Last year, a Texas judge issued a temporary order permitting cheerleaders at a Texas high school to display banners emblazoned with Bible verses and other religious messages during football games. On Wednesday, the same judge made that order permanent. As a result, signs such as this one will continue to be a regular fixture at these public high school football games:

As ThinkProgress previously explained, this case is troubling in no small part because these cheerleaders are receiving favorable treatment compared to another Texas cheerleader who alleged that she was raped. In the alleged rape case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a cheerleader could be required to cheer for her alleged rapist because in her “capacity as cheerleader, [she] served as a mouthpiece through which [her school] could disseminate speech namely, support for its athletic teams.” Public school cheerleaders, according to the Fifth Circuit, speak on behalf of their government-run school when they cheer.

But, in the Supreme Court’s words, the “First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” If cheerleaders are speaking on behalf of their public school, then they cannot display religious banners because doing so is not neutral on the subject of religion.

Admittedly, the decision this week came from a state court judge, while the Fifth Circuit is a federal court, so the Fifth Circuit’s decision is not binding on the Texas judge. Nevertheless, the Constitution’s requirement for church/state separation is binding upon state court judges. And, at the very least, alleged rape survivors should not face less favorable laws than everyone else.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) acknowledged Friday that it had improperly flagged groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny if they contained common Tea Party keywords in their names. Rather than addressing the real problem of political committees masquerading as 501(c)(4) groups to evade public disclosure laws, this approach instead delayed the process for several groups purely on the basis of their names.

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, noted that the number of 501(c)(4) group applications doubled between 2010 and 2012. As a result of this influx, she explained, low-level workers at the agency’s Cincinnati office had flagged about 300 applications for additional review based on a keyword search. None had their status revoked or denied and the IRS apologized for the mistake.

While it unclear whether the IRS workers intentionally targeted conservative groups — an agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for the complete list of keywords used — the office revealed that two of the terms on the list were “Tea Party” and “patriot.” As such, about 75 Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny.

The spike in 501(c)(4) groups comes after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that outside groups may make unlimited political expenditures. Since then, some 501(c)(4) organizations have begun abusing the system. Though groups engaged in some political activity may qualify as “social welfare groups” and receive tax-exempt status under this section of the tax code, electioneering cannot be their predominant activity.

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, for example, told the IRS that any political ads run by the group would be “limited in amount” and “would not constitute the group’s primary purpose.” Campaign finance reform advocates have argued that, in light of more than $70 million in “independent expenditure” ad spending, the group’s primary purpose is clearly campaign activity. But rather than register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee, Crossroads GPS continues to claim that it is not such a group and need not publicly identify its funders.

Yesterday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a bill that would have allowed in-person early voting in his state for 14 days prior to elections. Christie’s veto statement claimed that expanding the franchise in this way would be too expensive and also that early voting “risks the integrity and orderly administration of our elections by introducing a new voting method and process.” He also claims that the state’s current system allowing early voters to vote by mail is sufficient.

Christie’s claim that limiting early voting to mail in ballots will preserve the “integrity” of elections is, if anything, the opposite of true. According to the New York Times, mailed ballots are “less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.” Moreover, while in-person voter fraud is virtually non-existent, fraud in mailed ballots is “vastly more prevalent.”

There is another possible explanation for Christie’s veto, however. One empirical study shows that voters who vote by mail are “more likely to be Republicans” and another shows that they are more likely to be “politically conservative.” Admittedly, there is also a study from the 1990s claiming that in-person earlier voters tend to be demographically similar to voters who vote by mail, but it is likely that this study’s findings have been displaced by events. The Obama campaigns made turning out early voters to the polls a major focus of their get out the vote effort, and voter drives that bring black voters to the polls on early voting days are now common in African-American churches.

Zombie Industries, the company behind an “ex-girlfriend” mannequin that bleeds when shot, announced yesterday that it will discontinue the target and redesign it to have green skin in order to make it appear less like a real woman. In an interview with the Huffington Post, the company’s CEO added that he is disappointed that “people’s feelings were hurt.”

Earlier this week, online retailer Amazon announced that it would no longer sell the ex-girlfriend shooting mannequin. Zombie Industries also makes a green zombie target that resembles President Obama.

Yesterday, Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor Thomas McGinty announced that he may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro, the man who allegedly kidnapped, raped and beat three women and held them captive for about a decade. The basis for seeking the death penalty is charges that Castro forced one of his captives to miscarry by starving and punching her. Under Ohio law, “unlawful termination of another’s pregnancy” is considered murder.

