Since Congress recognized the gaping racial disparity between mandatory minimum sentences for crack offenses and cocaine offenses and reduced the ratio from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1, courts have grappled with when and how to apply the statute to already-decided cases. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the reductions in the Fair Sentencing Act applied to at least those cases decided before the law was passed, but not yet sentenced. But questions remain about whether the statute applies retroactively to tens of thousands of other inmates who might seek reduced sentences.

On Friday, a federal appeals court panel issued a sweeping decision that held the reduced sentencing ratio should apply retroactively to all cases, not just because that was the intent of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, but because failure to do so would be unconstitutional. In a powerful statement about the troubling history of drug sentencing, Sixth Circuit Judges Gilbert Merritt and Boyce Martin write:

The old 100-to-1 crack cocaine ratio has led to the mass incarceration of thousands of nonviolent prisoners under a law widely acknowledged as racially discriminatory. There were approximately 30,000 federal prisoners (about 15 percent of all federal prisoners) serving crack cocaine sentences in 2011. Thousands of these prisoners are incarcerated for life or for 20, 10, or 5 years under mandatory minimum crack cocaine sentences imposed prior to the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act. More than 80 percent of federal prisoners serving crack cocaine sentences are black. In fiscal year 2010, before the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, almost 4,000 defendants, mainly black, received mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine. […]

The Fair Sentencing Act was a step forward, but it did not finish the job. The racial discrimination continues by virtue of a web of statutes, sentencing guidelines, and court cases that maintain the harsh provisions for those defendants sentenced before the Fair Sentencing Act. If we continue now with a construction of the statute that perpetuates the discrimination, there is no longer any defense that the discrimination is unintentional. The discriminatory nature of the old sentencing regime is so obvious that it cannot seriously be argued that race does not play a role in the failure to retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act. A “disparate impact” case now becomes an intentional subjugation or discriminatory purpose case. Like slavery and Jim Crow laws, the intentional maintenance of discriminatory sentences is a denial of equal protection.

The two-judge majority opinion also suggests the court would be inclined to strike down other deeply discriminatory and draconian sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenders, which even the Congressional Research Service has flagged as a cause of the United States’ overwhelming prison population. Unfortunately, the dissenting Judge Ronald Lee Gilman’s opinion may better reflect the view of either a full Sixth Circuit panel or the Supreme Court justices who would review this case on appeal. Gilman puts the onus on Congress to make its law explicitly retroactive, and points to the failure of pre-Fair Sentencing Act constitutional challenges to the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expects a showdown in July over a potential second round of filibuster reform, and he’s prepared to push for a sweeping change to the minority’s ability to unilaterally obstruct judges and other nominees. According to reporting by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, Reid “is eyeing a change to the rules that would do away with the 60-vote threshold on all judicial and executive branch nominations.” The test, according to Sargent, of whether Reid will push this reform is whether Senate Republicans lift their blockades on Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, and Environmental Protection Agency leader-in-waiting Gina McCarthy.

 

While Reid’s apparent willingness to press serious filibuster reform is welcome, he made similar statements during the lead up to a debate over filibuster reform last January. That debate ultimately led to a weak package of reforms and a victory for Republicans. A minority of Senate Democrats, lead by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), refused to support reforms that would enable the Senate to function in the face of a determined obstructionist minority.

This time around, however, there are two reasons why Reid may be successful in pulling together the 51 votes necessary to achieve real reform. The first is the simple fact that Levin is retiring, so he can no longer approach colleagues as a powerful committee chair who could potentially influence the fate of their bills for years. Beyond that, a key Democratic ally is now facing what could potentially be an existential threat. Two Republican courts held that President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are not valid, and if these decisions are upheld it will completely disable the NLRB’s ability to function. Without the NLRB, the backbone of federal labor law will become completely unenforceable — and with it, the right to organize could effectively cease to exist so long as Senate Republicans block new appointments to the Board. Unless, of course, Senate Democrats take away the ability to block confirmations via a filibuster.

The Illinois legislature sent a medical marijuana bill to Gov. Pat Quinn Friday, after the Senate passed a measure 35-21 largely along party lines. The measure would permit marijuana use with a doctor’s prescription for 33 specified ailments, require users, growers, and dispensaries to undergo fingerprinting and criminal background checks, and limit the number of growers and dispensaries.

The news comes as several new studies are released suggesting that marijuana may aid in post-traumatic stress disorder, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, and as a possible weight control remedy. All of these studies, however, were either performed in other countries or based on surveys or self-reporting from marijuana users, because federal agencies have blocked access to a legal supply of marijuana even for academic studies.

Earlier this month, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed Maryland’s much more limited marijuana law, which provides narrow access to medical marijuana for research purposes. If the bill is signed into law, Illinois would become the 20th state with a medical marijuana law, in addition to the District of Columbia. Gov. Quinn has said he is “open-minded” about the measure.

