Handcuffing a prisoner to a hitching post for seven hours, denying him water, and then taunting him about his thirst as the summer sun beat down upon him was a “a cost-effective, safe and relatively pain-free way to impel inmates to work,” according to the Alabama Department of Corrections, and a brief filed by former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor (R) in 2002 called upon the Supreme Court to defer to this determination. Thanks to President George W. Bush, Pryor is now a federal appellate judge. And, if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gets his way, he will soon have even more control over what kinds of punishments are doled out to federal defendants.

The powerful United States Sentencing Commission sets the federal sentencing guidelines which form the basis of most criminal sentencing handed down by federal judges. Although there are some constitutional limits on the extent to which the Commission can increase federal sentences by altering the Guidelines, they remain one of the most potent vehicles for shaping federal sentences. Because no more than four of the Commission’s seven voting members may belong to the same party, the President traditionally names three members selected by leaders of his opposition party. According to the White House, McConnell selected Pryor to hold one of the Republican Party’s three seats.

There are many reasons why Judge Pryor is a bad choice for any position that requires him to show mercy and compassion, but his conduct in the hitching post case it one of the most blatant. Alabama’s practice of handcuffing prisoners to hitching posts reached the Supreme Court in 2002, and the Court’s description of the practice alleged in that case little doubt that it amounts to torture:

On May 11, 1995, while Hope was working in a chain gang near an interstate highway, he got into an argument with another inmate. Both men were taken back to the Limestone prison and handcuffed to a hitching post. Hope was released two hours later, after the guard captain determined that the altercation had been caused by the other inmate. During his two hours on the post, Hope was offered drinking water and a bathroom break every 15 minutes, and his responses to these offers were recorded on an activity log. Because he was only slightly taller than the hitching post, his arms were above shoulder height and grew tired from being handcuffed so high. Whenever he tried moving his arms to improve his circulation, the handcuffs cut into his wrists, causing pain and discomfort.

On June 7, 1995, Hope was punished more severely. He took a nap during the morning bus ride to the chaingang’s worksite, and when it arrived he was less than prompt in responding to an order to get off the bus. An exchange of vulgar remarks led to a wrestling match with a guard. Four other guards intervened, subdued Hope, handcuffed him, placed him in leg irons and transported him back to the prison where he was put on the hitching post. The guards made him take off his shirt, and he remained shirtless all day while the sun burned his skin. He remained attached to the post for approximately seven hours. During this 7 hour period, he was given water only once or twice and was given no bathroom breaks. At one point, a guard taunted Hope about his thirst. According to Hope’s affidavit: “[The guard] first gave water to some dogs, then brought the water cooler closer to me, removed its lid, and kicked the cooler over, spilling the water onto the ground.”

This is what Judge Pryor’s brief asked the Court to wave off as a “a cost-effective, safe and relatively pain-free way to impel inmates to work.” And Mitch McConnell believes that such a man should be allowed to decide which punishments are appropriate for all federal defendants.

Pryor is also a staunch defender of the death penalty, who even once argued that states should be free to execute the intellectually disabled. And he lobbied against a bill changing Alabama’s primary method of carrying out executions from electrocution to lethal injections, arguing that Alabama should not be “bullied by the fear that the Supreme Court” would declare the electric chair unconstitutional.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) does not much like it when the Senate is getting things done. Indeed, the frequency of filibusters more than doubled after McConnell became his party’s leader in the Senate. But, as Bloomberg reports, the Minority Leader has now outdone his own ability to come up with reasons for the Senate to avoid doing its job:

The Senate was supposed to vote this afternoon on the nomination of Patty Shwartz as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That vote has been postponed until tomorrow because Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has other plans: Kentucky’s senior senator will be in the sea of red at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta as his University of Louisville Cardinals take on the University of Michigan Wolverines for the men’s NCAA basketball championship. . . .

Why the schedule foul-up? On March 31, Louisville knocked off Duke University to qualify for the Final Four, setting up a potential conflict for McConnell between the Senate vote and the championship game. He has been a frequent face in the crowd at the team’s NCAA tournament games this year.

A senior Democratic aide said the schedule was adjusted in the expectation that if Louisville made it to the final round, McConnell would want to go to the game. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart pointed out that the schedule change was made before Louisville won its Final Four game against Wichita State University on Saturday and the finals match-up was known.

For the record, it takes 51 votes to confirm a judge, and only 60 to break the filibusters that are now ubiquitous under McConnell’s leadership — and the Senate contains 99 other senators who don’t think that attending a basketball game is more important than their day job. Even excusing McConnell’s decision to place his personal needs ahead of the country, there is no good reason why the Senate cannot simply confirm Shwartz in McConnell’s absence.

A liberal super PAC in Kentucky is on the defensive after recently sending a racist tweet attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) wife for being Chinese.

McConnell, running for reelection in 2014, is married to former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan after her family fled mainland China during the Chinese Civil War. One super PAC dedicated to defeating McConnell, Progress Kentucky, has spent months relentlessly hammering the Republican on outsourcing.

However, on February 14, they took the matter a step further and sent the following tweet impugning McConnell’s wife’s heritage as an explanation for why Kentucky jobs have been outsourced:

This woman has the ear of @mcconnellpress — she’s his #wife.May explain why your job moved to #China! rense.com/general77/raci…

— Progress Kentucky (@ProgressKy) February 14, 2013

Progress Kentucky spokesman Curtis Morrison issued the following statement to WFPL on the matter: “It’s not an official statement. It’s a Tweet. And we will remove it if it’s wrong.” Nearly two weeks later, though, the offending tweet has not been deleted.

There are a number of reasons why jobs in the United States have been outsourced, from inevitable globalization forces to corporate tax breaks that reward shipping jobs overseas. McConnell’s wife’s ancestry is not one of them. There are also legitimate reasons to criticize Chao’s tenure as Labor Secretary; her heritage has nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, xenophobic anti-Chinese messages have become a staple in modern campaigns. The last two election cycles alone have featured racist ads from Republicans, Democrats, and anti-spending front groups. Perhaps the most egregious was an ad from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) in a 2011 special election depicting a heavily-accented Chinese news anchor in the near-future reporting on how American debt led to Chinese army marching in front of the U.S. Capitol as it flies the Chinese flag.