As a constitutional matter, there is nothing improper about treating involuntary termination of another’s pregnancy as a very serious crime. The Supreme Court’s decisions recognize “the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” This is a right that belongs to the pregnant woman, not to monsters who would violently impose their wishes upon a woman. So even if the alleged miscarriages in this case occurred before “viability,” Castro will find little comfort in the Court’s abortion decisions. Nor should he. It is tough to imagine a more depraved act than intentionally abusing a woman until she miscarries.

The question of whether Castro may receive the death penalty, however, risks turning this trial into a proxy fight over whether a woman has the right to choose abortion. In Kennedy v. Louisiana the Supreme Court held that, with the exception of certain “offenses against the state” such as treason or espionage, “the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.” Quoting a previous decision that presented a similar issue, the Court explained that death is an “excessive penalty” for a criminal who “does not take human life.”

Abortion foes are already using Castro’s trial as a vehicle to express their opposition to reproductive freedom — just witness this National Review piece comparing the right to choose to “the logic of slavery, not of individual liberty” — it is inevitable that many of these same foes will clamor for Castro to be killed by the state in the hopes of creating a precedent establishing that a fetus is a “human life.”

To be clear, the legal question of whether a fetus is a “human life” for purposes of determining whether Castro may receive the death penalty is distinct from the legal question of whether a fetus is entitled to “personhood,” a term often used by the most rigid opponents of reproductive choice. There is no guarantee that a court decision permitting Castro to be executed will implement Todd Akin’s stance on abortion. But fine legal distinctions are unlikely to deter personhood advocates from using Castro’s case as an opportunity to advance their broader agenda.

A Missouri bill that would make all federal gun laws “null and void” and criminalize enforcement of those laws was sent to Gov. Jay Nixon (D) Thursday, after it overwhelmingly passed the House this week by a vote of 118-36. If the bill is signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor, Missouri would become the second state to enact a nullification law that is clearly unconstitutional. After the enactment of a Kansas law containing similar provisions, Attorney General Eric Holder sent Kansas officials a letter warning that the Department of Justice would take Kansas to court over the issue. The bill also contains several other provisions to relax state gun laws. Fox News reports:

In addition to declaring federal gun laws unenforceable, the bill would allow concealed weapons to be carried by designated school personnel in school buildings. It would allow appointed “protection officers” to carry concealed weapons as long as they have a valid permit and register with the state Department of Public Safety. The officers would also be required to complete a training course.

The bill would also allow people with a firearms permit to openly carry weapons less than 16 inches in length even in localities that prohibit open-carry of firearms.

Privacy rights of gun owners have been a hot topic this legislative session after lawmakers learned the state Highway Patrol shared the list of concealed weapons permit holders with a federal agent in the Social Security Administration.

The legislation passed Wednesday would prevent people from publishing any identifying information on gun owners. A person who publishes such information would be guilty of a class A misdemeanor. It also would prevent doctors or nurses from being required to ask patients about firearm ownership.

The measure would also lower the minimum age required to obtain a concealed weapons permit from 21 to 19.

The bill’s nullification provision not only declares invalid all laws that ”infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.” It also specifically states that several existing federal gun laws are void, including the Gun Control Act of 1968, even though that law merely sets forth the basic licensing system and list of prohibited gun purchasers and sellers that is now in place, and has not been deemed to violate the Second Amendment. The law also makes enforcement by federal officials a misdemeanor, and creates a private cause of action for Missouri citizens who are the subjects of federal enforcement to file a lawsuit for damages.

The bill even prohibits laws that impose “registration” and “confiscation” of guns, even though the failed bill in Congress to simply expand background checks would have included a provision explicitly banning a gun registry, and making its implementation punishable with jail time  –  a point that even gun rights organizations made during the National Rifle Association’s recent conference. But this is not the only recent Missouri bill to take an extreme and untenable position. The state Senate recently voted to entirely defund the state’s driver’s license bureau, citing gun confiscation worries, and both houses passed a bill to thwart a nonbinding United Nations resolution on sustainable resource development that conspiracy theorists warn will take away their freedom.