After President Obama opened the door to temporary legal status for more than a million young immigrants who came to the United States as children, Arizona and other states imposed their own hurdles to these deferred action beneficiaries living and working in the United States as the policy intended. On Thursday, a federal judge suggested he would likely find unconstitutional an Arizona policy denying driver’s licenses to these Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiaries. In a ruling declining to temporarily block Gov. Jan Brewer’s policy pending trial, U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell — a George W. Bush appointee and former clerk to the late conservative Justice Williams Rehnquist — said there is likely no rational justification for Brewer flouting federal immigration policy and treating deferred action beneficiaries differently than all other temporary legal residents:

The Governor’s disagreement with the DACA program may be a rational political or policy view in the broad sense – reasonable people certainly can disagree on an issue as complex and difficult as immigration – but it provides no justification for saying that an Arizona driver’s license may be issued to one person who has been permitted to remain temporarily in the country on deferred action status – say for an individual humanitarian reason – while another person who has been permitted to remain temporarily in the country on deferred action status under the DACA program is denied a license. … The Governor’s political disagreement with the DACA program as “backdoor amnesty” does not change the fact that both individuals have been allowed by the federal government to live and work here, nor does it identify a reason that one of the individuals presents less of a driver’s-license-related risk to the State.

The DACA program was intended to give young undocumented immigrants access to legal employment while they remain in the country, but depriving these beneficiaries of driver’s licenses of and other basic government services imposes major obstacles to achieving that goal. This hostility toward federal immigration policy should come as no surprise from the state that brought us SB 1070 and other discriminatory immigration laws, many parts of which have already been struck down by courts.

In opting not to block Brewer’s policy pending trial, Judge Campbell reasoned that the plaintiffs were not suffering irreparable harm, because most of them either continued to drive without a license out of necessity, or had other means of transportation. But this does not mitigate the risk that these immigrants incur every day they drive without a license, nor the public safety risks and hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims costs imposed by uninsured drivers. These factors will likely be a consideration in a final ruling by Campbell, and he appears poised to find Arizona’s policy a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Campbell also rejected the state’s motion to dismiss the case.

Carolyn Compton is in a three year-old relationship with a woman. According to Compton’s partner Page Price, Compton’s ex-husband rarely sees their two children and was also once charged with stalking Compton, a felony, although he eventually plead to a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespassing.

And yet, thanks to a Texas judge, Compton could lose custody of her children because she has the audacity to live with the woman she loves.

According to Price, Judge John Roach, a Republican who presides over a state trial court in McKinney, Texas, placed a so-called “morality clause” in Compton’s divorce papers. This clause forbids Compton having a person that she is not related to “by blood or marriage” at her home past 9pm when her children are present. Since Texas will not allow Compton to marry her partner, this means that she effectively cannot live with her partner so long as she retains custody over her children. Invoking the “morality clause,” Judge Roach gave Price 30 days to move out of Compton’s home.

Compton can appeal Price’s decision, but her appeal will be heard by the notoriously conservative Texas court system. Ultimately, the question of whether Compton’s relationship with Price is entitled to the same dignity accorded to any other loving couple could rest with the United States Supreme Court.

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, Tweeted a stunning attack against his opponent Friday, claiming, without any apparent justification, that a campaign ad by Rep. Ed Markey (D) blamed him personally for the Newtown shooting.

Markey’s ad correctly notes that Gomez opposes a federal assault weapons ban and is also against a ban on high-capacity magazines. Gomez has explained his opposition to such weapon restrictions, saying “If they [gun buyers] all the checks and they’re qualified to use a weapon, I don’t think we need to restrict what kind of weapon they use.”

From the ad, titled “Clear Differences”:

NARRATOR: Real differences in the race for Senate: Ed Markey has taken on the NRA. He’ll continue to fight for common-sense laws to stop gun violence. And Gabriel Gomez? Gomez is against banning assault weapons.

GOMEZ (in clip): I don’t believe that we need to do an assault weapon ban.

NARRATOR: And Gomez is against banning high capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.

GOMEZ (in clip): I don’t believe that you should have a limit on the high-capacity magazines.

NARRATOR: The more you know, the clearer the choice.

Watch the spot:

Gomez tweeted Friday:

.@edmarkey‘s new TV ad blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick. bit.ly/12GQTEe

— Gabriel Gomez (@GomezForMA) May 17, 2013

In a press release making the same charges, Gomez also inaccurately claims: “The only gun measure before Congress is the Toomey-Manchin proposal for expanded background checks which, just as I do, Congressman Markey supports.” The Senate voted on an assault weapons ban and magazine restrictions last month, at the same time as the minority blocked expanded background checks.

In a January letter, asking for Gov. Deval Patrick (D) to appoint him to the vacant Senate seat, Gomez contradicted his current position, writing: “Two main issues that will dominate the political discussion during this appointment will be Immigration Reform and Gun Control. Given my Latino and Navy SEAL background, I have credibility to contribute thoughtfully on these issues. I support the positions that President Obama has taken on these issues and you can be assured I will keep my word and work on these issues as I have promised.”

You may start seeing more people carrying James Bond’s gun around — by law. A new proposed federal law would require that all new guns, and eventually all guns for sale, would be required to have “smart” identification technology that only allows specially authorized users to fire it, something the silver screen saw recently in Skyfall. The law is intended to crack down on gun accidents, thefts, and suicides, but its critics — including a major gun violence prevention group — worry that it might make the problem worse.

