There aren’t many things Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) doesn’t believe to be unconstitutional. While it probably would not be possible to count every essential law or program that violates Lee’s tenther understanding of the Constitution, a short list includes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, FEMA, the FDA, federal income assistance for the poor and national child labor laws.

So it’s really not that much of a surprise that he found yet another law he thinks is unconstitutional today. This time, it’s the entire Violence Against Women Act:

[The Violence Against Women Act] oversteps the Constitution’s rightful limits on federal power. Violent crimes are regulated and enforced almost exclusively by state governments. In fact, domestic violence is one of the few activities that the Supreme Court of the United States has specifically said Congress may not regulate under the Commerce Clause. As a matter of constitutional policy, Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.

Watch it:

Once again, Lee might want to consider reading the Constitution before he behaves like he’s an expert in what it says. Although it’s true that Congress cannot prohibit domestic violence under its power to regulate commerce — unlike, say, a comprehensive regulation of the nation’s health care market, domestic violence laws are not economic regulation — the Constitution permits Congress to do a whole lot more than just regulate the nation’s economy. Specifically, the Constitution allows our national leaders to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and there is simply nothing in the Constitution’s text that prevents Congress from providing for the general welfare by funding grants that states can use to combat domestic violence.

Lee, however, has made quite a political career out of ignoring the text of the Constitution — and wielding his fake Constitution to declare that pretty much any federal law that protects the sick, the unfortunate, the young, the old and, now, women is somehow unconstitutional.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) announced that he would unilaterally veto Judge Elissa Cadish’s nomination to a federal judgeship in Nevada because she once refused to misrepresent the law in a way that favored the NRA. Heller believes he can carry the gun lobby’s water in this way because of an odd Senate tradition called “blue slips,” which currently allows either one of a judicial nominee’s home state senators to prevent that nominee from receiving a hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

This tradition, however, does not exactly have a longstanding pedigree. During the Reagan and the first Bush Administration, the blue slip tradition did indeed allow home state senators to block a judicial nominee, but only if both of these senators agreed. Indeed, this rule remained in effect until 1995, when Senate Republicans unilaterally changed it to make it easier to block President Clinton’s nominees with only one objecting senator — only to change back to Reagan Era rules once George W. Bush took office.

Heller now seems to think that, because a Democratic president is back in office, he should have the same power to unilaterally veto nominees that didn’t exist under Ronald Reagan or most of George W. Bush’s term. Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) apparently thinks otherwise:

Reid, the Senate majority leader, said he plans to ask Leahy to bypass the blue slip process in this case and move forward with the Cadish nomination. He said the two could meet Thursday.

Reid said his staff has compiled clippings and other material on Cadish that he plans to show to Leahy.

“Leahy is a traditionalist around here,” Reid said. “I’ve gotten all the articles about this together and am going to visit with Pat and go over it, but I don’t think he will do it.“

There’s nothing wrong with being a traditionalist, but there’s also no real tradition giving Heller a unilateral veto over nominees. If one set of rules were good enough for Ronald Reagan, than they should be good enough for Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has been playing with his Etch-a-Sketch when it comes to the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented children who attended school or joined the military. He said he would veto it during the primary when he needed to appeal to hardline conservatives, but then said wanted a Republican version of the bill almost immediately after the general election began.

The leading contender for such a bill comes from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a man many observers believe is also a leading candidate to be Romney’s running mate. Although Rubio has not released the full details of his plan, he describes it as a watered-down version of DREAM that will permit undocumented students to obtain temporary legal status while they study and more permanent status after they graduate.

Rubio’s apparent plan, however, isn’t even supported by Romney’s own immigration policy team. Outside of the Supreme Court hearing about Arizona’s harsh immigration law, S.B. 1070, ThinkProgress caught up with Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona’s law and Romney’s “informal advisor” on immigration issues. Kobach said he wouldn’t stand for any version of the DREAM Act that provides any legal status to any undocumented person. He was quick to distance himself from any criticisms of Rubio specifically, but Kobach did make clear that any form of permanent residency is amnesty, and he doesn’t support that:

KOBACH: Amnesty would be giving any person who is here illegally lawful presence of any sort in an en masse way. You know, there are individual cases which are not amnesty, but when it’s done en masse to a whole category of people, then yeah that’s amnesty.

