(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In the latest move by Louisiana to plow ahead with looser gun laws, the state legislature passed a measure that would criminalize journalists for publishing information about gun owners. Under House Bill 8, which now goes to Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) for his signature, those who “release, disseminate, or make public” any information contained in a handgun permit or about the identity of the permit-holder, including journalists, may be subject to a $10,000 fine and/or six months in jail.

The law comes in response to anger over the publication by a local New York newspaper of the names and addresses of gun permit holders. But as Mother Jones reports, the law goes beyond most others that merely forbid the release of gun permit information, to one punishing journalists for publishing it, in likely violation of the First Amendment.

The seminal Supreme Court case upholding the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers said government attempts to impose a “prior restraint” on journalists’ reporting is unconstitutional. And while some First Amendment scholars concede an argument could be made that this law does not impose prior restraint but merely punishment after the fact, even that sort of First Amendment restriction would have be accompanied by an unusually compelling justification for so severe an infringement on First Amendment rights.

“I find it very ironic that the very people who screamed the loudest about attempts to limit their Second Amendment rights are here eager to limit my First Amendment rights,” newspaper editor Carl Redman said during a May 7 hearing.

Other bills passed by both houses of the Louisiana legislature this week would allow for lifetime gun permits, and allow off-duty officers to carry their weapons onto college campuses.

The state Senate is set to consider four additional gun bills Monday, including one to nullify federal gun law that even its sponsor admits is likely unconstitutional. The state passed a constitutional amendment by ballot initiative last November that arguably makes state gun rights even broader than the Second Amendment.

A Florida honor student who was expelled and faced possible felony charges for a science experiment gone awry has not only been cleared of charges, she’s heading to space camp thanks to a former NASA employee.

Sixteen-year-old Kiera Wilmot combined household cleaner and aluminum foil in an eight-ounce water bottle on school grounds on April 22, curious to see what would happen. The chemical reaction “created a pop that sounds like a firecracker and smoke,” but no students were injured nor does there appear to have been property damage. At the suggestion of Florida Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty and after her science teacher said she had not sanctioned the experiment, the responding officer arrested Wilmot and charged her with possessing or discharging weapons or firearms at a school sponsored event or on school property and possessing any destructive devices — both felonies she would have been tried for as an adult. Pursuant to her school’s zero tolerance policy, Wilmot was also expelled at the time of the incident.

But last week the criminal charges against Wilmot were dropped following significant media coverage and an online petition that attracted nearly 200,000 signatures, upset that the arrest was the equivalent of criminalizing curiosity. She remains banned from her school, but her family is in discussions with the administration about a possible reinstatement.

Wilmot’s story caught the eye of Homer Hickman, an 18-year NASA veteran and author of the memoir “Rocket Boys,” later adapted into the film “October Sky.”  Hickman had his own brush with law enforcement during his teens. Hickman and several friends were led away from his high school in handcuffs for allegedly starting a forest fire, but his physics teacher and principal cleared him of wrongdoing.

Hickman said he “couldn’t let this go without doing something,” and while he’s not a lawyer, he could at least “give her something that would encourage her” and settled on purchasing her a scholarship to the United States Space Academy, a five-day college accredited course offered through the University of Alabama-Huntsville. After learning Wilmot has a twin sister, he raised additional funds so they could attend together in July.

While Hickman attended school long before the advent of zero tolerance policies, since then kids who make mistakes have increasingly faced criminal charges for what amount to disciplinary violations, particularly minority students like Wilmot.

This afternoon, the Senate confirmed Sri Srinivasan to the staunchly conservative United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans already have a plan to prevent anyone else from being confirmed to this powerful court while Obama is in the White House. Obama pulled this one confirmation off because the Srinivasan nomination was practically an act of trolling. Srinivasan clerked for a Republican judge and a Republican justice. He is unquestionably one of the best Supreme Court advocates in the country. And his nomination enjoys the support of Republican legal stars such as Paul Clement, Bush v. Gore attorney Ted Olson, and anti-Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr. Had Senate Republicans filibustered this nomination, it would have been difficult for them to deny allegations that they are acting in bad faith.

In no small part because of Srinivasan’s stellar legal credentials, the New Yorker’s Jeff Toobin claimed that “if Srinivasan passes this test and wins confirmation, he’ll be on the Supreme Court before President Obama’s term ends.” This claim is premature. At the very least, court watchers — and the President himself — should have some idea what Srinivasan thinks about the law before he joins the most powerful Court in the land, and Srinivasan’s views are largely unknown. After some time on the DC Circuit, Srinivasan may indeed emerge as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court. In the mean time, here are ten other possible candidates that could appeal to a Democratic president:

1. Paul Watford

Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford was among President Obama’s most outstanding appointees during his first term. A former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Watford is in his mid-40s and thus has many years of eligibility left for the Supreme Court. Like Srinivasan, Watford spent much of his career at a large law firm, so he should ideally spend enough time as a court of appeals judge that his views on important legal issues are clear. Nevertheless, he is likely to be near the top of any Democrat’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

2. Jane Kelly

Eighth Circuit Judge Jane Kelly began her career with the kind of credentials that all but guarantee a lucrative career to lawyers who want one — a Harvard Law degree and a United States Court of Appeals clerkship. Yet she chose to spend nearly two decades as a federal public defender instead. She also experienced an unusually easy confirmation process due to a personal tie to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). In a perfect world, she would spend some time as an appeals court judge becoming more familiar with the civil side of her docket, but the sort of attorney who passes up huge law firm salaries to ensure that criminal defendants receive excellent representation would be a welcome addition to the Supreme Court.