In 1925, Congress enacted what they thought was a modest law enabling sophisticated businesses to agree to resolve their disputes through private arbitration. Decades later, the Supreme Court transformed it into something completely different — enabling corporations to force workers and consumers into signing away their right to appear in a real court, and shunting them into a privatized arbitration system where the arbitrator is often closely aligned with the corporation. In one case, a private arbitrator even ordered a woman to pay more than $11,000 that she did not owe because she has the same name as another woman who did owe money.

There are supposed to be safeguards against the most abusive forms of forced arbitration. Federal law provides that forced arbitration cannot be used against “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” for example. But, in Circuit City v. Adams, five conservative justices held that forced arbitration can be used against workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce. Federal arbitration law does not even mention class actions — which are often the only way that plaintiffs with relatively small claims can vindicate their rights — yet the conservative justices used it to effectively immunize corporations from class action lawsuits. Under this Supreme Court, the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act has been transformed into a magic wand corporations can wave in order to make lawsuits against them go away.

Earlier this week, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced a bill to fix this. Under the Arbitration Fairness Act, “no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of an employment dispute, consumer dispute, antitrust dispute, or civil rights dispute.” So your boss cannot illegally fire you and then force you into a corporate-owned court. Your cell phone company cannot overcharge you and then escape meaningful accountability. And your mother’s nursing home will no longer be able to abuse its charges and then shunt any lawsuits into a biased arbitration panel.

At least, that is, if this bill is signed into law. Until then, the Supreme Court’s decisions expanding federal arbitration law into areas expressly forbidden by the law’s text will remain in effect.

A major U.S. private prison operator known for inmate abuse, violations, and disregard for the truth reported a 56-percent spike in profit in the first quarter of 2013, due in part to its new strategy for drastically reducing its taxes, the Associated Press reports. During a conference call touting its success, representatives at GEO Group boasted that the company continues to have “solid occupancy rates in mid to high 90s” and that they are optimistic “regarding the outlook for the industry,” in part due to a “growing offender population.” GEO Senior Vice President John Hurley assured investors during the call:

We have a longstanding partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Marshal Service and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. … We continue to see meaningful opportunities for us to partner with all three of these federal agencies, notwithstanding the various issues with the federal budget, which we believe will have no material negative impact on our business. The federal bureau of prisons continues to face capacity constraints coupled with a growing offender population.

The federal prison population has swelled 790 percent since 1980, in large part due to draconian drug and immigration laws. And the United States maintains the title of the world’s number one jailer. Private prison operators nonetheless remain enthusiastic about the prospects of high incarceration rates for business. Representatives on this call shied away from the strong language fellow prison firm Corrections Corporation of America used during its investor call in February, when CEO Damon Hininger assured a strong “continued demand for beds” even after immigration reform. GEO executives explained that they are now taking the position that “discussing our approach and strategies about any particular procurement is really not in the best interest of our company or our shareholders.”

Following a trend of corporations achieving dramatic tax reductions by becoming a real estate investment trust (REIT) – a mechanism historically reserved for firms holding real estate as an investment — both GEO and fellow prison operator Corrections Corporation of America successfully persuaded the Internal Revenue Service recently that they are essentially holding real estate, analogizing prisoners to renters paid for by the government. In reality, the job of running a prison is only nominally about the facility where it’s housed, and primarily about ensuring humane prisoner treatment, inmate rehabilitation, and public safety. But private prison corporations charging “rent” to house prisoners make no more or less money depending on whether they achieve these goals, particularly not when immense political spending to lobby for incarceration and privatization outweighs the public pressure from widely reported abuses at private facilities.

In a joint op/ed Wednesday, the three Republican members of the Federal Election Commission blasted campaign finance reformers and good-government groups for proposing changes to the impotent agency, defending themselves as “fair and impartial” regulators and administrators of campaign finance laws. But this same trio has been responsible for historic deadlock at the Commission and has openly refused to follow the campaign rules enacted by Congress.

FEC Commissioners Caroline Hunter, Donald McGahn II, and Matthew Petersen, all three of whom continue to serve though their terms have expired, wrote that “The agency’s harshest critics disregard the agency’s prime enforcement directive: Enforce the law as it is, not as some wish it to be.” They continue:

Ultimately, charges that the agency “does not enforce the law” ignore the legal parameters set by Congress that have been further limited by the courts. Failure to recognize these constraints would leave political participants at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats, an outcome both Congress and the courts have rejected.