THINKPROGRESS: So there’s been a lot of talk, no specific language yet, about a Rubio DREAM Act.

KOBACH: I just don’t want to comment on a Rubio DREAM Act, cause I just don’t know what it is [...] and, you know, he says he doesn’t want it to be an amnesty so I’ll take him at his word and we’ll see.

TP: So, but if it does provide legal residency without citizenship, would you consider that amnesty?

KOBACH: Yeah.

TP: And so you wouldn’t support that at all?

KOBACH: Not if it provides legal residency en masse to people who are illegally in the country.

TP: Do you think if he does, that would disqualify him to be Vice President in your mind?

KOBACH: I don’t know, I mean, who knows.

Watch it:

 

If Rubio is a serious contender for the VP slot, he likely will have to water down his bill even more than he claims to fit the campaign’s hard line on immigration — Romney is already playing coy about Rubio’s DREAM Act. If Rubio’s bill won’t please Kobach, Romney is going to need to shake his Etch-A-Sketch again to keep up with his latest favorite’s immigration policy.

From the very beginning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) led the opposition to reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — even leading Senate Judiciary Republicans to unanimously vote against it because they object to its protections for LGBT victims, immigrants and Native Americans. Grassley has now teamed up with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) “offer a substitute that would address GOP concerns with the bill.”

Although the full details of Grassley and Hutchinson’s watered down protections for domestic violence victims have yet to be released, it is likely that they will map Grassley’s previously stated opposition to providing greater support for LGBT, undocumented, and tribal victims of domestic violence. The Hutchison/Grassley amendment will likely leave out some victims who face particularly harsh discrimination. If Senate Republicans embrace Grassley’s earlier objections to reauthorizing VAWA, they will show that they are willing to tolerate a certain amount of domestic violence by ignoring certain victims:

For Native victims: In 86 percent of reported rapes or sexual assaults on Native women, the perpetrators are non-Native. While Hutchison has criticized the tribal provisions, saying that ‘any American’ could be imprisoned by tribal courts, in actuality, the provisions allow tribal members to prosecute a non-tribal people who commit domestic violence and who either live or work on a reservation, or are married to a tribal member. The Grassley / Hutchison amendment requires any domestic violence to be prosecuted in federal courts, meaning that rural tribal victims won’t seek help. Additionally, federal prosecutors “already decline to prosecute half of Indian Country crimes that are referred to them,” and with the added number of domestic violence crimes, victims are likely to never see justice.

For LGBT victims: The new version of the bill also lacks any additional provisions for the LGBT community, blanketing over LGBT-specific issues with gender neutral language that lumps the needs of gay and lesbian protections in with the needs of straight couples. The original version of VAWA says that domestic violence shelters cannot discriminate against gay, lesbian, or trans people, but the new version says nothing about this issue. Grassley has said that he does not believe discrimination in shelters is an issue — despite the fact that “44.6 percent of LGBT/HIV-positive survivors of intimate partner violence were turned away from shelters.”

For undocumented victims: The Grassley/Hutchison version of the bill takes out the added visas for undocumented people who are beaten and seek assistance from the state. The visas are put in place so that victims aren’t too scared to contact the authorities when they find themselves physically harmed or in danger. When such protections don’t exist, people are forced to work outside of the law to protect themselves.

But there may be a bit of good news in the amendment. It may offer increased funding for rape kits, the processing of which is notoriously backlogged in the criminal justice system across the U.S. This funding should be increased, but LGBT, Native American and immigrant victims should not have to suffer for it.

Devon Boyer, a council member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and a former law enforcement officer, shared the stories of two women who couldn’t see justice done to their abusers:

WASHINGTON, DC — As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on the constitutionality of Arizona’s “papers, please!” immigration law, supporters rallied outside with hate-filled jabs at Latinos and immigrants in general.