3. Alison Nathan

Appointing a federal district judge like Alison Nathan directly to the Supreme Court is unusual, but Judge Nathan’s experience as a trial judge would be a helpful addition to a Court that currently only has one former trial judge, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Nathan is a former law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens, and a former Associate White House Counsel. She would also be the first openly gay justice if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

4. Kamala Harris

Supreme Court observers ignore SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein at their peril, so we will not make that mistake by leaving out his views regarding the next Supreme Court nominee. Last year, Goldstein named Harris as an “ideal nominee” based on her youth, qualifications, and that fact that she would diversify the Supreme Court’s bench. One way she would add diversity is by becoming the only former elected official on the nation’s highest Court, a perspective that could make her particularly effective in pushing back against misguided election decisions such as Citizens United.

5. Goodwin Liu

California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu had a rough ride as a nominee to the Ninth Circuit, largely due to spurious claims that he would use a seat on the bench to, in Grassley’s words, make America more like “communist-run China.” Since joining California’s highest court, Justice Liu has instead emerged as “a paragon of judicial restraint,” in one law professor’s words. While Senate Republicans are unlikely to consider this fact if the president nominates someone that they once filibustered, a successful round of filibuster reform could remove that obstacle.

6. Deval Patrick

The Massachusetts governor is not just a successful politician, he is also a Harvard Law grad, former U.S. Court of Appeals law clerk, and former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Like Harris, Patrick would bring an elected official’s perspective to the Court, and his civil rights background would provide a counterbalance to Justice Antonin Scalia, who recently labeled the Voting Rights Act a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

7. Pam Karlan

Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan is a constitutional scholar, a leading expert on voting rights and a top Supreme Court advocate. In the wake of voter ID laws, early voting restrictions, voter purges, barriers to voter registration, and other efforts to suppress voting, Professor Karlan would be an ideal candidate to restore the Supreme Court’s respect for the franchise. Additionally, Karlan is in a long-term committed relationship with a woman, so she would add this perspective to the bench as well.

8. Paul Smith

Paul Smith may be the nation’s preeminent gay rights litigator, having argued and won Lawrence v. Texas before the Supreme Court. He also argued a pair of challenges to partisan gerrymanders that were halted by the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court. As a justice himself, Smith would be the ideal candidate to write an opinion declaring such gerrymanders unconstitutional once and for all.

9. Neal Katyal

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal has the distinction of being on the correct side of the most important constitutional issues to arise in the last two presidencies. As the Obama Administration’s top litigator, Katyal defended the Affordable Care Act in multiple courts of appeal against partisan lawsuits seeking to undermine it. And he convinced the Supreme Court to place an important limit on President Bush’s attempt to isolate Guantanamo detainees from the law in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

10. Tom Perez

Senate Republicans wasted no time in opposing Tom Perez, the Labor Secretary nominee given the task of cleaning up the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division after the Bush Administration left it in a shambles, once President Obama nominated Perez to the cabinet. Nevertheless, Perez’s background in civil rights and labor policy would help balance the conservative justices who turned their backs on Lilly Ledbetter’s right to equal pay for equal work. And, so long as Democrats control the Senate, a filibuster of Perez’s nomination could only be sustained if Senate Democrats allow it.

As Congress fails to make progress on reforming the nation’s gun laws, state legislatures have filled the void. A number of states around the country, and not just deep-blue ones, have taken steps to crack down on gun violence. Even some very conservative states have defeated National Rifle Association (NRA) supported bills that would have significantly weakened state gun laws.

Here’s a run-down of ten instances of state progress that were in some cases mere proposals as recently as this January:

1. Colorado. A purple state with a strong gun culture, Colorado nevertheless enacted universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

2. California. Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed legislation at the beginning of May that would provide $24 million for confiscating illegally owned weapons that the police have identified, but hasn’t had the resources to seize. California is also considering thirty-odd measures strengthening the state’s gun violence prevention measures.

3. Georgia. The Georgia legislature killed a bill at the end of the last legislative session that would have allowed concealed carry in churches, courthouse, and college campuses.

4. Maryland. Maryland enacted one of the most sweeping new gun laws in the country, including an assault weapons ban, restrictions on magazine size, and a requirement that all gun purchasers get a license and submit a fingerprint sample.

5. Rhode Island. The Ocean State’s legislature is considering an omnibus gun bill, supported by its governor, Lincoln Chafee (I), that would set up a police registry of guns to better track crime guns as well as make it harder to get a concealed carry permit.

6. Delaware. In early May, Governor Jack Markell (D) signed a universal background check bill into law.

7. Wyoming. The Wyoming legislature, which can be quite hostile to gun regulation, voted down a bill authorizing teachers to carry guns.

8. New York. New York strengthened its already strong gun laws, including stricter assault weapon and high capacity magazine bans.

9. Connecticut. Connecticut also passed a comprehensive package that included universal background checks for bullets as well as guns, as well as an assault weapons ban and magazine restrictions.

10. Nevada. Just this Wednesday, the Nevada Senate passed a universal background checks bill that would require a check on all private sales.

