Politico yesterday ran an op-ed from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in which he criticized President Obama’s statement cautioning against cases where “an unelected group of people . . . somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” According to Smith, “the president’s comments reveal a fundamental lack of respect for the judicial branch.”

Hitting President Obama for questioning the wisdom of judicial activism is especially bold for Rep. Smith, who one year ago this week said almost the exact same thing about marriage equality: “Who in our system of government has the power to decide fundamental questions like what marriage means; unelected judges, or the people?” Nor was this the first nor last instance of Smith engaging in the very same attacks on the courts that he accuses President Obama of:

On Marriage Equality: Immediately after a federal judge in California ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional in August 2010, Smith issued a statement attacking him for failing to remain impartial — claiming that “Judge Walker’s ruling places personal political ideology above the right of the people to pass laws.” And then last year, after President Obama announced that his administration would no longer seek to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, Smith lambasted judicial activism during a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

On Religion: Smith, along with two other House Republicans, was the driving force behind two amendments passed in 2003 that specifically forbade the enforcement of the ruling of a federal circuit court. A working group was co-created by Smith to “once and for all reassert [the] authority of Congress, and remind the judiciary of who they are, as outlined in the Constitution.”

On Judicial Activism of Any Kind: “Judges continue to substitute their own political views for the law, and we must push back,” Rep. Smith told attendees of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration conference in 2005.

It’s unclear what in the last few weeks has led Rep. Smith to fully embrace the authority of the courts after years of threatening to defund the enforcement of their rulings, alleging misconduct and using every opportunity to invoke “judicial activism” as the greatest threat to our democracy. And Rep. Smith was equally unperturbed when Republican presidents George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon all criticized the judiciary during their administrations.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the conditions of detention centers for immigrants who are facing deportation. The hearing was meant as a follow-up to new health and safety standards put in place by the Obama Administration, but Republicans were there to argue that detained immigrants — who include victims of human trafficking and asylum-seekers– had it too good at the facilities.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, titled the hearing “Holidays on ICE,” alleging that the detention centers are like vacations for those brought there by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Smith said in a press release that “the Obama administration’s new detention manual is more like a hospitality guideline for illegal immigrants.”

Other House Republicans and their experts piled on Smith’s suggestion that detainees enjoy hotel-like accomodations:

• Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said that 110 deaths since 2003 was not alarming to him. King said he felt it reflects the general population, though those kept in ICE detention centers otherwise do not (PDF), and there is ample evidence of abuse and human rights violations.
• King followed up, inquiring “Is it true that some of the inmates control the keys to their own cells?” The expert responded that he was not aware of that.
• One witness said that detainees had access to move around within the facility. But images of the facilities paint a different picture.
• As part of the new rules, detainees have a hotline to report abuse, During the hearing, the committee’s Republicans painted this as a bad thing. But previous experts have concluded that many facilities do not “meet the threshold of basic human rights standards.” Those standards include permitting detainees access to medical care and allowing women who are being held to give birth without being shackled.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, however, actually had photographic evidence of some of the conditions in these facilities, and they offered up a very different view of the detention centers. Many of her pictures depicted the results of brutal abuse, and one detainee Lofgren discussed died of cancer after being denied access to a doctor for two months.

Immigration advocates in the House have come out strong against Rep. Smith’s hearing. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), who wrote legislation pushing for detention center oversight, said that the hearing showed Republicans were seeking “cheap political points” and were unconcerned about the rights of people in the detention centers.

Watch highlights from the hearing below:

A bill by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) that would require businesses to screen for undocumented immigrants using the E-Verify system is facing growing opposition from Smith’s own party. E-Verify has been plagued by false identifications and concerns that it casts an overly-wide net that ensnares American citizens along with the undocumented.

At a markup of the bill yesterday, one Republican, Rep. Dan Lungren (CA) said, “It would devastate agriculture. … If we do not recognize the demonstrated need for foreign workers.” An estimated 80 percent of workers in the agricultural industry are undocumented, and agricultural groups testified in June that a mandatory E-Verify bill could drive out vital employees that cannot easily be replaced.

Additionally, a coalition of almost 30 conservative and Tea Party groups representing millions has launched a national media campaign against the bill. Their letter to the House Judiciary Committee focuses on the negative impact to employers and threat to civil liberties: “This job-killer creates a universal, mandatory electronic employment verification system by EVERY employer in the U.S. for EVERY person seeking employment in the U.S.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) originally promised that he would use his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee to focus on jobs. But the Texas conservative is so up in arms about the Obama administration’s recent decision not to automatically deport nonviolent undocumented immigrants that he is now committed to holding hearings on the subject.

Smith recently admitted to right-wing radio host Joe Pagliarulo that his goal in holding these hearings is nothing more than to “embarrass the president.” His nakedly partisan purpose has less to do with policy than trying to make the administration look bad “to get the American people on our side”:

SMITH: We can conduct hearings, oversight hearings, we can pull in administration officials, make them testify under oath, find out what’s going on, try to, frankly, embarrass the President and push back and get the American people on our side to push back against the administration. Secondly, the Appropriations Committee can defund any of these efforts, but unfortunately, on the appropriations level, you can only defund it one year at a time, so that’s not a long-term solution.