Of course, thanks to these three, the Federal Election Commission has not followed the “legal parameters set by Congress.” Indeed in 2011, McGahn conceded “I’m not enforcing the law as Congress passed it… I plead guilty as charged.” Instead, he argued, he enforced the law based on his own interpretation of what the Supreme Court would want him to do. “In a close call, the tie goes to the speaker, not the regulator… The court has said certain [portions of McCain-Feingold] are unconstitutional.”

But rather than wait for the courts to rule on who should have to disclose the donors funding their electioneering communications, these Republicans instead simply chose to ignore the clear text of the 2002 campaign finance law and have allowed hundreds of outside group ads to be aired with no real disclosure as to who bankrolled the message.

And by waiting as much as five years to take action on obvious violations, they have ensured that campaigns can do virtually anything without fear of any meaningful penalty.

Former Common Cause President Scott Harshbarger once quipped that, ”This is probably the only agency in Washington that has done from the beginning exactly what it was intended to do, which was to do nothing.” But with an unprecedented number of deadlocked votes on even routine enforcement matters, Hunter, McGahn, and Petersen have managed to make historically weak campaign finance enforcement almost non-existent.

Earlier this week, a Mississippi man escaped death by just a few hours when the state Supreme Court agreed to block his execution, scheduled for that Tuesday evening. Although hair sample evidence was available for testing, and Willie Manning’s conviction had hinged on unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, the court had just a week earlier refused to order DNA testing, and was prepared to allow the execution to go forward. It was only after the FBI revealed that its own analysis of key evidence was unscientific and invalid just days before Manning’s conviction that a court agreed, without comment, to block his execution.

Now, in another murder case involving similar FBI error, a man who spent 32 years in prison for a Maryland murder has been granted a new trial after DNA testing performed in March discredited key FBI statements that linked him to hair samples at the crime scene, and refuted statements about the origins of both the bullets and the gun used at the crime scene. The Washington Post reports:

The genetic testing contradicted testimony by an agent with the FBI Laboratory who said that he found [John Norman] Huffington’s hair in the bed where one victim was killed, claiming an accuracy rate of 99.98 percent.

“Due to the substantial weight given to the microscopic hair analysis by the jury . . . as well as the results of the DNA test . . . there is a significant possibility that the outcome of Petitioner’s case may have been different,” Dwyer wrote in a May 1 order that Huffington’s lawyers received Wednesday. […]

Huffington’s case was among those featured in a series of articles last year in The Washington Post, which reported that government officials knew for years that flawed forensic testimony and false hair matches may have led to hundreds of wrongful convictions. […]

Huffington’s lawyers said they did not know of specific problems with the FBI hair examination until informed by The Post that in July 1997, [Prosecutor] Cassilly considered and then rejected having the FBI review the case because the hair expert involved, FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone, had been discredited.

Huffington was initially sentenced to death, before an appeals court lowered the punishment to two life sentences. The conviction hinged on both the FBI’s flawed data and the testimony of Huffington’s friend that he said he intended to use his gun to commit the crime. Huffington says he went home before the violent shooting and stabbing occurred.

Huffington’s case is one of potentially hundreds of cases in which prosecutors relied upon flawed evidence, according to a 2012 Washington Post investigation. Even in those cases in which the Department of Justice had already determined the FBI analysis was flawed, it only disclosed that fact to the defendants in 30 of 137 cases. Following the Washington Post report, the DOJ expanded the scope of its review to thousands of FBI analyses, and revealed the critically flawed evidence in Manning’s and Huffington’s cases. Only after the DOJ’s review did the FBI commit to testing Huffington’s DNA evidence. It is still unknown whether Manning’s DNA evidence will be tested.
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The number of stop-and-frisks performed by the New York Police Department dropped in the first three months of 2013, and so did the city’s crime rate, according to new data from the New York City Council. The statistics come as the NYPD’s aggressive use of stop-and-frisk is under review in a major lawsuit challenging the practice’s constitutionality. Plaintiffs allege an expansive and racist use of police stops has been applied without legal justification, subjecting vast swaths of the city’s young African American and Hispanic men to invasive frisks, unwarranted searches, and detention at police centers for alleged minor crimes, often marijuana possession.

The latest statistics represent a continued slow decline in stops since the practice has come under fire, but the stops continue to have a severe disproportionate effect on minorities. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The number of stop-and-frisk reports filed by New York City police fell 51% in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year. […]

From Jan. 1 through March 31, officers conducted 99,788 stop and frisks, compared with 203,500 during the same period in 2012, according to New York Police Department data. It wasn’t clear how many of those encounters resulted in a subject being frisked after a stop.