Introduced by Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), the Personalized Handgun Safety Act of 2013 would require that all guns manufactured for sale or put up for sale, would have to have some kind of “personalized” technology that limited the ability to fire the gun to its owner and any individuals authorized. Since this technology is not widespread now, these requirements would kick in within two years for manufacturers and three years for sellers. Affected sellers include both federally licensed retailers and private sellers.

The bill is technologically feasible. Several possible ways of building “smart” guns include firearms that only activate when you press a special ring into it, guns that won’t work until you enter a key code, guns that only fire if they detect a specific radio signal, and guns that recognize biometric info like fingerprints. Some smart guns are already available abroad, including one Irish design that automatically disables guns when they’re brought into properly equipped schools.

There’s some reason to believe these measures could be effective in reducing gun violence. Roughly ten to fifteen percent of crime guns are acquired by theft; an average of 232,400 guns are stolen per year. Presumably, a smart gun couldn’t be used by a thief.

So long as parents don’t give their kids biometric “permission” or leave their gun key lying around, then kids also wouldn’t be able to fire the gun. Adam Lanza couldn’t have brought his mother’s guns to Newtown absent her say-so were they smart guns. Some of the 900 kids who died in gun accidents or suicides last year may not have lost their lives.

“Even if smart guns disarmed only our dumbest, laziest criminals and other unauthorized borrowers like kids,” wrote Dave Guston and Ed Finn, two professors at Arizona State University, “the savings in lives could be tremendous.”
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For nearly two decades U.S. law enforcement agencies have used counter-terrorism devices known as “stingrays” after the brand name of one variant or ISMI (international mobile subscriber identity)-catchers to track locations in domestic investigations, but information about the devices has been kept carefully under wraps from the public and sometimes even from judges authorizing its deployment. Last week an Arizona judge ruled that a tracking warrant used to deploy the device against Daniel David Rigmaiden, who is accused of collecting millions of dollars in rebates by submitting fraudulent tax returns, was valid despite the fact that the FBI failed to disclose they would be using a stingray or explain how the devices functioned in that warrant.

Much of what is known about their current use in the U.S. comes from a treasure trove of heavily redacted documents being dripped out month by month thanks to an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and a handful of public cases like Rigmaiden that have been released publicly. Speaking at a Yale Information Society Project (ISP) on biometrics and location tracking earlier this year, EPIC Appellate Advocacy Counsel Alan Butler noted:

“The biggest problem I see with stingrays is the secrecy aspect — The fact that we don’t know how they are used, how exactly they work, what different techniques are available [...] The accountability measures that would be in place for other warranted, more standard surveillance methods are really nonexistent here.”

One thing we do know, according to statement at the same conference from the American Civil Liberty Union’s (ACLU) Chris Soghoian, is that stingrays work by essentially exploiting a security vulnerability in cell service technology: Phones are constantly searching for the nearest signal so they know what tower to connect to when a call comes in, and phones will automatically connect to any tower identifying itself as having the strongest signal strength from your carrier.

The device sends out a signal pretending to be a nearby cell tower with the strongest signal, tricking phones into connecting and allowing the operator to harvest identifying information about devices in the form of the unique ID string of numbers associated with the device known as ISMI and in some variants even communications content, although U.S. law enforcement generally denies using them for the latter need. Whenever a phone is powered on, you can measure the strength of the phone responding to this signal and triangulate a location. This graphic adapted from one in Jennifer Valentino-Devries’ excellent Wall Street Journal coverage of the Rigmaiden case in 2011 shows how it works:

Due to the nature of the devices, they gather up all information within a certain signal range including information about non-target devices — meaning innocent bystanders are having their data sucked up as well. In court documents associated with the Rigmaiden case the FBI requested permission to “expunge” all data obtained in the process, but how much data operators generally have access to during the surveillance process or if that is the standard practice remains unclear leading to a number of questions about whether or not the Fourth Amendment rights of the general public are being compromised. Soghoian noted as much at the Yale ISP conference, saying “No matter how the stingray is used — to identify, locate or intercept — they always send signals through the walls of homes [...] The signals always penetrate a space protected by the Fourth Amendment.”

There are a variety of situations this could be used unrelated to criminal investigations, like aiding search and rescue teams, but when it’s used by law enforcement it’s usually because the phone company can’t find the phone for some reason (such as lacking a GPS chip), to identify what phones are being used by a suspect in a burner type situation (think the Wire), or when the phone company refuses to help with an investigation. But the legal framework for deployment in the United States is murky.

In the Rigmaiden case a warrant was sought because they were after the signal on a mobile wireless card believed to be within his residence where he might have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But FBI and Department of Justice officials have claimed investigators’ stingrays should be treated like “pen registers.” Pen registers are a category of tools that gather information on outgoing calls — normally, the numbers dialed on a particular phone — but don’t receive the content of the communications and do not require a warrant to deploy. Instead, they are allowed under the Electronic Privacy Communications Act of 1986 (ECPA) with a court order that only requires investigators to believe information gathered as a result of the order is likely to assist an ongoing investigation, a lesser standard than probable cause.

However, some judges have found that location information is more intrusive type of surveillance than call logs, and across the field courts appear to be applying different standards — with the prosecution in Rigmaiden saying that “decisions are made on a case-by-case basis” by magistrate and district judges. In US v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled a GPS tracking device being placed on a suspect’s car constituted a search, but did not rule on if the search was warranted or constitutional.

