Following up on Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) threat to lash out at President Obama’s decision to make four necessary recess appointments by seeking revenge against Obama’s other nominees, Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) used a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday to make a similar threat:

Given this President’s blatant and egregious disregard both for proper constitutional procedures and the Senate’s unquestioned role in such appointments, I find myself duty-bound to resist the consideration and approval of additional nominations until the President takes steps to remedy the situation. Regardless of the precise course I choose to pursue, the President certainly will not continue to enjoy my nearly complete cooperation, unless and until he rescinds his unconstitutional recess appointments.

Watch it:

At the outset, it’s important to note that there is no one in America who has less stature to claim that someone else shows “blatant and egregious disregard” for the Constitution than Mike Lee. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. Taking Mike Lee’s advice on constitutional law is a bit like taking John “Bluto” Blutarsky’s advice on American military history.

Moreover, Lee’s suggestion that he has shown “nearly complete cooperation” in the past is laughably false. Lee openly admits that he filibustered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray’s nomination because he wanted to sabotage that consumer protection agency, and he filibustered an exceptional nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because she had the audacity to do her job properly when she was Solicitor General of New York.

Fortunately, the Lee/Grassley plan for scorched earth retaliation does not seem to be resonating with much of the Senate GOP. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) recently said that he “would be surprised if you see mass reprisals,” and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) — who has his own history of aggressive obstructionism — waived off Lee and Grassley’s angry tactic because he doesn’t think it will be a “particularly effective strategy.”

Nevertheless, the Senate’s broken rules enable just one senator to work a great deal of obstructionist mischief even if the other 99 vehemently disagree. Indeed, the fact that the current rules allow someone with the poor judgment of a Mike Lee to work such havoc shows why Obama was right to call for filibuster reform in his State of the Union speech this week. America can ill afford to have its ability to have a functioning government rest in the hands of the Senate’s most radical member.

Last August, ThinkProgress highlighted a Texas Watch report showing that the Texas Supreme Court “sided with consumers in 27 percent of cases involving an individual against a corporation or government agency — and it reversed jury verdicts in 72 percent of cases.” A new report by that same organization shows that the court’s favoritism towards corporations is now even worse:

Over the course of the decade, we have reviewed 624 consumer cases, carefully categorizing and compiling win-loss rates, with the scope of these consumer cases encompassing instances where individuals, patients, policyholders, and small business owners were pitted against corporate or governmental entities. . . . On average, defendants have won an overwhelming 74% of their cases and plaintiffs have won just 22% of the time over the last decade. Furthermore, since 2005, consumers have lost an astonishing 79% of their cases before the Texas Supreme Court.

The report also notes that a major factor driving this trend is Gov. Rick Perry (R), whose appointees to the court consistently sided with corporations over people. Indeed, the “win rate” for corporate and other defendants skyrocketed shortly after Perry took over as governor:

MIAMI, Florida — Speaking at the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network conference here today, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned his fellow conservatives against using rhetoric towards immigrants that is “harsh and intolerable and inexcusable“:

“We must admit that there are those among us that have used rhetoric that is harsh and intolerable and inexcusable,” Rubio said. “And we must admit — myself included — that sometimes we’ve been too slow to condemn that language for what it is.”

While Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, did not mention them by name, his words could have been intended for GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney who spoke immediately after him at the conference. Both have taken immigration policies well to the right of President Bush, with Romney going even further than Gingrich in saying that he would veto the DREAM Act.

Rubio is a rising star in the GOP and extraordinarily popular among the Hispanic conservatives at the conference, and his words received a very warm reception here. His comments came after he was interrupted by two undocumented students who confronted him for not supporting the DREAM Act.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has successfully staked his claim as the most extreme GOP presidential candidate when it comes to immigration. His immigration plan is to make conditions in the country so horrible for undocumented immigrants that they have no option other than to self-deport. He embraced the support of Kris Kobach, the anti-immigrant Kansas secretary of state with ties to hate groups.