While several states have also loosened their gun laws after Newtown — and a few advanced laws so extreme that they are almost certainly unconstitutional – the above examples prove that the NRA’s stranglehold over the gun conversation isn’t nearly as tight as some believe, and that concerted effort at the state level can have significant effects on the gun policy landscape.

Most people are aware of the ongoing conflict between federal and state laws on marijuana. While marijuana remains flatly prohibited and subject to criminal punishment under federal law, 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and two have legalized recreational marijuana. The most pressing and well-known issue for medical marijuana dispensaries and the customers who rely upon them for medical relief is threats of prosecution and asset forfeiture from federal officials. Many dispensaries, facing jail time, eviction, or seizure of real estate, have opted to shut down entirely.

But what is less known is that even those dispensaries that haven’t been targeted for federal prosecution or have thus far survived it are subject to fundamental legal obstacles to operating their business. These obstacles discourage potential marijuana distributors and growers from applying for licenses, and make it more likely that they will operate at least partially under the table and outside the legal system.

1. Medical marijuana businesses can’t open a bank account. Banks that do business with marijuana distributors are considered money launderers, so dispensaries cannot bank or access other bank services legally if they are open about their status as a marijuana dispensary. Even those who have skirted this by opening accounts in their personal names or being vague about the nature of the account have had their accounts terminated, often jumping from bank to bank. One Colorado state bank known for allowing dispensary clients terminated more than 300 accounts after the Department of Justice warned in 2011 that they would pursue money laundering charges. Without a bank account, dispensaries have no good means of even paying employees, let alone storing their money or paying their exorbitant taxes (see below). Washington State officials who contacted banks about their position said they are waiting from a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder on the federal government’s response to two ballot initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana before they reconsider their position. Some dispensaries are trying to form their own banking cooperative to skirt these restrictions.

2. Medical marijuana businesses have scant access to loans. Because of the same banking regulations that bar bank accounts, marijuana dispensaries that are open about their purpose typically can’t take out loans from traditional financial institutions or the Small Business Administration — eliminating the major sources of funding for most small businesses. But they may also have difficulty borrowing funds from nontraditional lenders, including the sorts of “angel investors” that have popped up in the industry. An Arizona ruling last year on an attempt to enforce a loan to a medical marijuana dispensary refused to enforce the loan contract, because the money was for an illegal purpose under federal law.

3. Medical marijuana entrepreneurs can’t open a credit card account, and many are blacklisted from any credit card use. “Over the past two years, Amex and other major credit card companies – including Visa and MasterCard – have distanced themselves from the medical marijuana industry, refusing to process transactions at dispensaries and closing merchant accounts for MMJ centers,” Medical Marijuana Business Daily reported last week. Now business owners are learning that they have been added to a “merchant match list,” which makes it almost impossible for that person to open an account for any other unrelated business, stifling many entrepreneurs who might want to dip their toe into the marijuana industry. This blacklist can even affect businesses in which one owner with a minority stake in the company is on the list. Without access to loans, dispensary owners who enter the business because of a passion or expertise about medical cannabis rather than financial means will be all-the-more reliant upon partners and investors, who may be deterred from entering a business that will tar their credit eligibility.

4. The IRS won’t let marijuana businesses deduct any of their business-related expenses. Although the IRS is happy to take marijuana dispensaries’ money, a tax code provision that bans any tax deductions related to “trafficking in controlled substances” has made their business very expensive. While some IRS rulings have held that expenses unrelated to marijuana distribution might be deducted, that ruling has been construed narrowly, and leaves most marijuana businesses with a hefty bill and few permissible deductions. After the owner of the largest U.S. dispensary lost his challenge to the 2011 IRS rule, he said, “I see only two outcomes here. Either this IRS assessment has to change or we go out of business. There really isn’t a middle ground for us.” Thus far, this dispensary and others continue to operate.

All of these obstacles stem from the same federal ban under the Controlled Substances Act that enables criminal prosecution or asset forfeiture against marijuana businesses, and even if federal officials stopped prosecuting dispensaries altogether, these issues would chill state attempts to make dispensation of medical and/or recreational marijuana above-board, regulated for health and safety, and taxable. All of these issues could be resolved by legislation that eliminates federal penalties for those actions that comply with state marijuana laws.

Last November, Florida voters endured massive lines and chaotic polling places largely thanks to a barrage of election law changes pushed by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) and other GOP lawmakers. Republicans slashed the number of early voting days in half, changed ballot length restrictions to add lengthy and frivolous constitutional amendments to 12-page ballots, restricted voter registration, and tried to purge mostly minority voters from the voting rolls.

On Wednesday, Scott signed a bill to reverse his own election laws by restoring early voting days and ballot limits, among other measures.

Though Scott initially insisted he “did the right thing” by implementing these laws, vehement backlash and plummeting approval ratings prompted the governor to embrace election reforms:

The new bill extends early voting from 8 days to 14, extends early voting hours from 8 to 12 hours a day, and expands polling places to include courthouses, civic centers, stadiums, convention centers, fairgrounds and government-owned senior and community centers to keep up with crowds.

It also seeks to make ballot length more manageable by restricting constitutional amendments to a maximum of 75 words, and loosens some of the restrictions on when voters have to file provisional ballots.

It also permits county supervisors to hold early voting on the Sunday before the election, “respecting the ‘souls to the polls’ tradition of many black churches,” as reported by the Florida Current.

The bill moves back Florida’s primary elections from January to the first Tuesday allowed by Democratic and Republican National Committees to avoid penalties.