Due to the lack of disclosure used by investigators pursuing stingray deployment, it is also unclear how often the devices are being used by law enforcement although evidence suggests they are being deployed in at least a handful of states. Reporting from the LA Times uncovered 21 uses of the devices by the LAPD in a four month period in 2012 “apparently without the courts’ knowledge that the technology probes the lives of non-suspects who happen to be in the same neighborhood.”

The lack of clarity around almost every aspect of stingray tech and its use by law enforcement did not happen by accident: The FBI delayed releasing the documents now being released thanks to EPIC’s FOIA lawsuit, only acquiescing when being ordered by a federal judge “to produce all records, except those subject to classification review, by August 1, 2013,” and among the documents already released in that inquiry was a nondisclosure agreement preventing FBI staff from discussing the technology.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted became one of the villains of the 2012 presidential election for his multi-pronged efforts to restrict voting. After the election, Husted ordered all boards of elections to hold public hearings on voter fraud suspicions. Conservatives, long bereft of compelling evidence that in-person voter fraud actually exists, rushed to point out Hamilton County, Ohio, where 93 cases of anomaly votes are being investigated by the board.

The only problem is, 59 of the voters facing possible felony prosecution appear to have cast two ballots by mistake — and ultimately only had one ballot counted. The Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an extensive review of these cases, finding that most involve errors by Board of Elections employees or voter confusion:

• Five are the result of acknowledged errors by a board of elections office. In another nine cases, voters said they did what they did because a Board of Elections employee told them – or didn’t tell them – what to do.

• Eight are the result of postage problems.

• 12 came from people who were confused, according to the board’s own investigation.

On Wednesday, the board of elections split along party lines over whether 39 of these voters should be reviewed for prosecution. Husted will now have to decide whether to pursue cases like 64-year-old Bella Lipavisky, a Russian immigrant and long-time voter who feared she made a mistake on her absentee ballot and was told to cast a provisional ballot by poll workers. Many other Ohioans shared similar worries with the Enquirer that they had made an error on their absentee ballot or that it would not reach the board of elections. These voters then showed up at the polls and cast provisional ballots, which are used if the voter’s legitimacy is in question. In all 39 cases reviewed Wednesday, only one vote was counted.

Tim Burke, Hamilton County Board of Elections chairman, expressed misgivings to the Enquirer about “an effort by some to make it appear there is more voter fraud than there actually is” by inflating the number of allegations with people who were simply confused by the system. The Hamilton County prosecutor, Joe Deters (R), has charged 6 people for voter fraud thus far.

It’s no surprise these voters were concerned their ballots would not count; Ohio has the highest number of provisional ballots in the country, and routinely tosses thousands of legitimate votes every election. The confusion among voters and poll workers was exacerbated by Husted’s war with the courts over his voting hour restrictions and last-minute changes to vote protocols. Critics predicted that even Husted’s well-intentioned initiative to mail absentee ballot request forms to every registered voter would flood the system with provisional ballots from people who chose to return an absentee ballot application but later decided to vote in person. Sure enough, the number of provisional ballots increased in several Democratic strongholds.

While the hearings have netted a couple of cases of legitimate voter fraud — a nun who voted for a friend who passed away shortly before the election and a poll worker who filled out ballots for her granddaughter and other relatives — they make up less than .0034 percent of all Ohio voters. By contrast, laws meant to combat voter fraud raised obstacles for hundreds of thousands of people — primarily minority, low-income, and elderly Americans — trying to cast their votes all over the country. As many as 49,000 people in Florida, Ohio’s partner in election woes, were discouraged from voting by Republican voter suppression laws.

Teenage inmates in adult prisons endure higher rates of sexual abuse by staff members than adult inmates do, according to a new study from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Because of the vast under-reporting of such abuses, the true number is likely to be much higher.

 

While 1.8 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds in adult prisons reported being assaulted by another inmate, 3.2 percent were abused by staff. Gay and bisexual inmates were abused at even higher rates. Inmates diagnosed with serious psychological distress were also prime targets for victimization by staff members and inmates alike.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act, passed in 2003, created the first national standards to curb sexual violence in prison. Because teenagers are considered prey in adult prisons, PREA stipulated that minors should be removed from all adult jails and prisons. Ten years later, the October 2013 deadline for state and local prison facilities to certify compliance with PREA is just a few months away. Yet inmates, primarily those who are 16 and 17 years old, continue to live under constant threat of rape in adult prisons. Three-quarters of sexually victimized youth in the DOJ study reported they were abused more than once, and nearly half said staff used force to get what they wanted.

One former juvenile inmate who was raped and abused in prison explains that the horrors they experience spill over into society at large:

Placing juveniles in adult facilities has devastating consequences not only for the youth but also for the communities from which they came. Eighty percent are released before their 21st birthday, and 95 percent are released before they turn 25. They’re coming back into society indelibly marked by what they’ve experienced — either traumatized by sexual assault, or hyper-violent from having learned to fend off the threat.