Last night during the CNN GOP debate in Florida, even Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has attempted to strike a compassionate tone on immigration during the primaries, agreed that, of the GOP presidential contenders, Romney is anti-immigrant:

BLITZER: I just want to make sure I understand. Is he [Romney] still the most anti-immigrant candidate?

GINGRICH: Among the four of us, yes.

BLITZER: Go ahead, governor.

ROMNEY: That’s simply inexcusable. That’s inexcusable.

Watch here:

Of course Romney disagrees with the characterization since he also has tried to frame himself as a pro-legal immigration candidate and touts out his father’s birth in Mexico (even though his father never had Mexican citizenship). Earlier in the week, his campaign pressured the Gingrich camp to take down a Spanish campaign ad that called Romney “anti-immigrant.” Gingrich’s campaign removed the ad after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said the language used was “inaccurate, inflammatory and doesn’t belong in the campaign.”

But Gingrich had it right during the debate when he told moderator Wolf Blitzer that yes, Romney was anti-immigrant, no matter how many times Romney may say it’s inexcusable.

MIAMI, Florida — Two undocumented students confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during his speech here this morning at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference over his lack of support for the DREAM Act. Holding signs that read “Rubio: Latino Or Tea-Partino?” (Latin or Tea Partier?), the students were quickly escorted out of the Doral Golf Resort & Spa ballroom, where Rubio was speaking ahead of GOP presidential candidates, by security.

To his credit, Rubio said the two young men were “very brave” for raising “this legitimate issue” and urged them to stay to hear the rest of his speech. Instead, they were met by Doral City Police officers outside the ballroom, who pulled the students — one gave his name as Joe, preferring not to use a last name — away from reporters. Watch it:

Last year, a Florida judge struck down Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) plan to privatize much of the state’s prison system because of a flaw in the way it was enacted. Nevertheless, Florida lawmakers are now reviving this ill-conceived plan:

Dozens of correctional officers shouted “Shame! Shame!” as the Senate Budget Committee voted Wednesday to revive a hotly debated budget-cutting plan to privatize state prisons in 18 South Florida counties. . . .

“Come work a shift with us … come do what we do every day,” prison officers called out to Senate Budget Committee Chairman JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, after his committee voted 14-4 for a bill (SB 2308) that restores the massive privatization plan the Legislature passed in budget language last year. Sgt. Thomas Johnson of Marion Correctional Institution challenged Alexander to show up at a prison unannounced and take a tour with rank-and-file guards to see what they face on the job.

Private prisons have a well-documented record of failing to save taxpayers money. An exhaustive 2007 study conducted by the University of Utah concluded that “the value of moving to a privately managed system is questionable,” while many services are often inferior at private facilities as compared to public ones.

But while the taxpayers may not see much return on their investment, others stand to reap millions of dollars. Last year, a report issued by the Justice Policy Institute found that private prisons spent millions on lobbying to help “make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” In 2010, the two largest private prison companies had a combined $2.9 billion in revenues, Think Progress reported.

The corporations that own and operate private prisons are not the only ones who benefit financially either. An examination of campaign finance records shows that GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, was one of the 15 largest contributors to the Florida Republican Party in 2010, and gave over $11,000 in contributions directly to the campaigns of 14 of the 20 members of the Budget Committee that approved the bill, by a vote of 14-4. Since 2006, GEO Group has spent a total of $1.3 million in campaign contributions in Florida alone.

The political investments private prison companies are making are not limited to Florida, either. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer accepted at least $60,000 from people directly connected to the Corrections Corporation of America. And in Pennsylvania, a judge was sentenced to 28 years in prison after it was discovered he had been “selling” convictions of young offenders to several private juvenile detention centers, which profit mightily from heightened incarceration rates. One victim was sentenced to three months in one of the centers for mocking an assistant vice principal on MySpace.

MIAMI, Florida — As Mitt Romney spent yesterday promising to create conditions deplorable enough for undocumented immigrants that they will engage in “self-deportation,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) warned that his party’s rightward shift on state-based immigration legislation “turned off” Hispanic voters.

ThinkProgress asked Bush about Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law, HB 56, which includes provisions requiring officials to check the immigration status of children enrolling for school and prompting local utilities to shut off residents’ water service unless they prove their citizenship.