They also showed that the reduced stops in the first quarter of 2013 resulted in a 43% decline in weapons recovered compared with the same period in 2012.

Overall crime is also down 2.7% this year through April 28 with murders leading the way with a 30% decline compared with the same period last year, police data show. […]

Data from the first quarter of this year has been consistent with previous years: Black and Hispanic people accounted for the vast majority of stops.

African-Americans were the subjects of 56% of the stops and were 65% of the violent-crime suspects identified by alleged victims, according to the NYPD data. Hispanics were the subjects of 30% of stops and were 27% of violent-crime suspects.

Officers testifying during the weeks-long trial on the policy have revealed that they were told to target young, black men, and expected to meet monthly quotas for stop-and-frisks and arrests.

Police argue that the stop-and-frisk policy is necessary to ensure public safety. But the New York Civil Liberties Union is pointing out that the drop in crime — particularly murder – weighs heavily against the argument that more frivolous stops means more safety. Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) blasted the NYCLU for its advocacy to reform stop-and-frisks, calling the civil rights group “extremists” akin to the NRA.

(HT: Capital)

You may think your email is private, but federal investigators may not agree. Documents uncovered via Freedom Of Information Act requests by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) suggest the FBI is not obtaining warrants to read email, citing an outdated federal computing law from the 1980s. According to an excerpt from the 2012 FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide:

“In enacting the [Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA)], Congress concluded that customers may not retain a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in information sent to network providers…[I]f the contents of an unopened message are kept beyond six months or stored on behalf of the customer after the e-mail has been received or opened, it should be treated the same as a business record in the hands of a third party, such as an accountant or attorney. In that case, the government may subpoena the records from the third party without running afoul of either the Fourth or Fifth Amendment.”

ECPA, the law governing access to email and cloud stored data, was passed at a time when the cost of online storage was so high it seemed unthinkable that anyone would store data there indefinitely, so anything left on networked storage for longer than 180 days was considered abandoned and required only an administrative subpoena to access. But in the time since it became law, the price of online storage went down and many people started to rely on free cloud based email solutions like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail as digital storage lockers.

There have been numerous efforts to update ECPA to be more in line with current consumer behavior and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unwarranted searches and seizures, but none as of yet have succeeded. The most recent attempt to update the law to clearly require a probable cause warrant hit a major milestone in April when S.B. 607, a standalone fix, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) introduced a companion bill to the House on Tuesday, although a similar proposal was already introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Ted Poe (R-TX) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) earlier this year.

But while the law has not yet been updated, the courts and tech companies are adapting to the way consumers use these services in the modern era. In the 2010 case United States v. Warshak, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel including two Republican-appointed judges ruled email providers cannot be compelled to turn over the content of messages without a probable cause warrant regardless of how long it has been stored in the cloud, but that ruling only applies to the four states in the Sixth Circuits’ jurisdiction. Earlier this year a number of tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo announced they go beyond ECPA and require warrants for email content data on Fourth Amendment grounds.

Rep. Steve Stockman’s (R-TX) official campaign Twitter account sent out a series of tweets on Wednesday evening offering one lucky American the chance to win an assault rifle. Not just any assault rifle, though, Stockman is offering the Bushmaster AR-15, the same rifle used in the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT:

I’m giving away a FREE Bushmaster AR-15! Sign up in just seconds at stockman2014.com/ar15-entry/ #tcot #teaparty #gop #tlot #rkba #nra #texasgop

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@ReElectStockman) May 8, 2013

Want to win a FREE AR-15? Congressman Steve Stockman is giving one away!Sign up at stockman2014.com/ar15-entry/ Grab this gun before Obama does!

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@ReElectStockman) May 8, 2013

In fairness to Stockman, his gun raffle is unusually compliant with federal law for someone who has threatened to work towards impeaching President Obama for seeking to expand background checks. According to the official rules listed on the campaign’s website, the newly minted assault rifle owner will have to go through this same supposed imposition on their freedom:

Firearms prizes must be claimed through a licensed firearms dealer in accordance with federal, state and local law. Firearms prize winners must meet all legal requirements and will be subject to a dealer’s background check.

This isn’t the first time Stockman’s campaign account pulled an outlandish stunt to gain donations or grow its email list. In April, the account sent out word that Stockman would be offering bumper stickers that read “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.”