Critics of PREA note that the bill has no way to enforce its standards to curb sexual assaults and is completely dependent on self-reporting by the agencies holding the prisoners. Anecdotal evidence suggests the true number of assaults is suppressed by youths who are afraid to report. It’s no wonder many choose not to report, as a 2005 DOJ study found that few prosecutors are willing to prosecute cases that cannot prove staff members threatened overt physical force to rape inmates because the penalty is so low. Staffers who are charged will often be released on low bonds or receive short sentences because their victims were inmates. Even when staffers were clearly caught sexually abusing prisoners, only about 56 percent were referred to prosecutions.

Several exonerated men whose innocence of murder was proven years after they were sentenced to death are imploring Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) not to sign a Florida bill that would set automatic timelines for imposing the death penalty, and likely would have resulted in the execution of these and other innocent people.

The bill, known as the “Timely Justice Act,” was passed last month amid legislator sentiments that “timely justice” is more important than “guilt or innocence,” with one legislator saying, “Only God can judge. But we can sure set up the meeting.”

Now, as the deadline approaches for Gov. Scott to sign the bill, former inmates who escaped the death penalty are coming forward to demonstrate the extraordinary costs of the law’s passage, in a state with the highest number of exonerations, and more people on death row than any state but California.

“If Governor Scott would just sit with me and others like me, I know he will veto this bill that, if it had been law, would have ended my life – I am innocent,” said Seth Penalver, who sat on death row for 18 years before exonerating evidence emerged. “If he signs this bill into law, I fear other people who are innocent like me, will be unjustly executed by the State of Florida.”

Exoneree Juan Melendez wrote in the Huffington Post:

The “Timely Justice Act” would speed up a system we know has already sent innocent men, like myself, to death row. Some of these prisoners may be men like me, who have exhausted their legal appeals, yet keep trying to find a way to prove their innocence.

In multiple cases of current death row prisoners, we don’t know exactly what the legal claims are. Some of the men on Florida’s death row ran out of legal options simply because their attorneys missed filing deadlines.

In those instances, no court had the opportunity to evaluate the claims and determine whether they have merit. How can we possibly justify speeding up the execution of prisoners in those cases?

According to logic of the “Timely Justice Act,” any prisoner who has exhausted his appeals and been through a clemency process has had every opportunity and is ready for an execution date, regardless of the specific questions and issues that surround his case.

I am living proof that each case is unique and that the system must allow ample time for the truth to emerge.
Given Florida’s troubling track record on wrongful convictions, this legislation ensures the unthinkable — the execution of an innocent person.

Although the final version of the bill eliminated timelines for filing appeals and post-conviction motions, it would require the governor to issue an execution warrant to those who have exhausted their legal remedies within 30 days, and require execution within 180 days of the warrant. The problem is that when it comes to the death penalty, cases are reopened years later when new evidence finally emerges or defendants obtain the resources to uncover new evidence. In several recent instances, crucial errors in FBI analysis were not revealed until years after hundreds of individuals’ cases had been completed and decided.

Just this week in Florida, a man who was sentenced to death in 2006 is just now requesting a retrial, after he obtained lawyers in 2011 that secured testing of crucial DNA evidence.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is overturning Roe v. Wade. Or, at least, that’s what freshman Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) seemed to suggest in a speech earlier this month:

Just in the last several days, a Bismarck news anchor mistakenly uttered vulgarity on live television. He’s been heralded by celebrities from New York to California as some sort of pop icon. His bosses have been called goons because they fired him. We learned this week that the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to rape, and advocated that military personnel and colluding chaplains who proselytize should be court-marshalled.

Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. And we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often.

Cramer’s link between recent school shootings and a 40 year-old Supreme Court decision is certainly an unusual take on what causes events to transpire, but his attempt to present abortion as more dangerous to society than weakly regulated access to firearms is far from unique. Indeed, in five states, it is significantly harder to obtain an abortion than it is to purchase a gun.

The congressman’s statement appears to be part of a broader theory about how bad things are happening in the United States because people have turned away from Cramer’s version of Christianity. At another point in the speech, he claims that “[i]nnocent people in New York have airplanes flown into their places of work, and marathoners in Boston are victims of bombs, yet Christianity is singled out as bigotry in our public institutions because politicians and academics lack the courage to speak truth. We’ve normalized perversion and perverted God’s natural law to the point where the only thing not tolerated anymore is a stand for truth.”

Kansas Board of Education member Steve Roberts (R), an elected official representing one-tenth of the state, defended on Tuesday his use of a racial epithet at a previous board meeting to “push the frontiers of political correctness.” After a former Topeka NAACP president advocated for more African American history in state curriculum standards, Roberts had brought up an unrelated non-binding 2007 New York City resolution discouraging the use of the “N-word” and other offensive language.

Roberts, a former math tutor who was first elected to the board last November, had delivered a monologue to the Rev. Ben Scott at the April board meeting during a discussion on history, government, and social studies standards. Roberts complained that New York City had banned the same racial slur that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had used (in quoting racist police forces and other segregationists) in his famous 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” saying:

We have to push the frontiers of political correctness and do what’s right. And so, if I were to use it clinically, I would almost use a test to see what the effect on Twitter would be. You know, ‘That Roberts guy said nigger at the state school board meeting, and he said it as, it’s probably the ugliest word in our vocabulary.’ It’s an ugly repugnant absolutely horrific word that we should rise above. But I did get it out there and I appreciate the opportunity to do it in a politically correct setting.