Bush said that Hispanic voters “see the ramifications of the Alabama law and other things like that and get turned off.” The former Florida governor went on to declare that, given the growing influence of Hispanic voters, “it makes no sense to me that we are sending these signals:”

BUSH: The problem is that the federal law’s not being enforced. The more that’s being done to enforce the borders and to enforce the laws, the greater probability that this issue begins to subside. From a conservative point of view, I think that’s appropriate and important because Hispanic voters hear these debates and see the ramifications of the Alabama law and other things like that and get turned off. It’s not a good thing — I know this will sound a little crazy — but I happen to believe that if swing voters decide elections and swing voters in swing states are the most important voters in the presidential race, and if you send a signal that turns them off, that’s a bad thing. So from a practical political view, putting aside the policy, it makes no sense to me that we are sending these signals, not withstanding the frustration that people feel that the federal government’s not enforcing the immigration laws of the country.

Watch it:

Still, Bush’s sensible warnings on immigration policy are falling on deaf ears among many in his party. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the presidential race, where Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney has made anti-immigrant rhetoric a centerpiece of his campaign. He has pledged to veto the DREAM Act, his immigration plan involves forcing “self-deportation,” and he has trumpeted the endorsement of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the author of not only Alabama’s immigration law, but Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 bill as well.

Though Bush has tried to steer his party away from its anti-immigrant tendencies, the proliferation of state-based bills has continued unabated. In December 2010, after Arizona’s SB 1070 bill passed, the Denver Post reported that “Bush said if his children walked the streets of Phoenix they might look awfully suspicious to police.” (Bush’s wife was born in Mexico and his children are Hispanic.)

With Romney as the favorite to soon lead his party, Republicans may have difficulty winning Hispanic voters in the fall as moderate voices like Bush get pushed to the wayside.

To learn more about the Republican presidential candidates’ views on immigration, check out ThinkProgress’ regularly-updated page here.

Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) named the first victim in his plan to retaliate against President Obama for naming recess appointees by seeking revenge against Obama’s nominees. Because DOJ Office of Legal Counsel head Virginia Seitz wrote an opinion that correctly reasoned that the president has the power to make recess appointments when the Senate is not available to confirm nominees, Grassley claimed that Seitz’s confirmation to this role is “likely to be the last confirmation that she’ll ever experience.”

To their credit, two former Bush Administration attorneys quickly denounced Grassley’s misguided campaign of vengeance:

“The Senator’s name-calling is misplaced,” said Jack Goldsmith, who served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel during President George W. Bush’s administration. “The legality of the Obama recess appointments is, as the Seitz opinion acknowledged, a close question. But much of Seitz’s opinion followed long-settled executive branch legal precedent, and when she encountered novel issues, she addressed them honestly in a reasoned analysis that she published for the world to see and criticize.”

“These OLC opinions involve very difficult constitutional issues as well as separation of powers,” said Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the Bush administration. “OLC lawyers should be free to render their honest opinion and not be threatened with adverse career consquences by either the White House or Congress.”

Seitz’s opinion did indeed confront a very difficult legal question, and she did indeed rely heavily on well-settled precedents. Ultimately, however, she forgot the first rule of keeping right-wing senators mollified — the Constitution only says what conservatives wish it said.

South Carolina raced to be among the first GOP-led states to pass a radical voter ID bill that stands to disenfranchise “nearly 180,000 voters” in the state, “most of whom are elderly, student, minority or low income voters.” Indeed, the Associated Press found that the law hits majority-black precincts the hardest as “the percentage of minority voters without the right identification is higher in those areas than other precincts statewide.”

But apparently, requiring a photo ID to cast a vote is not enough proof of eligibility for state legislators. Now, they’re considering a bill that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote:

South Carolina legislators want to require more proof of citizenship when people want to register to vote under legislation a panel plans to discuss.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans to take up a bill Thursday that says citizenship proof can come from documents that include a driver’s license, birth certificate, United States passport or tribal identification.