Listen here:

Smith then told Pagliarulo that the only long-term solution to ensure harsher treatment of undocumented immigrants is to elect a new president in 2012.

(HT: Political Correction)

Last week, 49 GOP members of Congress wrote House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) asking him to launch an utterly frivolous investigation into whether Justice Elena Kagan needs to recuse from the Affordable Care Act litigation. As ThinkProgress explained, the case for a Kagan recusal is so utterly lacking in merit that this call for an investigation can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to distract from the very serious ethical scandals facing Justice Clarence Thomas.

Nevertheless, Smith took them up on their request for an investigation. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Smith seeks a pile of documents regarding Kagan’s non-existent involvement in the health care litigation:

1. All documents referring to any meetings or conversations (personal or electronic) about potential or actual health care legislation or litigation in which Solicitor General Kagan was involved, mentioned or copied.

2. All documents referencing potential or actual health care legislation or litigation in which Solicitor General Kagan was involved, mentioned or copied.

3. All documents referencing excluding Ms. Kagan from any matters involving health care legislation or litigation while she was Solicitor General.

4. All documents referencing possible recusal by Solicitor General Kagan from any matters relating to health care legislation or litigation if she were confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

Most of the documents Smith seeks are already public, and they reveal absolutely no evidence whatsoever suggesting Kagan should recuse. Earlier this year, a conservative news outlet filed a FOIA request seeking documents relating to Kagan’s involvement in the health care litigation. All that they were able to uncover is that Kagan directed other lawyers within her office to work on the Affordable Care Act matter, rather than actually working on the case herself.

Under federal law, judges must recuse themselves from cases where they “participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.” To participate as counsel, a lawyer must actually provide legal advice or otherwise act as an attorney in a case — telling another lawyer to work on a case does not constitute participation as counsel. So the right’s so-called evidence against Kagan actually proves the opposite of what they claim it proves — it shows that she scrupulously directed Affordable Care Act work away from herself and onto other lawyers in a way that eliminates any recusal issues for her as a justice.

Nevertheless, there is something ingenious about Smith’s document request. His request for documents referencing pending litigation will undoubtedly include some documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege (although the federal courts recognize a narrow exception to governmental attorney-client privilege for criminal cases, that exception does not apply here). When DOJ honors its ethical obligation not to turn over these documents, Smith will almost certainly use their adherence to legal ethics as an excuse to rant about an imagined cover-up.

Ultimately, however, the most likely purpose of Smith’s investigation remains the same. Smith would uncover nothing jeopardizing Kagan’s ability to hear the health care cases even if he were given unlimited access to DOJ’s archives. What he may accomplish, however, is shifting attention from the many, many ethics scandal involving Thomas — including a scandal strikingly similar to the gifting scandal that forced Justice Abe Fortas to resign from the Court in 1969.

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) scheduled a markup on the “Keep Our Communities Safe Act,” a bill that Smith claims will “stop the release of dangerous criminal immigrants into American communities.” The reality, however, is much darker:

To understand the scope of Chairman Smith’s bill, take the example of someone who commits a crime and serves a five-year term. If he’s a U.S. citizen, after his prison sentence, he is released into society. If he’s an immigrant, lawfully in the country or not, the U.S. can move to deport him after his five years in prison.

However, if he is a legal immigrant but from a country such as Cuba, with which the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations, he probably cannot be deported. There are a handful of countries around the world with which the U.S. has such constrained diplomatic relations that deportation is very difficult.

What this bill would do is allow the government to lock that person up indefinitely. All it would take is a written certification every six months from the Homeland Security secretary that the detainee is a risk to the community.

The bill’s critics argue that it is an unconstitutional bill that will lead to foreign nationals who pose no threat to society being detained indefinitely — and there are two Supreme Court decisions that strongly suggest they are right about the bill’s unconstitutionality. According to Antonio Ginatta of Human Rights Watch:

[A] person who completes his sentence is suddenly subject to a lifetime in detention based purely on the unilateral and unappealable decision of an administration appointee. It gives that official full authority to subject someone to incarceration well beyond the criminal sentence imposed by the judge or jury. [...] This bill gives the president imperial power over the judiciary and the legislature when it comes to locking up immigrants.

Human Rights First also notes that the bill “contains several provisions that have nothing to do with dangerousness or safety assessments or even flight risk.” In fact, it will likely lead to the indefinite incarceration of “asylum seekers fleeing religious, political and other forms of persecution and seeking protection in the United States – who do not warrant that description and whose detention is unconnected to community safety.” The organizations also claims that since 2003, “immigration authorities have spent more than $300 million of taxpayer dollars detaining thousands of asylum seekers in jails and jail-like facilities under a system that lacks basic due process safeguards.”

The prolonged detention of refugees and asylum seekers hasn’t worked out so well for Australia. Suicide is common among detained refugees in Australia, and riots erupted in April in the country’s detention centers over Australia’s prolonged mandatory detention policy.

Salvatore Colleluori over at Political Correction further argues that Smith’s bill is “an attempt to correct a statistically small problem.” In his testimony on the bill, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Gary Mead pointed out, “Since the beginning of FY 2009, ICE has released 12,567 individual aliens. … Of this amount, 868 were re-booked into ICE custody, which is a relatively low re-detention rate of 7 percent.”