Watch the video:

According to Topeka Capital-Journal reports, when Scott and other civil rights leaders expressed their concern about those comments at Tuesday’s board meeting, Roberts stood by his remarks.

“I did my best to say the ‘N-word’ clinically,” he noted, adding “I’m willing to be considered politically incorrect … I don’t think that’s a bad thing.” Roberts then accused those criticizing his comments as only wanting media attention.

Two events this morning strike at the heart of whether workers have the right to organize. The first is a brand new decision by two Republican judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit striking down President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The second is a confirmation hearing, coincidentally being held this morning, on five nominees to that same Board. If the Third Circuit’s opinion stands, and the five nominees are not confirmed, the practical result will be a blank check for union-busting employers.

The background here stretches back to a 2010 decision by the Supreme Court holding that the NLRB is powerless to act unless it has a quorum of at least three members. The NLRB has exclusive jurisdiction over what are known as “unfair labor practices,” meaning that it is the only body of government permitted to enforce much of federal labor law. If the NLRB is powerless to act, there will be no one to enforce workers’ rights to join a union without intimidation from their employer. No one to enforce workers’ rights to join together to oppose abusive work conditions. And no one to make an employer actually bargain with a union. Without an NLRB to enforce the law, it may be possible for an employer to round up all of their pro-union workers, fire them, and then replace them with anti-union scabs who will immediately call a vote to decertify the union.

This reality gave Senate Republican filibusters of President Obama’s NLRB nominees a special aura of danger. When the Senate minority filibusters nominees to a powerful court, the other judges on that court can continue to issue decisions (even if those decisions are likely to reflect the ideological preferences of past presidents). If senators filibuster most agency heads, the agency’s remaining staff can maintain its day to day operations. But if a filibuster blocks confirmations to the NLRB, a sweeping array of workers’ rights simply cease to exist.

To ward this off, President Obama recess appointed three people to the NLRB nearly a year and a half ago. A panel of Republican-appointed judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down those recess appointments earlier this year. And, today, two more Republican judges voted to strike down the same appointments (an Obama appointee on the same court voted to uphold them).

While the rationale behind the these two court decisions is somewhat different, it’s not clear how much legal arguments actually matter in a case like this. The bottom line is that every Republican judge to consider the matter has now struck down President Obama’s appointments. There are five Republicans, and only four Democrats on the Supreme Court. That’s probably all you need to know if you’re placing bets on how the justices will resolve the case.
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In the nation’s highest court, corporations are winning immunity from lawsuits at a higher rate than ever, in part because they can invest tremendous sums in litigation. But in many state high courts, corporations have yet another tool in their arsenal to rig the game in their favor: spending on state judicial elections. And as spending on judicial elections continues to break new records nationwide, those six state supreme courts that have seen the most money pour into their judicial elections since 2002 — Texas, Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois – saw individuals losing to corporate defendants in the overwhelming majority of the cases, according to a new Center for American Progress report. These states are seeing average win rates of 70 percent for corporate defendants, and this rate does not even account for the countless individuals who never sue to begin with, because both the laws of the state and the orientation of the judges pummel their chances at success. Report author Billy Corriher explains:

One Texas plaintiff, Connie Spears of San Antonio, ran up against the state’s stringent medical-malpractice laws when she sought to hold a hospital accountable for failing to diagnose a blood clot, a problem she had previously experienced. The delay in discovering the clot led to the amputation of both of her legs. It took years for her to find a lawyer willing to take the case, due to Texas’ defendant-friendly laws, and once she did, she could not find an expert witness who met the state’s standards. Spears says that negligent medical care has impacted her family and “ruined all of our lives,” but she could not hold anyone accountable in Texas.

Even in in those cases in which the evidence is so overwhelming that lawyers believe they may be able to overcome the onerous legal standards set by courts and legislatures, individuals have lost over and over. In Ohio, a plant worker whose leg was crushed and pelvis fractured after he was pinned against an electric powered fork lift could not overcome the state legal requirement that corporations have “deliberate intent” to injure the employee, in spite of rampant evidence of willful negligence. In fact, Bruce Houdek’s manager had explicitly told the forklift drivers not to avoid aisles where employees were driving fork lifts and labeling inventory. He lost his case for damages 6-1.

When individuals do win, stringent damage caps preclude awards that compensate to the full extent of the loss. In Texas, a family who said their son’s skull was crushed during birth and suffered severe brain damage recovered the maximum award of $500,000 – an amount eaten up by medical bills in just the first three weeks of his life. The boy’s father was a small business owner, and had been a public supporter of damage caps until he experienced what that meant for him. He is now an outspoken opponent of damage caps. Texas, which has recently seen one of the highest corporate win rates of 85 percent, saw a deluge of corporate money in the mid-1990s after a court ruling invalidated a state damages cap. Thanks both to elections spending and political lobbying for so-called “tort reform,” the state now has some of the strictest limits on liability for negligent health care providers. And in a sign that this insulation from liability really does affect corporate accountability, Texas now also holds the title of number one in workplace fatalities, and has more than three times the number of accidents, and four times the number of injuries and deaths as the second-ranking state, Illinois.