Proof of citizenship may seem like an intuitive requirement for voter registration. However, a requirement to provide a driver’s license or birth certificate will impair voter registration drives, especially when people may not readily have that identification on hand. Coupled with the voter ID law, this requirement will serve to disproportionately disenfranchise minorities in the state.

The current voter ID law isn’t even legal, and it was blocked by the Department of Justice for leaving South Carolina’s non-white voters “significantly burdened” in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA requires voter laws in states that have a long history of discrimination to be “precleared” by DOJ or a federal court in DC before they may take effect. Instead of assuring that the photo ID law doesn’t violate basic civic rights of their constituents, these legislators are hoping to further suppress voting rights by making it more difficult to even register, let alone vote.

Several other states are picking up the 2011 anti-voter trend and seeking to implement their own voter ID laws. Despite repeated failure to impose one in the past, Missouri is pushing through a voter ID bill despite the fact that “no one testified in favor” of it. Iowa’s Republican secretary of state also plans to unveil a new voter ID bill as well.

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:

An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Police say the bill stops them from intervening to protect victims. For instance, they would be stripped of their power to arrest someone who is threatening to use violence against a victim or child. It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims when promised to focus on economic priorities.

MIAMI, Florida — A group of undocumented students gathered outside a Mitt Romney campaign stop yesterday to protest the former Massachusetts governor’s pledge to veto the DREAM Act if he were elected president.

The DREAM Act would allow certain qualified youth, most of whom were brought here as children, to apply for residency and citizenship in the United States after completing high school and two years of college or the military. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in December 2010 and received 55 votes in the Senate, but failed due to a Republican filibuster.

Last month, Romney promised an Iowa audience that even if Congress sent the DREAM Act to his desk, he would veto the measure.

The student protestors on Wednesday were outraged by the presidential hopeful’s pledge, which would hinder their future prospects in the country they’d grown up in. Led by Felipe Matos, an aspiring biology teacher who was elected president of the student government at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus and named one of the top 20 community college students in the country, the students chanted, “veto Romney, not the DREAM Act!” and “education, not deportation!”

Watch highlights from the protest:

Ironically, the venue of the event was Miami’s Freedom Tower — “a monument to the Cuban immigrant experience” where “thousands of Cuban exiles were processed when they first entered the United States.” Inside, Romney’s speech focused almost exclusively on bringing “freedom” to Cubans. “I will use the power of America to spread freedom in Latin America,” he said. This apparently does not apply to people who come to the United States from Latin America or elsewhere looking for freedom.

Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a radical elections law that shortens the state’s early voting period, bans in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibits boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. If this law had been in effect in 2008, over 200,000 voters in Columbus, Ohio alone would not have been able to cast their ballot in the way that they did.

Kasich’s plan to make it harder to vote is now facing a surprising dissenter, however, his fellow Republican and Ohio’s secretary of state:

Ohio’s top election official says state lawmakers should repeal and replace a controversial new elections law rather than allowing voters to weigh in on it in November.

Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted told a gathering of election officials Wednesday that he believes Ohio should start over on the process after the 2012 presidential election. He made the call despite the legislation containing many of his own ideas.

The new election law shortened Ohio’s early voting period, among other changes to the state’s election procedures.

If the state legislature doesn’t follow Husted’s advice, it is fairly likely that the people of Ohio will. Kasich’s anti-voter law is currently suspended after hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters signed petitions seeking to have the law overturned by referendum. The law will go before the voters this November, where it could face the same fate as Kasich’s anti-union law that was defeated in a similar referendum last year.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is raking in millions of dollars to fund his campaign against a recall effort to remove him from office. Out-of-state donors have poured money into his campaign coffers, making up more than 60 percent of the $4.5 million Walker raised in five weeks. And that includes the $1 million he received from four out-of-state donors alone, who donated $250,000 each — all thanks to a loophole in state law:

Normally, a governor or candidate for governor can accept a maximum of $10,000 from an individual during a four-year campaign cycle. But a quirk in state law lifts all limits for recall targets while petitions are circulated and election officials determine how many signatures have been submitted.