And lastly, the bill imposes $25,000 fines for failing to fix voting machines, something that reportedly snarled elections in Palm Beach County, according to the Sun Sentinel.

Shortly after the election, prominent GOP members admitted many of the new election laws intentionally tried to make it harder for Democrats to vote. These vote-suppressing efforts largely succeeded; the long lines discouraged at least 201,000 Floridians from voting, while black and Latino voters waited nearly twice as long as whites.

Senator William “Mo” Cowan (D-MA), the most junior member of the U.S. Senate, has only been in office for about three-and-a-half months, but has already witnessed minority obstruction of on background check legislation, a measure to mitigate budget sequestration, and nominations for Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Labor, CIA director, EPA administrator, and federal judges. In an exclusive interview Wednesday, Cowan told ThinkProgress that the Senate’s requirement for a three-fifths super-majority needs to be eliminated.

Noting that he was stunned to learn, on his arrival in the Senate, of the “60 vote majority” needed to do business in 100-member Senate, Cowan said the rules need to be fixed:

COWAN: My view on it is this: I appreciate and respect the rules and the negotiations that led to that, but it’s currently getting in the way of too much of what we’re trying to get done — and need to get done. I think that when they’re important issues, be it nominations or legislation… that we need to have a chance to have votes, get to the issues, have real debate, and make decisions. I respect the role of the minority, I don’t believe in the majority rolling over the minority, but I don’t believe that’s what you get with a 50-vote threshold.

Noting that he does not believe there is any discriminatory intent, Cowan added that the effect of Senate Republican obstruction could be preventing diversity in government — such as stalled Labor Secretary-nominee Tom Perez. He added that the 60-vote threshold is “keeping the Senate from functioning effectively and efficiently in the work the American people need [it] to do.

Listen to the audio:

Appointed to the Senate by Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) to temporarily fill the vacant seat of Secretary of State John Kerry, Cowan brings a unique perspective: he has never run for the office and is not a candidate for election. On June 25, Bay State voters will elect a new Senator to fill the remaining 18 months of Kerry’s term. Kerry had been hesitant about cloture reform.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is reportedly considering a move prevent a minority of Senators from blocking confirmation of presidential appointees.

After an outcry from judges, professors, and other community leaders about the unjust and discriminatory imposition of the death penalty in Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) agreed to indefinitely grant reprieve to death row inmate Nathan Dunlap, citing his uncertainty about the death penalty generally, and not his opposition to this particular execution. His order reads:

It is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives. Because the question is about the use of the death penalty itself, and not about Offender No. 89148, I have opted to grant a reprieve and not clemency in this case.

Hickenlooper also said Colorado’s system is flawed, citing a study that showed the death penalty was applied inconsistently. Hickenlooper’s announcement comes several months after the failure of a bill to abolish the death penalty. Ironically, the bill died after Hickenlooper suggested he might veto it, but the movement to expose Colorado’s broken death penalty system did not. In letters imploring Hickenlooper to commute Dunlap’s sentence, members of the NAACP exposed statistics that the three individuals on Colorado’s death row are all black, all from the same one county, and all committed their crimes before they turned 21. A group of judges lamented that Dunlap’s trial was rife with error, with Dunlap’s lawyer never even raising his history of bipolar disorder and psychotic tendencies.

Hickenlooper’s grant of a reprieve rather than clemency means that John Dunlap’s execution will be on hold until another executive order, according to the Denver Post. But Hickenlooper said it was “highly unlikely” he would revisit the decision, although another governor might. The decision means that Colorado is, in effect, not imposing the death penalty, and Hickenlooper’s public opposition may lead to a revival of legislation to officially abolish it. Eighteen other states have abolished the punishment, which data shows is disproportionately and arbitrarily applied and does not deter violent crime.

 

McMinnville, Oregon Police brutally assaulted a man who was neither being arrested nor accused of any crime, according to dashboard camera footage and an internal police review recently acquired by Portland’s Newschannel 8.

Hipolito Aranda was watching the police conduct a DUI investigation on February 13th, 2010, when he was approached and frisked by Sgt. Tim Heidt. Though Aranda offered no resistance, Heidt handcuffed him, threw him to the ground, and began punching him repeatedly all around his body. The video footage corroborates this narrative of events:

Newschannel 8 Reporter Kyle Iboshi reports that, according to the internal McMinnville Police report, “Heidt did not have probable cause or evidence of a threat that would justify the initial frisk.” Moreover, “There was no visible actions on Hipolito’s part that warranted the aggressive take-down used in this situation,” and the officer’s account of the events “is extremely troubling even if not deceitful.” Heidt had accused Aranda of resisting arrest, but a jury cleared Aranda.

The ordeal was terrifying for Aranda. “I thought I was going to die,” he said. Though Aranda is currently pursuing a civil rights suit over the matter, Sgt. Heidt remains on duty.

This is the second older case of police brutality to come to public attention in recent weeks. In Berkeley, California, two police officers nearly killed a man for asking to read the ticket they were (incorrectly) assigning him before he signed it.