During a Wednesday House oversight hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder that overwhelmingly focused on the invasive government search of Associated Press phone logs and the IRS, one House member took the opportunity to grill Holder on another Department of Justice issue that has provoked criticism from the left. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) tore into Holder over his approach to marijuana, asking why his Justice Department is “continuing to put people in jail,” even as polling shows a majority of Americans believe the plant should not be illegal:

One of the greatest threats to liberty has been the government taking people’s liberty for things that people are in favor of. The Pew Research Group shows that 52 percent of people do not think marijuana should be illegal. And yet there are people in jail, and your Justice Department is continuing to put people in jail, for sale, and use, on occasion, of marijuana. That’s something the American public has finally caught up with. It was a cultural lag. And it’s been an injustice for 40 years in this country to take people’s liberty for something that was similar to alcohol. You have continued what is allowing the Mexican cartels power, and the power to make money, ruin Mexico, hurt our country by having a Prohibition in the late 20th and 21st century. We saw it didn’t work in this country in the 20s. We remedied it. This is the time to remedy this Prohibition, and I would hope you would do so.

WATCH IT:

In addition to the majority support for decriminalizing marijuana cited by Cohen, an even greater proportion of Americans say they think the United States is losing the so-called “War on Drugs” and that states should be allowed to decide whether marijuana is legal.

Holder said shortly after two states passed ballot initiatives to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana that he would announce a DOJ policy on a federal response. But six months later, his only answer has been that he expects an announcement “relatively soon.” Regional federal officials, meanwhile, have re-upped crackdowns on medical marijuana dispensaries, sending threat letters to dispensaries in several cities in Washington and California. And what started as a Drug Enforcement Administration crackdown has now developed into new DOJ action by regional U.S. attorneys. Just this month, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag filed federal forfeiture actions to seize the real estate that houses two Bay Area medical marijuana dispensaries seemingly in compliance with state and local laws, including the largest dispensary in Berkeley and another dispensary that serves the Mission region of San Francisco. Haag has filed a similar action against the largest U.S. dispensary with locations in Oakland and San Jose, suggesting a strategy to hamper the industry by targeting the largest players.

Members of Congress have introduced several bills to square state laws with the federal marijuana prohibition.

A crowdsourced effort to count every person killed by a gun in the United States since the Newtown tragedy is currently being hosted by Slate. As of this writing, the count is 4,099. This number also appears to be growing rapidly. Just a few hours ago, it was at 4,096.

Veterans and others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder have long reported anecdotally that marijuana provides unique relief for their symptoms, but past attempts to perform scientific studies have foundered because access to a legal supply of marijuana is blocked by federal agencies. A new study released this week averted this obstacle in a brain imaging study that did not require a marijuana supply, and concluded that cannabis may mitigate the flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, and other symptoms that plague PTSD sufferers. Medical Daily reports:

A new study by researchers at the New York University School of Medicine and their collaborators across the U.S. suggests that there is a connection between the number of cannabinoid receptors in the brain and the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to an NYU press release.

Cannabinoid receptors, or CB1 receptors, are part of a large system of chemicals and signaling pathways from the brain to the body, NYU says. They play a role in the formation of memories, and in transmitting messages about appetite, pain, and mood to the body. Studies have shown that certain chemicals, like cannabis, can combine with naturally produced neurotransmitters to activate CB1 receptors, which in turn can impair memory and reduce anxiety. […]

“There’s not a single pharmacological treatment out there that has been developed specifically for PTSD,” said lead author and NYU researcher Alexander Neumeister in the statement. “That’s a problem. There’s a consensus among clinicians that existing pharmaceutical treatments such as antidepressant simply do not work.” In fact, he added, anecdotal evidence has shown that some PTSD sufferers who use marijuana, a cannabinoid, experience more symptom relief than with antidepressants.

The reason researchers were able to link their brain research to marijuana is because it contains its own cannabinoids, which can and have been isolated to medically treat individuals with neurological disorders. This study, conducted by a major medical institution and published in a reputable scientific journal, is groundbreaking. But it also reinforces the loss to the medical and scientific communities from federal government resistance to support research on the drug.

If clinicians want to actually know how marijuana works, they will have to conduct studies using marijuana. Legal access to marijuana is controlled by one federal agency with a mission to combat drug abuse. A panel made up of representatives from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Health and Human Services must approve a proposal for legal marijuana access. In 2011, a psychiatry professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine who specializes in treating veterans designed a triple-blind study to test marijuana that earned approval by the Food and Drug Administration. But when Dr. Sue Sisley requested marijuana from the panel, they turned back her request, providing a range of contradictory and confusing justifications that are difficult if not impossible for Sisley to address in a subsequent request, and effectively block access to the drug for this study.

