. He promptly paid the $120 mandatory court surcharge and moved on with his life, but not before confessing a newfound disillusionment with the criminal justice system.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) likes to say that the United States doesn’t need new gun laws, it just needs to enforce the ones that that already exist. If that’s true, then the NRA should support new legislation introduced in the House last week that repeals a series of restrictions on the ability to enforce current gun laws.

The “Enforce Existing Gun Laws Act” (H.R. 1728) was introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) last week. The legislation repeals several riders that have been snuck in over the years to restrict the powers available to the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau (ATF) and other authorities to use the laws on the books against firearm crime. Many of the riders were passed as part of the 2004 Tiahrt Amendments (named after their sponsor, former Rep. Todd Tiahrt [R-KS]) or a package of gun law weakening riders passed just this year.

Here’s four of the most important provisions of the Enforce Existing Gun Laws Act:

1) Removes a key restriction the ability of the federal government to use background checks against criminals. Federal law currently mandates that all “approved” background check results — essentially, records of approved sales — be destroyed after 24 hours. This makes it substantially more difficult for law enforcement officials to figure out whether a criminal was mistakenly approved to purchase a gun and trace crime guns back to the original point of sale quickly.

2) Frees the ATF to draw conclusions about crime from gun trace data. Though research on gun violence has used gun trace data to provide clear evidence that measures like universal background checks effectively deter crime, current federal law prevents the ATF from drawing “broad conclusions about firearms-related crime” in official reports, no matter how warranted by the evidence they are.

3) Allows federal agents to require that gun dealers inventory their guns. The Tiahrt Amendments contain a provision preventing the ATF from requiring federally licensed firearms dealers to inventory their guns before inspections, preventing federal law enforcement from checking submitted inventories against real inventories to establish whether a particular firearm retailer is crooked.

4) Gives the ATF more power to shut down suspicious gun dealers. Current law prevents the ATF from shutting down a retailer due to a “lack of business activity.”

Though these and other elements of current law overturned by the Enforce Existing Gun Laws Act impede federal ability to make current gun laws work, the NRA has in the past supported several of them.

Earlier this week, the Alabama senate passed a bill that purports to nullify any action the federal government takes regarding firearms. The bill provides that “[a]ll federal acts, laws, orders, rules, or regulations regarding firearms are a violation of the Second Amendment,” and that such acts “shall not be recognized by this state, are specifically rejected by this state, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state.” Last month, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed a similar bill into law in his state.

As ThinkProgress has previously explained, these bills are unconstitutional and have virtually no chance of being upheld by the courts. The Constitution provides that duly enacted federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” Indeed, if states had the unilateral authority to decide which federal laws are or are not constitutional, as nullification’s proponents claim, it would undermine America’s very ability to exist as a single nation. As James Madison warned, nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself.”

Yet, while these nullification bills are doomed to fail, they are likely to inflict a profound human cost if signed into law. If Alabama’s governor signs this bill, the lawmakers who supported it will go home, pat themselves on the back for finding a new way to stick it to Obama and liberals, maybe collect some campaign donations from the NRA and its leadership, and then promptly move on to something else. Meanwhile, an innocent, largely law abiding citizen will read in the newspaper that federal gun laws no longer exist in Alabama, and could decide based on that fact to commit a federal gun crime. The law enforcement officials who arrest that citizen, the prosecutors who try him and the judge who ultimately sentences him will care little that Alabama passed an unconstitutional nullification bill — they will just do their job of enforcing the still-valid federal law.

Americans have a right to know what the law is, and they should not be sent mixed messages by the people they elect to serve them. In this case, their decision to play political games with the Constitution could lead someone with no intention of violating the law to commit a federal crime and bear the consequences of that action. That is far to high a price to pay in order to score some rhetorical points against supporters of gun laws.

In 1979, the Supreme Court affirmed a decision holding that state cannot place unique burdens on college student votes that do not apply to other members of the electorate. Nevertheless, Ohio Republicans now want to punish state universities that encourage students to cast a ballot. Under a budget amendment filed by Republicans in the Ohio House, state universities that provide documents enabling students to register to vote in their college town, rather than in the state where their parents reside, will be forbidden from charging those students out-of-state tuition. Thus, the amendment would effectively reduce the funding of state schools that assist their students in registering to vote.

This is the second GOP attempt to restrict college students from voting in just the past month. About a month ago, a North Carolina Republican lawmaker filed a bill that would raise taxes on families with college students if the student registers to vote at school rather than in their parents’ hometown.

It’s not difficult to guess why Republicans support these — and other — efforts to make it harder for college students to cast a ballot. As former New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien (R) said when explaining his support for measures to make it harder to vote, “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do.”

On Wednesday morning, the National Review broke the news that tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is considering a presidential run, a scoop that should surprise no one who’s paid attention to his short Senate career. As Jonathan Bernstein explains, Cruz has spent his few months in the Senate alienating his colleagues by constantly trying to distinguish himself as the more-conservative-than-thou alternative to “establishment” Republicans. Such behavior makes no sense if Cruz is interested in building the coalitions necessary to legislate, but it makes perfect sense if he has his eyes set on winning a tea-soaked GOP primary in 2016.