Bishop E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee to be the next Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, does not believe that victims of the Oklahoma tornado should receive any federal aid to help them rebuild their lives. In video from a previous campaign first posted by Right Wing Watch, Jackson claims that federal relief to disaster victims is unconstitutional:

JACKSON: I don’t think that the federal government has much of a role at all constitutionally, at all [in disaster relief]. Now, you may make an argument that it does. You might argue that it’s a national security issue you might argue that it weakens us in the event of some sort of national military emergency. So you can make an attenuated argument. But I think that as a constitutional matter the federal government doesn’t have a whole lot to do with that. In my view, these are things that are ultimately supposed to be handled by the states. And, so, we’ve got a big Tenth Amendment problem in our country. . . . We’ve turned the federal government into a kind of god.

Watch it:

Disaster relief is not an attempt to steal power from God. To the contrary, it is the just response of a nation sensitive to the lesson of 1 John 3:17, which reads that “if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

It is also entirely consistent with the Constitution. The Constitution gives the United States broad authority to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Ensuring that all Americans can rebuild their lives in the wake of a major national disaster is a classic example of using federal revenues to provide for the general welfare.

While Jackson’s view of the Constitution is wrong, it is not surprising giving the range of unusual views he’s expressed in the past. Jackson believes that Planned Parenthood is “more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.” He thinks that the original Constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause, which gave slave states additional representation in the U.S. House by allowing them to count 60 percent of their slave population when congressional seats were apportioned among the states, was “an anti-slavery amendment.” He accused Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of faking his faith. And he believes that being gay “poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of.”

In April, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) refused to vote for the Senate’s bill to expand background checks on gun purchases, pushing a debunked conspiracy theory that the bill would create a national gun registry to justify his opposition. Now that anti-gun violence groups are targeting him along with other senators who voted against the failed legislation, Heller sent a letter to his constituents insisting on his support for increased gun control.

As 87 percent of Nevadans support background checks, the letter avoided any mention of Heller’s vote against the Manchin-Toomey background checks compromise. Instead, the senator touted his co-sponsorship of an NRA-supported bill that claimed to strengthen background checks but would actually make it easier for mentally ill people to get guns.

I have been adamant from the beginning of the gun control debate that our current background check system needs strengthening and improving, particularly in areas that could keep guns out of the hands of felongs and the mentally ill. We need to increase submission rates of disqualifying records by state as well as close existing loopholes in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). You may be interested to know, I am an original cosponsor of bipartisan legislation, the NICS Reporting Improvement Act (S.480), to strengthen our current background check system and close loopholes related to the mentally ill. This legislation provides clarity to existing law and is a common sense approach to preventing unnecessary violence.

The bill Heller refers to was drafted in consultation with the NRA and would allow patients who were involuntarily committed and treated for mental illness to pass a background check. Despite his professed support for gun control, Heller has actually voted to loosen gun laws. He has repeatedly supported a proposal to allow concealed weapons to be carried into states where they are illegal, co-sponsored two bills to make interstate gun purchases easier and to repeal Washington, D.C. gun laws. Indeed, the NRA-backed bill he’s now trying to pass off as a background checks bill would have also weakened gun laws by making it easier to buy guns across state lines. As gun sales in states with lax gun laws are a common method of evading stricter laws in other states, the bill Heller touts in his letter could very well have made gun violence worse.

Heller is not the only senator trying to dissemble on their gun control stance after voting against background checks. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) responded to an ad criticizing his vote by claiming he did vote to strengthen background checks. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) also had some help from the NRA in an ad trying to obscure her anti-background check vote.

During the Tea Party’s uprising of 2009, E.W. Jackson, the controversial Republican candidate for Virginia Lieutenant Governor, founded a socially conservative organization named Staying True To America’s National Destiny (STAND).

Though the website has since been heavily scrubbed, a cached version from October 9, 2009 shows that Jackson’s group initially spelled out its “Top 7 Issues”. The second most important issue, he argued, was “to bring an end to the hyphenated American.” Jackson warned that by referring to oneself as Jewish-American or Hispanic-American, it comes “at the expense of our national unity.”

STAND FOR AN END TO THE HYPHENATED AMERICAN

It is time to bring an end to the hyphenated American. We have balkanized ourselves into islands of ethnocentrism: Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans. We understand the desire of people to maintain a connection to their history and ancestry. That desire is legitimate, but not at the expense of our national unity. We are Americans with different ethnic backgrounds, but we are first and foremost Americans. Some of our forefathers came from Europe, some from Asia, India, the African continent and a host of nations around the world. If we restrict ourselves to our ethnic enclaves and ethnic identities, we deprive ourselves of the great benefits of the American experiment. It is about uniting a diverse group of people with a common love for freedom, democracy and the ideals of our nation. We are a family. We unite under one Constitution, one flag, and one common destiny. Without a single language, that ideal will become farther and farther from reality.

See a screenshot below:

Preventing Americans from acknowledging their ethnic heritage was so important to Jackson that it actually edged out abortion (3rd most important) and outlawing marriage equality (4th most important) in his list of top issues.

Jackson did deem one problem even more troubling than the hyphen, however. His number one issue was creating an “American History Month,” because “[w]e have Black History Month and Gay Pride Month, but these only serve to further balkanize us.”

During the just-concluded trial on the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, the city argued that officers’ disproportionate targeting of black and Latino New Yorkers was not due to racial profiling but because each stopped individual was doing something suspicious at the time. The data, however, tells a different story: weapons and drugs were more often found on white New Yorkers during stops than on minorities, according to the Public Advocate’s analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 statistics.