Though outnumbered by opponents of SB 1070 at least 20-to-1, supporters made up for their timid numbers with unabashed hate and racism. Among the things SB 1070 proponents said that were overheard by ThinkProgress:

• “Go back to your third-world armpit if you don’t like it!”
• SB 1070 supporter, pointing to SB 1070 opponents, many of whom are Latino: “We can read, unlike some of the people over there”
• Select lyrics from a song called “God Save Arizona” that compared Attorney General Eric Holder to Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor: “On a clear Sunday morning 1941…they sank the Arizona in a cloud of fire and smoke…And years later in 2010, Arizona is a target once again…Attacked by drug lords, terrorists, and our own Attorney General”
• A button that read, “Don’t Blame me… I voted for the American.”
• “Mexico doesn’t even want them.”
• SB 1070 supporter to a nearby opponent: “Why don’t you put that sign in Spanish?”
• SB 1070 supporter, pointing to SB 1070 opponents, many of whom are Latino: “Those people over there are trespassing!”
• “Obama can’t even come up with a decent birth certificate.”

Watch a few of the remarks:

In a recent campaign speech, Senate candidate John Raese (R-WV) offered a full-throated defense of Ted Nugent’s recent threatening comments about President Barack Obama and lambasted the Secret Service for taking the comments seriously.

The Huffington Post posted a portion of his speech, in which Raese said:

RAESE: How many of you remember Ted Nugent? I do. Ted Nugent came to West Virginia to help me in 2010. He came along with Sarah Palin and we had a wonderful event. And we had a wonderful event. Now I’m with Josh Sowards. Josh, how are you today? Josh is a former Mountaineer basketball player. He played in a lot of those good [West Virginia Mountaineers basketball coach] Bob Huggins games that we all sat at many Lincoln Day dinners when people said ‘Time out, we gotta listen to the Mountaineers beat Kentucky.’ Remember all that stuff? He was a part of that. Now Josh, if Bob Huggins came in and told you that we’re are in a vicious game against Penn State and we are gonna go right out on that court and we’re gonna kill’em, would the FBI want to investigate Bob Huggins? I don’t think so. That’s called a figure of speech. Controlling the people. Remember that, controlling the people. Ted Nugent is a patriot. Ted Nugent is somebody that’s firm in this country. And when you see scenarios that break down like that scenario, it’s a concern, isn’t it.

Watch the video:

But Nugent didn’t say that Republicans should “kill” Democrats in the general election. He said “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Virtually all 63,500 Google hits for the phrase “dead or in jail by this time next year” are references to Nugent’s comment, so it is hard to see how that constitutes a “figure of speech.”

Nugent has not been charged with any crime — merely interviewed by the Secret Service so they could be certain he was not a threat to the safety of the president. Forty three men have served as president of the United States. Four have been assassinated and several others — including Obama — have survived assassination attempts. Because America is rooted in the belief that ballots, not bullets, are the way to settle political disagreements, any threats to the safety of the president or others directly in line to be president are a crime and must be taken seriously by the officers tasked with protecting their safety.

It is hard to imagine many West Virginian’s would share Raese’s opinion of what constitutes “controlling the people.”

The good news at today’s Supreme Court argument on Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law is that the justices appeared likely to strike some of the law down. States are not permitted to set their own immigration policy because immigration, like all other foreign policy matters, is reserved to the national government. There are probably not five votes to eliminate this rule altogether and allow Arizona to criminalize the mere act of being an undocumented immigrant.

The bad news is that the “show me your papers” provision requiring police to determine the immigration status of many people they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is not in the country legally, is likely to be upheld. And it is likely to be upheld due to a fairly strained reading of federal law.

A majority of the Court appeared sympathetic to Republican superlawyer Paul Clement’s argument that, even if the Court does not eliminate the longstanding rule against states’ setting their own immigration policy, federal law effectively deputizes Arizona to seek out and discover undocumented immigrants within its borders. Under the provision Clement relies on, states are permitted to “cooperate with the Attorney General in the identification, apprehension, detention, or removal of aliens not lawfully present in the United States.” So Clement claims that SB 1070 simply “cooperates” with the federal government by helping to identify undocumented immigrants that federal officials can then detain or deport.

There are a number of problems with this argument, but the most important one is that Arizona is not “cooperating” with the Attorney General in anything — a reality that is pretty conclusively demonstrated by the fact that the Attorney General is suing the state of Arizona to get them to stop enforcing SB 1070. It is a bizarre form of “cooperation” that leads your partner in an endeavor to seek a federal court order to get you to stop trying to lend a hand.