If Cruz runs, he would give voice to the conspiracy-minded, John Birch Society wing of the Republican Party that the National Review’s founder fought so hard to purge several decades ago. Cruz is the Glenn Beck of the United States Senate, promoting new conspiracy theories just as easily as Mr. Beck adds new names to his chalkboard. Here are five examples of such theories that Cruz actually believes in:

• George Soros leads a global conspiracy to abolish the game of golf. In a January 2012 article published on Cruz’s senate campaign website, the future senator argues that a twenty year-old non-binding United Nations resolution signed by 178 nations including the United States under President George H.W. Bush, is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” Cruz attributes this plot to a common tea party boogieman — “[t]he originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property.”
• Communists infiltrated Harvard Law School. Almost three years ago, Cruz gave a speech to the tea party group Americans for Prosperity in which he claimed that revolutionary communists were a major presence on Harvard’s law faculty. According to Cruz, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Cruz’s claims came as a big surprise to Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as President Reagan’s solicitor general, who says that “I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government.’”
• Islamic law threatens the United States. Echoing a common fear among very conservative politicians that Sharia law is somehow creeping into American life, Cruz told a senate candidate’s forum last year that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in the United States. In reality, there are barely any examples of Islamic or Sharia law even being mentioned in American legal proceedings, and when it is mentioned it is typically because a contract, will or other document drafted by a private citizen invokes Sharia law, not because the court wishes to replace American law with something else.
• Obama wants the immigration bill to fail so he can campaign on it in 2016. Cruz claims that “the reason that the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship” in the immigration bill making its way through Congress “is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill” giving Obama an issue to campaign on in 2014 and 2016. In reality, a path to citizenship was a key prong of the immigration bill President Bush supported in 2007. It’s also a major prong of the Gang of Eight bill — a gang which includes Republican Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). So if the path to citizenship is actually an Obama plot to give himself a campaign issue, Obama has some unexpected co-conspirators in this scheme.
• George W. Bush led an assault on Texas’ “sovereignty.” Cruz’s first campaign ad touted his victory in a Supreme Court case permitting the state of Texas to execute a Mexican national, despite the fact that Texas violated America’s treaty obligations by not permitting this Mexican citizen “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” President Bush objected to Texas’s effort to flout a treaty that even North Korea had honored when it detained two American journalists for five months in 2009. Cruz dismissed Bush’s objections as an intrusion on “the sovereignty of the States.”

If elected to the White House, Cruz is unlikely to step back from his penchant for Glenn Beck-style conspiracies. In an interview with Fox News Sunday just a few days after he became a senator, Cruz claimed that “I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.”

When Marine private Lazzaric Caldwell attempted suicide by slitting his own wrists while stationed in Okinawa, he faced criminal charges under a military code provision that punishes “self-injury.” Suffering from diagnosed depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and facing several other convictions, Caldwell pleaded guilty to the charge, and was sentenced to 180 days in jail in addition to a bad-conduct discharge. On Monday, the highest military court overturned Caldwell’s conviction on narrow grounds by a vote of 3-2, but it left the door open for other charges of “intentional self-injury without intent to avoid service.” MClatchy Newspapers reports:

The setting aside of Caldwell’s guilty plea, because of facts specific to his case, means another military prosecution eventually could become a test case for the crime of self-injury. Congress or the Pentagon also could address the broader legal question if officials want to modify military law. The two dissenters in the 3-2 decision issued Monday believe that could be the better course.

“While I question whether punishing either bona fide suicide attempts or suicidal gestures (under the Uniform Code of Military Justice) is wise or fair, that is a determination to be made by the president and Congress, and not this court,” Judge Margaret A. Ryan wrote for the dissent. […]

Active-duty members may be prosecuted under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for conduct that causes “prejudice to good order and discipline” or has a “tendency to bring the service into disrepute.” Self-injury is one of the enumerated examples of this kind of conduct, as are a variety of other actions, ranging from indecent language and perjury to straggling and wearing unauthorized insignia. […]

In its decision Monday, the court’s majority concluded that the set of facts in Caldwell’s particular case “does not establish that his conduct was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, or of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.”

“We need not address the more general and specified question as to whether and when a bona fide suicide attempt would satisfy the elements of (a Uniform Code of Military Justice) offense,” Chief Judge James E. Baker of the military appeals court wrote.

The military has faced a suicide and mental illness epidemic in recent years, and lawmakers have introduced bills to improve mental health assessments, but not to alter the self-injury provision. The provision could be modified either through an act of Congress, or by the Pentagon or the White House removing self-injury from the list of enumerated actions under Article 134, and a Defense Department committee is now reviewing the provision. Caldwell’s bad-conduct discharge made him ineligible for certain veteran’s benefits, and Caldwell said last February he was getting no mental health treatment.