White New Yorkers make up a small minority of stop-and-frisks, which were 84 percent black and Latino residents. Despite this much higher number of minorities deemed suspicious by police, the likelihood that stopping an African American would find a weapon was half the likelihood of finding one on a white person.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime. Considering one officer’s testimony that superiors explicitly directed him to target young black men, minorities are judged by a much more flexible definition of “reasonable suspicion.”

And this loose approach to the Constitution’s ban on unlawful searches and seizures is part of a larger pattern of African-Americans being targeted by police. In one incident an officer cuffed and detained a 13-year-old African American boy, the son of a former cop, for six hours because he allegedly reached into his pants’ waistband. Other cops punched and pepper-sprayed a 38-year-old veteran who was discussing Memorial Day plans with friends on a street corner. Yet another black man reported being stopped and arrested 4 times in one year on criminal trespass charges later dismissed by a judge.

In general, stop-and-frisk has proven to be remarkably ineffective; nearly 89 percent of all stops result in no charges. The city has also had to settle a surging number of civil rights lawsuits against police to the tune of $22 million in one year.

Last August, a woman in Josephine County called 911 and pleaded with dispatchers to send police — “my ex-boyfriend is trying to break into my house. I’m not letting him in but he’s like, tried to break down the door and he’s tried to break into one of the windows.” The woman had good reason to be afraid of this man, as she told the dispatcher on the other side of the phone, this same abusive ex had put her in the hospital just a few weeks before. But the dispatcher has no one to send. Because the local sheriff’s department recently lost millions in federal funds, it laid off 23 of its 29 deputies and limited their availability to eight hours on Mondays through Fridays. The woman’s call to 911 took place on a Saturday.

With no deputies available, the 911 dispatcher transferred the woman to the state police — but they would not come rescue the woman either. In the words of the state police dispatcher, “I don’t have anybody to send out there. You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away? Do you know if he’s intoxicated or anything?”

Eventually, the ex-boyfriend, a man named Michael Bellah, pried open the woman’s front door. Choked her. And raped her. After he was caught, he plead guilty to kidnapping, assault, and sex abuse.

This woman’s situation was not a tragic outlier — while Sheriff Gil Gilberson declined to comment on this specific case, he noted to Oregon Public Radio “[t]here isn’t a day go by that we don’t have another victim” due to a law enforcement deficit caused by a budget cuts that went into effect last May.

The Josephine County’s Sheriff’s Office budget was cut after the the expiration of a multi-million dollar annual federal aid payment to timber-dependent counties, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, originally passed in 2000. The federal government previously shared timber sale revenues from public lands with rural counties to offset the lack of property taxes from those lands, but as logging was reduced by 90 percent in federal lands since 1989, the aid program replaced that revenue source.

Without money from the program, the county was forced to lay off most of its deputies and close its entire major crimes division. Two of the remaining six deputies are limited to patrolling federal forest lands and a local river because of how their positions are funded.

After the cuts, Gilberson released a press statement suggesting victims of domestic violence “consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.” The Grant Pass State Police Office usually has just two officers working per shift, but has become the only resource for local law enforcement on weekends. They’ve received about three times as many calls in as in the past.

But despite these dire circumstances, yesterday Josephine County voted 51 to 49 percent against a public safety levy for more law enforcement. The levy would have raised county property taxes from 59 cents per $1,000 of property value, the lowest in Oregon, to $1.48 for the next three years. It rejected a similar property tax levy increasing the rate to $1.99 per $1,000 shortly before the initial cuts 57 to 43 percent.

While clearly, the situation in Josephine County is an extreme example of a community failing to live up to public safety needs of its residents, the community is not alone in struggling to recover from revenue lost with the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. Nationwide more than 700 counties in 41 states benefited from the program, including 33 of the 36 counties in Oregon.

The idea that some racial groups are, on average, smarter than others is without a doubt among the most discussed (and debunked) “taboos” in American intellectual history. It is an argument that has been advanced since the days of slavery, one that helped push through the draconian Immigration Act of 1924, and one that set off a scientific firestorm in the late 60s that’s hardly flagged since.

Yet every time the race and IQ hypothesis reclaims the public spotlight, we are caught slackjaw, always returning to the same basic debates on the same basic concepts.

The recent fracas sparked by Dr. Jason Richwine’s doctoral dissertation is a case in point. The paper is a dry thing, written for an academic audience, yet its core claim, that Latino immigrants to the United States are and will likely remain less intelligent than “native whites,” has proved proper tinder for a public firestorm. The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst in Empirical Studies is now a former Senior Policy Analyst — Heritage could not risk further tainting an immigration report it hoped would be influential by outright defending its scholar’s meditations on the possibly genetic intellectual inferiority of immigrants from Latin America.

It might seem like the book is closed on l’affaire Richwine: he’s left his job, Heritage is left with a black eye, and not a single mind has been changed about the value of research into race and IQ. But there’s still one major unanswered question.

If the dissertation was bad enough to get him fired from the Heritage Foundation, how did it earn him a degree from Harvard?

A popular answer among Richwine’s defenders is that, quite simply, it was exemplary work. Richwine’s dissertation committee was made up, by all accounts, of three eminent scholars, each widely respected in their respective fields. And it is Harvard.

But dozens of interviews with subject matter experts, Harvard graduates in Richwine’s program who overlapped with him, and members of the committee itself paint a somewhat more textured picture. Richwine’s dissertation was sloppy scholarship, relying on statistical sophistication to hide some serious conceptual errors. Yet internal accounts of Richwine’s time at Harvard suggests the august university, for the most part, let serious problems in Richwine’s research  fall through the cracks.