Walker’s most recent campaign finance report covers December 11 to January 17, the day Walker’s opponents filed petitions with more than 1 million signatures to recall him from office — when only 540,000 were needed. It could take up to 60 days for the Government Accountability Board, which runs state elections, to review the signatures.

Walker’s campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews contended that he only is trying to counter the money national out-of-state unions will spend on the recall effort, but there is little evidence that unions are even capable of competing with the kind of deep pocketed groups and wealthy individuals that support Walker. Last year, corporate interest groups sprang to the rescue of a Walker ally on the state supreme court, Justice David Prosser, after polls began to show Prosser’s reelection bid in trouble. This influx of corporate money rapidly overwhelmed the much smaller donations made by groups supporting Prosser’s opponent, and he managed to squeak out a narrow victory.

So far, Walker has an enormous fundraising lead over potential opponents. In the same time period where Walker raised millions, the state Democratic party raised more than $394,000, with $40,000 being the largest donation to the party. United Wisconsin, the group spearheading the recall effort along with the Democratic party, raised $86,379. And former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, who has announced she is running against Walker, had $27,000 in her campaign account as of June 30.

While it’s not clear if Walker’s opponents will match his millions in campaign donations, it is perfectly clear that Walker is benefiting from an unfair loophole in state law allowing just a handful of wealthy individuals to drown out the more than a million Wisconsin residents who want to see him recalled.

For three years, Senate Republicans have waged an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s nominees — using the filibuster to shut down entire agencies and stoking a nationwide vacancy crisis on the federal bench. In his State of the Union speech last night, President Obama met this obstructionism with an equally bold proposal, calling for filibusters on nominations to effectively be eliminated after 90 days:

Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days. A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything, even routine business, passed through the Senate. Neither party has been blameless in these tactics. Now, both parties should put an end to it. For starters, I ask the senate to pass a simple rule that all judicial and public servant nominations receive an up or down vote within 90 days.

Watch it:

President Obama’s call for filibuster reform is significant, but it is probably less significant than the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) largely endorsed the proposal — although with an exception for Supreme Court nominees. In 2011, a major push for filibuster reform fizzled in no small part because many Senate Democrats feared the consequences of Republicans having a free hand to appoint radical judges and other nominees more than they feared the consequences of Democratic presidents being completely unable to govern. Reid’s support for Obama’s proposal suggests that the winds are shifting, and Senate Democrats have begun to realize that it is better to have two parties that are able to govern rather than having their party be hamstrung.

Yet while this apparently growing consensus on the need for filibuster reform is significant, it still must overcome the Senate’s arcane rules which typically require a 67 vote supermajority to amend the body’s rules. Supporters of reform have three possible paths forward:

• Bipartisan Consensus: Wishing for bipartisan cooperation in the age of Mitch McConnell is a bit like hoping that the Senate will be rescued by a magical unicorn. Nevertheless, the fact remains that no one knows who will be president in 2013 or who will control the Senate. It is possible that some Senate Republicans would sign onto a filibuster reform plan in the hopes that they could benefit from it in the future.
• The January Option: Because the Constitution forbids a past legislature from tying the hands of future lawmakers, a newly-elected Senate has the power to eliminate or revise the filibuster with just 51 senators voting in favor. The catch, of course, is that the next Senate will not be seated until January, so this option does nothing to prevent filibusters for the entirety of 2012.
• Just Nuke It Already: In 2005, back when George W. Bush was nominating judges, Senate Republicans proposed the so-called “nuclear option,” which would have allowed them to eliminate judicial filibusters mid-way through a Senate session with only 51 votes. Of the three options, the nuclear option stands on the weakest legal footing, however, and it is unlikely to win the support of many of the Democratic senators who denounced it in 2005.

It is unclear if, much less how, the Senate will take up President Obama’s call for filibuster reform. What is clear, however, is that the status quo cannot continue. It is not President Obama who suffers when Mitch McConnell wages his campaign of obstruction, it’s the millions of consumers who depend on functioning federal agencies to safeguard their rights, the workers who depend on workplace safety and fair wage laws in order to provide for them families, and the thousands of litigants who wait months or years for justice in a judiciary burdened by far too many vacancies.