The nation’s highest court ruled Friday that, for now, a federal district court cannot force Ohio’s Secretary of State to enforce federal elections laws that she is flagrantly ignoring. Oddly enough, the Supreme Court is right: A loophole allows the Secretary of State to make a mockery of the law – unless and until DOJ steps in.

But DOJ is so busy suppressing political speech that it can’t be bothered with enforcing voting laws. This is especially true for voting laws that inconvenience the campaign of Barack Obama – to whom top DoJ election lawyers have given large campaign donations.

If Attorney General Michael Mukasey doesn’t step in, he’s a virtual accessory to the crime.

But it’s been a week and nothing from Mukasey. (The Dems are keeping him busy, though.) But you wonder why the public thinks so little of Washington?

But yesterday, its head, Paul Helmke, wailed about “judicial activism” that supposedly overrides “the will of the people” in an editorial in the Atlanta Journal. His complaint is like the pot calling the kettle black.

The reason for his wailing is that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban, citing the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.”

Whatever you may think of the D.C. Circuit’s decision, it is based on a plausible interpretation of the Constitution’s text.

The same can’t be said for the Brady Campaign’s bogus claim that the federal law that protects gun-makers violates the “separation of powers” — an erroneous interpretation of an amorphous concept that isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution’s text, but whose existence is reflected in specific constitutional provisions, like the Appointments Clause, that prevent conflict between branches of government, and limit the diffusion of government power.

The Brady Campaign claims that the federal law limiting gun lawsuits (known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)) violates “the separation of powers” because it affected pending cases against gun manufacturers, supposedly infringing on judicial prerogatives. So what? Legislatures change the law in ways that affect pending cases all the time.

The classic example was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It contained provisions that abated pending criminal prosecutions against people who engaged in sit-ins, even if the sit-ins technically violated state laws against trespassing. The Supreme Court did just that in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill (1964), overturning many convictions and dismissing many prosecutions, even though that affected pending cases. Federal laws often preempt state law.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute discusses the broader implications of Helmke’s argument.