A July 4 march encourages gun advocates to carry loaded rifles into Washington, DC and knowingly break the law. Although described as a nonviolent “act of civil obedience,” organizer Adam Kokesh implied a threat of violence if “the government chooses to make it violent.” He encourages participants to peacefully submit to law enforcers but underlines that point with, “We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”

Since Friday, more than 2,000 people have RSVPed to the march to “put the government on notice.”

In a local news channel interview pointed out by Politico, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier explained that this is an open disregard for DC law:

[W]hen you cross with firearms and you’re not in compliance with the law now you’re talking about a criminal offense and there’s going to be some action by police. Obviously there has been no permit filed by the organizer and we’ve not made contact with the organizer yet. But we will, and we’ll make sure they understand that if they want to pass through the District of Columbia with loaded firearms as long as they are in compliance with the firearms laws for transportation of firearms to the District, we’re all for it. But passing into the District of Columbia with firearms is a violation of the law and we’ll have to treat it as such.

Whether Lanier’s warning invigorates or extinguishes the protest remains unclear.

Kokesh’s plans, along with a series of other open carry protests, undermines arguments made by the National Rifle Association against gun violence prevention. The NRA claims that it is unfair of the government to strengthen background checks or ban assault rifles for law-abiding citizens. Yet this protest plans to purposely break the law.

That point is missed by Kokesh. Open carry is illegal in the District, but Kokesh wants to aim his message at the federal government for attempting modest background checks supported by gun owners and non-gun owners alike.

Hours before a Colorado Senate deadline, marijuana legalization opponents introduced a measure to repeal the newly passed ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol. The bill’s introduction Monday evening, after having become public just a few days earlier, prompted immediate reaction from the marijuana legalization community, and at 10 p.m., the bill’s sponsors backed down and took the bill off the table in the face of a filibuster threat and defeat in the House. From the Associated Press:

The last-minute maneuver infuriated marijuana legalization supporters, some of whom ran up several flights of stairs to testify against the measure when they got word it would be heard.

“You’re subverting the will of the voters,” argued Joe Megysy, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a major backer of last year’s pot measure.

Even House colleagues seemed taken aback by the late-night maneuver to ask voters again whether retail pot sales should be allowed.

“This has caught all of us a bit off guard,” said Rep. Dan Pabon, sponsor of a marijuana regulation measure in the House. He said the chances of the repeal measure getting the necessary two-thirds margin in House were “.001.”

The bill would have linked repeal to a tax measure that will go before the Colorado legislature this fall. If voters did not approve certain taxes on marijuana, then the repeal would go into effect. The sponsors said its intent was to pressure the marijuana industry to support the taxes, but it also would have pressured voters to choose between accepting taxes they might not support, or lose the ballot initiative they had previously supported. The ballot initiative garnered more votes than President Obama in November.

As the Colorado legislature completed its session, it also considered several other bills related to marijuana regulation. Although several were left in limbo, the legislature did pass a key measure that has failed numerous other times to set driving under the influence limits of 5 nanograms per milliliter. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has said he supports the measure. The House also passed a bipartisan resolution asking for direction from the federal government on how to proceed with regulating pot. Attorney General Eric Holder has still not announced any federal policy on the two state laws to legalize recreational marijuana.

Thanks to multiple petitions, the “ex-girlfriend” mannequin that bleeds when shot will no longer be available to purchase on Amazon.com. “Alexa,” or “the ex,” as she is marketed, was thought to be an April Fool’s Joke when first covered last month. In fact, the doll is a very real product encouraging men to seek fatal revenge against women.

The company that manufactures the target, Zombie Industries, also displayed a target resembling President Obama at the NRA convention last week. Zombie Industries has a line of 15 “zombie” targets, including one woman because, as the website says, “To discriminate against Women by not having them represented in our product selection would be just plain sexist.”

The website features a promotional video showing several men “busting up a zombie chick.” Towards the end, the camera zooms up on a man holding a handgun to the prone mannequin’s head. He pulls the trigger a couple more times after saying, “Dodge this.”

Watch it:

Testimonials from customers praised the mannequin for looking like “my bitch ex-wife” and “a girl I knew in High School.”

Considering the staggering number of women who are killed by exes, boyfriends, husbands, and stalkers each year, Amazon should never have hesitated in dropping the mannequin. Guns are the most common weapon used to kill women, and having a gun in the house makes domestic abusers 7 times more likely to kill their partners. Women aren’t the only ones impacted by this fatal pattern; between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of mass shootings began with the shooter targeting his girlfriend, wife or ex.