An equally important problem, which Solicitor General Don Verrilli relied upon heavily in Court, is that it’s also not true that federal law calls for the kind of sweeping “attrition through enforcement” regime that SB 1070 expressly states is its goal. The federal government does not deport people who are likely to be tortured in their home country, for example, or many victims of domestic violence. Likewise, federal immigration law delegates authority to set immigration enforcement priorities to the executive branch of the federal government, and the executive branch has used that authority to focus enforcement on high priority groups such as violent criminals and repeat offenders. SB 1070 forces the federal government to waste limited resources deciding how to handle low-priority immigrants that it has no intention of pursuing enforcement actions against — resources that could instead be spent on higher priority targets such as violent felons.

One silver lining came early in the argument when several justices, including crucial swing vote Justice Kennedy, appeared bothered by the fact that the “show me your papers” provision might permit Arizona to detain an individual longer than they would normally be detained while the state is trying to figure out whether or not the person is undocumented. A few of these questions even suggested that the provision could be unconstitutional if it extends the period when someone can be detained. Chief Justice Roberts, however, also seemed to find a way to resolve this dilemma that the Court’s conservatives could find appealing.
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Despite receiving over $100,000 in corporate PAC contributions, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) claimed earlier this month that, “I don’t have any corporate contributions into my campaign.”

King made the remarks during a town hall meeting on April 6 in Jefferson, Iowa. Pressed by a constituent about the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, King claimed he had “not dug into” the decision yet, but conceded that he’s “not comfortable with the result.” Still, he claimed that his own campaign was free from the influence of corporate contributions.

CONSTITUENT: The whole question of what’s wrong with our country here is corruption. Money buying elections. Money buying corporate messages.

KING: That’s another thing. I will listen to him. I just want to tell you. I don’t have any corporate contributions into my campaign.

Watch it (relevant section begins at 1:25):

A cursory glance at King’s fundraising reports this year shows maxed-out contributions from the PACs of many corporations, including Koch Industries, American Crystal Sugar, AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon, First American Bank, Kirke Financial Services, Mail Services LLC, Mobren Biological, Silverstone Group, Sukup Manufacturing, and a wide array of corporate trade associations.

King is technically correct that corporations haven’t contributed directly to his campaign. Federal election law prohibits corporations from making such contributions to any candidate. However, corporations establish their own PACs precisely so that their leadership and investors can donate to candidates. King’s campaign has benefited immensely from these corporate PACs, receiving more than $100,000 for his reelection bid.

Last week, Catholic Bishop Daniel Jenky sparked national outrage when he compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. In response to this indefensible statement, a large group of Notre Dame professors called for Jenky to either apologize to Obama or resign from the Catholic university’s board. As of this writing, 84 professors are listed as signatories to the letter:

As you will be aware, the Bishop Daniel Jenky, a member of Notre Dame’s Board of Fellows, has been widely quoted for a homily in which he described President Obama as “seem[ing] intent on following a similar path” to Hitler and Stalin. Jenky’s comments demonstrate ignorance of history, insensitivity to victims of genocide and absence of judgment.

We accept that Jenky’s comments are protected by the First Amendment, but we find it profoundly offensive that a member of our beloved University’s highest authority, the Board of Fellows, should compare the president’s actions with those whose genocidal policies murdered tens of millions of people, including the specific targeting of Catholics, Jews and other minorities for their faith.

We request that you issue a statement on behalf of the University that will definitively distance Notre Dame from Jenky’s incendiary statement. Further, we feel that it would be in the best interest of Notre Dame if Jenky resigned from the University’s Board of Fellows if he is unwilling to renounce loudly and publicly this destructive analogy.

A public petition calling for Jenky to apologize has also received nearly 14,000 signatures. You can sign that petition here.

Earlier this month, ThinkProgress reported that immigration from Mexico into the United States reached a “net zero” level. Yet a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center reveals that more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than are leaving Mexico for the U.S.A for the first time since the Great Depression.

The report notes several factors that are likely behind the change including tighter borders, including a weakened U.S. economy and a rise in deportations. But most interesting are two factors that may indicate that the trend may be lasting. First, the birthrate in Mexico has dropped. Between 1960 and 2009, the average Mexican woman went from having nine children to just two. As such the Mexican population has dropped. Second, the Mexican economy has improved. With a relatively strong economy, there is less incentive for citizens to emigrate.