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Under both the influence of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and corporate spending in state courts around the country, procedural wins have imposed new onerous hurdles on individuals aiming to hold businesses accountable for their wrongdoing. Two new analyses out this week point to the real costs of these losses for individuals. In one study, researchers found that dismissals of housing and employment discrimination claims spiked from 62 percent before two major Supreme Court cases made it harder to state a claim, to 71 percent afterwards. Even more noteworthy, that spike in dismissals fell largely on Republican-appointed judges, whose dismissal rate spiked from 61 percent to 74 percent in cases where defendants disputed the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ initial filing.

In a second analysis, two antitrust lawyers point to the “scant recognition” of the costs imposed on attorneys, courts, and experts when new decisions make the requirements at each stage of litigation increasingly more onerous, meaning these new barriers and corporate-driven “tort reform” make the legal system more expensive. J. Douglas Richards and Michael Eisenkraft write:

Contrary to widely propagated but fictitious notions unlike many corporate defendants and most corporate defense counsel, plaintiffs generally want to get their case before a fact-finder as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Helping them attain this end without repetitive prior evaluations of a case’s merits would promote judicial efficiency and reduce litigation expenses for all parties as well as for the courts.

In spite of these findings and increasingly business-friendly rulings both at the Supreme Court and in the state courts, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came out with a study finding that the U.S. “liability system” is the most expensive of 13 countries analyzed because of so-called “lawsuit abuse” in which too many claims are filed that cost too much.

While this Chamber study was painted in a Corporate Counsel report as ranking the U.S. legal system overall the most costly, its only measure is the cost of liability insurance for businesses. The study seems to acknowledge that these costs are simply “liability costs” that affect businesses. But whether the Chamber is griping about costs to the legal system or costs to businesses, recent statistics show that individuals filing tort lawsuits that the Chamber has dubbed “frivolous” in a long-running PR campaign are not to blame. Statistics from the National Center for State Courts show that between 1999 and 2008, the tort caseload decreased by 25 percent, while the number of contract cases – primarily cases between one business and another – spiked by 63 percent.

As of 2008, the number of incoming contract cases was six times the number of tort cases. This means that it is actually other businesses that are filing more cases against each other, and potentially (though not necessarily) driving up their own price of liability insurance. So-called “tort reform” movements in the states that seek to limit corporate liability and cap damage amounts rely upon the assumption that frivolous civil lawsuits alleging injuries and wrongdoing flood our courts. But it is actually business-to-business cases whose numbers are growing.

There are no doubt other factors that make our legal system more expensive, as is pointed out by the Chamber’s study. The costs of our common law system, for example, in which each case is argued on the basis of precedent and lawyers are required to navigate an impenetrable web of case law and statutes, make the costs of legal counsel sometimes astronomical. And, as compared to the European countries with more robust social safety nets, Americans must turn to the court system to recover for more types of losses (for example, in countries where health care is public, private corporations do not have liability in that area).

But however expensive an increasingly onerous litigation system is for businesses, it is that much more expensive for individuals, particularly when procedural hurdles and damage caps prevent them from ever recovering their losses.

Summer has not even begun and children across America have barely gotten bored with last year’s Christmas presents. Yet Texas is already gearing up for the season when conservatives accuse liberals like the two people pictured above of waging a War on Christmas.

A measure labeled the “Merry Christmas bill,” which is currently awaiting Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) signature, provides that public school staff may “offer traditional greetings” including “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Hanukkah” to their students, and it permits school districts to “display on school property scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations, including a menorah or a Christmas image such as a nativity scene or Christmas tree” so long as the display includes either a “secular scene” or symbols from more than one faith. The bill’s lead sponsors also put up a website promoting the bill, where they warn about a world where children ask “Daddy, why do we have a Christmas tree at home and a Holiday tree at school?”

Religious displays that merely comply with the minimum requirements of this bill are likely unconstitutional under existing law — although the law in this space is quite garbled. Although the Supreme Court did uphold a government-sponsored display that included a nativity scene in its 5-4 decision in Lynch v. Donnelly, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the key fifth vote upholding that display, and her opinion made clear that government cannot take action whose “actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion” or which “conveys a message of endorsement or disapproval.” Subsequent decisions make clear that a religious displays which violate the Constitution do not always cease to do so just because they appear alongside non-religious icons. A crucifix is still a crucifix, even if it is displayed next to the Golden Arches.

Yesterday, however, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could easily give Texas free reign to tear down much of the wall between separation of church and state. Admittedly, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy has balked in the past at efforts to make public school students to attend religious ceremonies, so it is possible that he would balk at similar efforts by public schools to endorse a religious viewpoint. At the very least, however, the law is likely going to become much more permissive of lawmakers who wish the government to broadcast their religious beliefs to others.