The NRA, which promotes Zombie Industries as a vendor, tried to defend its campaign against universal background checks by claiming women need guns to protect themselves. Thanks to the gun lobby’s fight to maintain the loophole that allows domestic abusers and stalkers to buy guns without background checks, hundreds of real ex-girlfriends will continue to face the risk of being attacked by dangerous men.

The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s overtures to children have come under fire after its annual conference last week, which advertised weapons for children and advocated storing firearms in kids’ rooms just on the heels of the fatal shooting of a two year old by her five year old brother. A ThinkProgress review of the NRA children’s magazine, InSights, found another piece of disturbing advice: kids should build target ranges inside their homes.

The article, “BB, It’s Cold Outside,” ran in the January 2013 edition of InSights. The spread features a picture of a young-looking boy holding a BB gun next to a fireplace, and is addressed to children who are “shooting a real gun now” but can’t wait to practice until it’s warm enough outside to make firing one fun. The NRA article recommends that, instead, the child build a home BB gun range to keep up.

While the article does tell kids to follow standard firing range safety rules and ask adult permission before setting up the indoor range, here are some other tips it offers:

– “Eliminate ricochet with a proper backstop. You have no idea how bouncy a tiny metal ball can be until you hear one whizzing by your head.”

– “There are plenty of indoor range setups you can find on the internet.”

– “You don’t want people opening a door or looking in a window to see a BB gun pointing at them.”

– “While you’re thinking of cool stuff to use as targets, also keep in mind how you’re going to set them up in your range. Hanging targets work great, by the way.”

– “When you’re trying to improve accuracy, BB guns are the best. If you have a habit of flinching when pulling the trigger, BB guns will help you work that out.”

The online edition of the article links to a previous InSights feature article, which helpfully reminds young children that “The first and most important thing to remember is that with air guns, any projectile that does not hit a proper pellet stop has a very high possibility of a ricochet or bounce back. This is particularly true with a BB gun using round steel projectiles.”

Though BB guns are powered by air rather than gunpowder, they’re still very dangerous. A 2009 study in the journal Pediatrics found that BB guns and similar weapons send roughly 22,000 Americans to the emergency room each year, the overwhelming majority of whom are children aged 5-14. These injuries have, in some cases, been fatal. The American Association of Pediatrics has concluded that these guns “are weapons and should never be characterized as toys,” partly because “the range of muzzle velocities for nonpowder guns overlaps velocities reached by traditional firearms.”

It’s also questionable whether young children can be trusted to accurately carry out all of the NRA’s safety instructions. Not only are young children notoriously clumsy and irresponsible, but it’s unclear whether, say, an eight year old is capable of understanding the difference in lethality and risk between BB guns and real firearms. The Savage Arms .22 “Rascal” .22 rifles, which are frequently advertised in InSights under the banner “One Shot! One Thrill!,” don’t look all that different from some BB gun models.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) took a bath in the polls after she voted against expanding background checks for gun purchases — her approval rating dropped 15 points in the immediate aftermath of her vote. Moreover, she is currently being hit by an ad pointing out that she opposed expanding background checks despite the fact that 89 percent of the state support comprehensive checks. In reaction to this ad, the National Rifle Association responded with an unusual tactic — trying to trick voters into thinking she actually supports background checks. Watch it:

The ad’s core claim is that “Kelly Ayotte voted for a bipartisan plan to make background checks more effective.” In reality, Ayotte opposed the bipartisan background checks plan co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). What she voted for instead was a plan by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would actually weaken gun laws by making it easier to buy and transport guns across state lines. Gun sales in states with lax gun laws are a common method of evading strict state and local laws, and are a major driver of gun violence in cities such as Chicago. So the proposal Ayotte supported could make gun violence worse.

In addition to making it easier for gun purchasers to evade state law, the Grassley/Cruz proposal includes provisions that encourage states to share mental health records with the existing federal background checks system — a solution that does nothing to prevent people who want to evade this system from taking advantage of holes in the current system which allow people to buy guns with no background check at all. Additionally, the proposal funds additional prosecutions of felons who seek to buy guns — a solution that also does nothing to prevent felons who seek to buy guns from evading detection altogether by taking advantage of holes in the background check system.