Studies like this one are needed not just to put scientific backing behind the anecdotes and to better adjust prescriptions of the substance to the some 30 percent of veterans who suffer from PTSD. They are also crucial to disputing the Drug Enforcement Administration’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I dangerous drug with no currently accepted medical use, and Congress’ position that marijuana is illegal even for medical purposes. In 2011, the DEA once again refused to reschedule marijuana, citing an absence of rigorous study, and a federal appeals court declined to disturb that ruling. Plaintiffs argued that it is precisely the Schedule I designation that prevents the funding and marijuana access needed to perform larger-scale studies. The Schedule I designation — more severe than the designations for cocaine and opium poppy – also means the federal government recognizes no sanctioned use for the substance in spite of 19 state medical marijuana laws, and prescriptions cannot be written for marijuana.

Another study released just this month found that inhaled marijuana can abate Crohn’s disease symptoms in those who did not respond to conventional treatments. According to a 2011 survey performed in Canada and the United Kingdom, some half of Crohn’s disease patients use medical marijuana to treat their symptoms. The primary prescription drugs used to treat this disorder can cost $25,000 a year without insurance, and vary in effectiveness. This study was conducted in Israel, where medical marijuana research is encouraged by the government.

Under fire for the Justice Department’s surveillance of AP reporters’ phone records, the White House is pushing to revive a “media shield” bill to protect reporters who refuse to identify confidential sources. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) received a call Wednesday from the White House asking him to reintroduce his 2009 bill.

The last media shield bill was thwarted when Wikileaks exposed thousands of pages of secret government documents, killing the political will to bring the legislation to a floor vote. Even before that, however, the Obama administration refused to support Schumer’s legislation unless it excluded reporters who publish leaks deemed to cause “significant harm” to national security.

Though the administration’s renewed interest in the media shield could signal regret over the AP scandal, the compromise bill may not have protected the AP from the DOJ’s subpoena because of this exception for national security leaks. However, Schumer argued the legislation would have made a difference:

In a statement, Mr. Schumer referred to the A.P. subpoena: “This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

It is not clear whether such a law would have changed the outcome of the subpoena to The A.P. But it might have reduced the chances that the Justice Department would have demanded the records in secret, without any advance notice to the news organization, and it may have allowed a judge to review whether the scope of the request was justified by the facts.

As the New York Times notes, the media shield compromise language would actually help the government pursue reporters to root out leaks of classified information — “Judges could not quash a subpoena through a balancing test if prosecutors could show that the information sought might help prevent a future terrorist attack or other acts likely to harm national security.”

The bill would, however, protect journalists from civil suits attempting to force them to give up sources or information. It would also require the information seekers to prove why their need trumps the need for unfettered media.

If the United States and all the other countries of the world were to line up by voter participation rate, we would find ourselves ranked lower than war-torn countries like Sierra Leone, massive countries like Indonesia, and baby democracies like East Timor.

Despite our status as the world’s oldest democracy, just over half (53.6 percent) of voting-age Americans cast a ballot in 2012. In fact, of 169 countries ranked by turnout level, the U.S. has the ignominious honor of taking 120th place.

There are plenty of reasons for our fledgling turnout rate. We hold elections more frequently than most countries. Many voters find it hard to take time off during a Tuesday in early November to vote. An increasing number of states have passed new laws designed to inhibit certain people from casting a ballot. The list goes on.

Other countries have been able to achieve far higher levels of participation with the help of various initiatives designed to encourage citizens to vote. Some, particularly compulsory voting, may be right for the United States and others may not, but it is instructive to consider how other countries have structured their elections to make them as accessible as possible.

Here are a number of these reforms, in no particular order:

1. Automatically registering everyone to vote. Some countries like France (71.2 percent turnout) and Sweden (82.6 percent turnout) automatically register their citizens to vote, removing a major hurdle in the electoral process. France automatically registers citizens when they turn 18, while Sweden and other Scandinavian countries use tax registration rolls to produce voter lists.

2. Weekend voting. Many countries including Australia (81.0 percent turnout), Greece (69.4 percent turnout), and Brazil (80.6 percent turnout) put Election Day on the weekend. This helps ensure that as many people as possible can participate and won’t be prevented by work requirements.

3. Nationwide Election Day registration. Canada (53.8 percent turnout), for example, allows citizens who haven’t registered to do so when they get to the polls on Election Day, rather than barring them from participating.

4. Lower voting age. Not all nations set the voting age at 18. Many like Brazil (80.6 percent turnout), Nicaragua (71.8 percent turnout), and Austria (75.6 percent turnout) allow 16-year-olds to vote.

5. Compulsory voting. Dozens of countries, ranging from Uruguay (96.1 percent turnout) to the Dominican Republic (70.2 percent turnout) to Singapore (55.3 percent turnout), require citizens to vote. Some of the countries actually enforce the requirement, usually with a small fine for people who don’t cast a ballot; $20 in Australia for those without a good excuse, for instance. Other countries either don’t have penalties for non-voters or don’t enforce penalties on the books.

6. Online voting. A few countries have started to dip their toes into the online voting water. Most notably, Estonia (55.5 percent turnout) has been allowing its citizens to cast a ballot online since 2005. In 2011, a quarter of all Estonians utilized the option. They have yet to face major security breaches in the system.

7. Fewer elections. Elections are often unsynchronized in the United States, with local elections taking place on different dates than federal elections, to say nothing of primaries, recalls, and the like. Many other countries hold all their elections on a single day, in part to avoid voter fatigue.