For years, the U.S. immigration debate has been built around an assumption that there are large numbers of Mexican nationals trying to move into the U.S. — legally and illegally. This report suggests that this assumption may need to be re-evaluated. As Princeton Professor Douglas Massey, who co-directs the Mexican Migration Project, told the Washington Post, “I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s.”

In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court justified its conclusion that corporations and wealthy individuals can spend unlimited money to influence elections because it believed that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” According to a recent survey conducted for the Brennan Center for Justice, however, this places the five conservatives who joined this opinion in very lonely company. According to the poll, “69% of respondents agreed that ‘new rules that let corporations, unions and people give unlimited money to Super PACs will lead to corruption.’ Only 15% disagreed.”

To put this in perspective, a 2007 poll found that 19 percent of Americans believe in “spells or witchcraft,” and that’s just one of the supernatural beliefs that are more common than agreement with the conservative justices’ bizarre reasoning in Citizens United:

Put Conrad, a homemaker from Hampton, Va., firmly in the camp of the 34% of people who say they believe in ghosts, according to a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. That’s the same proportion who believe in unidentified flying objects — exceeding the 19% who accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. . . .

A smaller but still substantial 23% say they have actually seen a ghost or believe they have been in one’s presence, . . . Three in 10 have awakened sensing a strange presence in the room.

To be fair, only 14 percent of Americans believe that they have personally seen a UFO, or one percent less than those who think that Citizens United was correctly decided.

Mitt Romney had the most conservative immigration policy of any Republican presidential candidate during most of the primary, but now that’s he trying to appeal to Hispanic voters as he pivots to general election, the presumed GOP nominee has been shifting back towards the center. Yesterday, he opened to door to a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act — a law he vowed to veto during the primary — and earlier, he said that he never called for making Arizona’s harsh immigration law a “model” for the nation.

But that’s not how one of the key people behind that law, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, sees it. The former Republican lawmaker, who was ousted in a recall election, was the key force behind turning SB-1070, authored by Romney adviser Kris Kobach, into law.

He told reporters today that he “absolutely” believed Mitt Romney had endorsed the law as a model for the country. The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley reports:

“The folks that he’s said [are] his advisers on this, I have worked with for years and have great confidence and trust in them,” Pearce told reporters after a Senate subcommittee hearing on the immigration law. “I know Romney is a compassionate man, most of us, I’d like to think, are. But I think he also understands the crisis and the damage to this republic and the need to enforce our law.” [...]

Romney also has advocated for what he called “self-deportation,” or making things difficult for undocumented immigrants until they decide to leave, one of the central tenets of the Arizona law. [...] “[Self-deportation] is in SB 1070,” Pearce said.

Previously, Pearce has said that Romney’s “immigration policy is identical to mine.”

Romney has tried to distance himself from Kobach, who also helped author the controversial immigration crackdowns in Alabama, South Carolina, and other states. But Kobach quickly contradicted him, saying he regularly advises senior members of Romney’s staff.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions knows something about what it means to be unfit for the federal bench. In 1986, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Session’s nomination to a federal judgeship in Alabama after a Justice Department attorney revealed that Sessions called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” Unfortunately, rather than gaining some humility from this incident, the now-Sen. Sessions seems to be finding questionably qualified nominees under every rock he can lift:

Sessions was one of [Justice Elena] Kagan’s toughest critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee when she was nominated by President Obama in 2010. Last week, he revived his complaints about her when he became one of only two committee members to vote against Maine lawyer William J. Kayatta Jr., whom Obama nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.

Kayatta’s transgression, according to Sessions, is that he was the lead investigator for the American Bar Association panel that gave nominee Kagan its highest rating — “Unanimous Well-Qualified.”

Given that Kagan had never been a judge and had little experience in private practice, Sessions said, such a rating “was not only unsupported by the record but, in my opinion, the product of political bias.”

For the record, Justice Kagan was the sitting Solicitor General, a former Dean of the Harvard Law School, a former White House attorney and senior policy staffer and a former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall when she was nominated to the Supreme Court. The idea that she wasn’t well qualified for her current job is absurd.