So the plan that Ayotte supported would do little, if anything, to “make background checks more effective,” as the NRA claims. Nevertheless, it is significant that the NRA decided that it should run this particular ad in the first plan. The NRA’s ad, with its effort into misleading voters into thinking Ayotte is more supportive of gun regulation than she actually is, is a tacit admission that the NRA’s sweeping opposition to expanding background checks will not play with voters.

Kansas high school student Wesley Teague is the president of Heights High’s senior class and a varsity track athlete. He was also suspended for the rest of the school year and banned from most graduation activities, including a speaking opportunity at a senior breakfast and convocation ceremony Friday, for tweets joking about his high school’s sports program.

On Thursday, Teague tweeted “‘Heights U’ is equivalent to WSU’s football team.” “Heights U” refers to a term some in the school community use to express pride in their sports teams. “WSU” refers to Wichita State University, which has not had a football team since the 1980s. He followed up this tweet with quips about Heights sports teams’ trouble winning games, and with comments about how he feels comfortable making these comments because he is about to graduate.

In a letter to Teague and his parents explaining the decision to suspend the senior class president, the school claimed Teague “acted to incite a disturbance” and that he “posted some very inappropriate tweets about the Heights athletic teams, aggressively disrespecting many athletes [...] After reading the tweets and taking statements from other students it was found that Wesley acted to incite the majority of our Heights athletes.” A school spokesperson later claimed that “there was a negative reaction from many students, including threats of fights in the school.”

In a conversation with ThinkProgress, Teague flatly denied that his comments were intended to be disruptive and said both his peers and the administration over-reacted to his routine use of social media:

“The school labeled it as cyberbullying, saying I tried to incite the students and I caused a disruption, but at the same time what the students were saying back to me about the comment was actually the cyberbullying [...] I was just like, “Wow, it’s my opinion, and freedom of speech,” but I’m not mad at the kids who were talking trash on me, I’m upset that my school and our school district won’t let me participate in my senior activities that I’ve waited four years to take part in.”

As a matter of First Amendment law, a school may target student speech if school officials “reasonably conclude that it will ‘materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.’” Even if Teague’s tweets actually did result in sufficient disruptiveness to permit the school to take action, however, it hardly follows that suspending Teague was the appropriate response.

For his part, Teague is trying to find peace with the school’s actions. “I’m trying to let it go,” he told ThinkProgress. “If the school wants to suspend me because of my opinion, I honestly don’t want to go there anymore.”

Pennsylvania state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) wants to rig the Electoral College to put a Republican in the White House, and he convinced half of the GOP’s 26 member state senate caucus to co-sponsor a bill that attempts to do so. Under Pileggi’s election-rigging plan, the blue state of Pennsylvania would give many of its electoral votes to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate — Mitt Romney would have won 8 of the state’s 20 electors under this plan — while red states will continue to allocate all of their electoral votes to the Republican candidate as well.

At least one of Pileggi’s fellow Republicans, however, does not support this plan to rig future elections. In video of a recent town hall meeting first posted by People for the American Way, state Sen. Chuck McIlhinney (R-PA) comes out against the bill:

QUESTION: I just had a question about a bill that Senator Pileggi had, that we have been hearing a lot in the press about, that changes the Electoral College votes. What is your stance on that? What is your position on that and why?

MCILHINNEY: The Electoral College — what they are trying to say is that you have a proportionate amount of votes you need, or we have 20 electoral college votes and they should be based upon a proportionate of the number of people who voted in Pennsylvania. Now, under that system, I could never see a Presidential candidate ever getting more than 11 to 9, no matter who it is. Because I am never going to see a candidate win 75% of the vote in Pennsylvania. So you could never even get more than 11 let alone 20. Which makes no sense to me whatsoever. . . . It will force us into a state that will only have two electoral college votes depending on which way you go with it. So, I won’t support it. I don’t think it’s gonna come up.

But that’s the logic is to say that every vote should count. So, even if your candidate lost, you’re still gaining him some Electoral College votes in that Electoral College. But it really was poorly thought out, if I can say that. I respect Senator Pileggi a lot but I wouldn’t support it.

McIlhinney’s statement is good news for American democracy, but it is not enough in and of itself to stop Pennsylvania Republicans from moving forward with their election-rigging plan. Currently, Republicans control 27 of 50 seats in the state senate plus the lieutenant governorship, so a total of three Republicans must oppose rigging the Electoral College in order to kill Pileggi’s plan.