In March, Colorado came close to becoming the 19th state to abolish the death penalty, but the bill failed after Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) voiced opposition and suggested a possible veto. A few months later, Colorado’s death penalty is still firmly in place, and the state is poised to complete what would be only the second execution in 45 years (the last was in 1997). Few dispute that Nathan Dunlap committed a horrific crime and murdered several people at a Chuck E. Cheese. But judges, university professors, and other prominent state leaders are urging Gov. Hickenlooper to commute Dunlap’s sentence, both because crucial errors that defined his trial may have led him to get a harsher sentence than others, and because killing anyone under the perverted state system would be a miscarriage of justice. According to letters filed with Hickenlooper’s office:

• All three people on death row are black men. In a state that is only 4.3% African American, Colorado’s death row is 100% African American.
• All three men on death are from the same one county, out of Colorado’s 64.
• All three men committed their crime when they were under the age of 21.
• Two law professors who studied Colorado’s application of the death penalty concluded it was unconstitutional, after finding that prosecutors pursue the death penalty in less than one percent of the cases where it is an option, and that the state failed to set “clear statutory standards for distinguishing between the few who are executed and the many who commit murder.”

“It appears that race, geography and youth largely determines who gets the death penalty in Colorado,” wrote a group of NAACP leaders in a letter urging Gov. Hickenlooper to grant clemency. They note that not a single black juror served on the panel that sentenced Dunlap to death.

In addition to the injustices that define the Colorado system, a group of former Colorado judges also point out that Dunlap’s bipolar disorder and psychotic tendencies were not even mentioned at trial. In fact, according to their letter, Dunlap’s lawyer told the jury that there was no explanation for his violence.

The judges add that “no clear evidence exists that the death penalty deters violent crime. What it does in our current system, as in this case, is to drain our judicial system of millions of dollars as mandatory appeals drag on for decades.” Studies have shown that the death penalty does not lower the homicide rate. In fact, the murder rate is lower in states without the death penalty. Hickenlooper says he continues to wrestle with the death penalty, and whether to commute Dunlap’s sentence.

A Berkeley truck driver is suing the California High Patrol for a brutal assault that brought him to the brink of death — provoked, according to a report by the local NBC affiliate, only by the man’s request to read the ticket he was being given before he signed it.

 

On September 2nd, 2011, Russian immigrant Olegs Kozacenko was driving his truck when he was pulled over by Officer Andrew P. Murrill of the California Highway Police. Murrill attempted to ticket him for driving too many hours in the truck. Kozacenko refused to sign the ticket before reading it.

At this point, NBC Bay Area reporters learned, Murrill decided he needed to make a “forcible arrest.” He and his partner, Officer Jim Sherman, claim that Kozacenko was “actively resisting” and “exhibiting extraordinary strength” in doing so. The consequences were “life-threatening injuries including a crushed left orbital eye socket, multiple facial fractures, a broken left arm, a concussion, unconsciousness and possible neurological damage.”

Kozacenko nearly died, as the nearest hospital did not have an emergency room advanced enough to treat his injuries.

According to court testimony obtained by NBC, Murrill concedes that Kozacenko was not even guilty of the offense he was attempting to ticket the driver for:

In his testimony during an evidentiary hearing on a defense motion to suppress evidence gathered after the ticket was written, officer Murrill admitted that he was confused, either by the law governing the hour limits for truck drivers or by reading the truck driver’s log book. Murrill also admitted on the witness stand that he was not a trained commercial vehicle specialist and did not call to ask for a commercial vehicle specialist to help at the scene. And he admitted on the stand that the hours Murrill was reading on Kozacenko’s truck driver log book were recorded two days earlier when Kozacenko was driving through Nebraska, Iowa and Wyoming.

NBC reports that “the Valley Division, where Murrill works, led the state in the number of disciplinary actions against officers for 2011, the same year of Kozacenko’s arrest.” Police officials claim that there is no video of the altercation and that all associated radio logs have been deleted by system malfunctioning for this time period.”

Murrill and Sherman remain employed by the CHP. Olegs Kocazenko is currently unemployed and seeking legal redress from both the Highway Patrol and the state of California.

After months of evidence from more than 100 witnesses suggesting the New York Police Department sets quotas on the number of stop-and-frisks, instructs officers to target black men, and taunts young teens, federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin ended the trial by expressing considerable alarm about the “high error rate” of the controversial stop-and-frisk program, and questioned whether police racially profile. The New York Times reports:

“A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a gun and nobody has a gun,” Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said on Monday during closing arguments in the trial. “So the point is: the suspicion turns out to be wrong in most of the cases.” […]

Observing that only about 12 percent of police stops resulted in an arrest or summons, Judge Scheindlin, who is hearing the case without a jury, focused her remarks on Monday on the other 88 percent of stops, in which the police did not find evidence of criminality after a stop. She characterized that as “a high error rate” and remarked to a lawyer representing the city, “You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time.”

“That is a lot of misjudgment of suspicion,” Judge Scheindlin said, suggesting officers were wrongly interpreting innocent behavior as suspicious.

Scheindlin was referring to the constitutional standard — “reasonable suspicion” —  required for a police stop. She also questioned whether NYPD officers who make the “worrisome” argument that a higher stop and frisk rate among blacks and Hispanics mirrors higher crime rates in those populations are therefore using race as a basis for making otherwise inexplicable stops.

Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit now underway allege an expansive and racist use of police stops has been applied without legal justification, subjecting vast swaths of the city’s young African American and Hispanic men to invasive frisks, unwarranted searches, and detention at police centers for alleged minor crimes, often marijuana possession. Scheindlin has already ruled in another stop-and-frisk case that police stops in the Bronx are likely unconstitutional.

The aggressive stop-and-frisk program has been justified as reducing crime, but new figures show that the crime rate went down with a drop in the number of stop-and-frisks under public pressure.