By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

In mid-April, Kansas passed a law asserting that federal gun regulations do not apply to guns made and owned in Kansas. Under the law, Kansans could manufacture and sell semi-automatic weapons in-state without a federal license or any federal oversight.

Kansas' "Second Amendment Protection Act" backs up its states' rights claims with a penalty aimed at federal agents: when dealing with "Made in Kansas" guns, any attempt to enforce federal law is now a felony. Bills similar to Kansas' law have been introduced in at least 37 other states. An even broader bill is on the desk of Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell. That bill would exempt any gun owned by an Alaskan from federal regulation. In Missouri, a bill declaring federal gun laws "null and void" passed by an overwhelming majority in the state house, and is headed for debate in the senate.

Mobilizing the pre-Civil-War doctrine of "nullification," these bills assert that Congress has overstepped its ability to regulate guns — and that states, not the Supreme Court, have the ultimate authority to decide whether a law is constitutional or not.

The head of the Kansas's State Rifle Association, an  affiliate of the National Rifle Association, says she put the bill together and found it a sponsor. While the NRA regularly lauds passages of states' gun-rights laws, it stayed silent on Kansas' law, and, so far, has kept a low profile on nullification. (The group did not respond to our requests for comment.)

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Via Heather Libby:

Moving oil is a dirty business, and never has that been more clear than this past month. Since March 11, the global oil industry has had 13 spills on three continents. In North and South America alone, they’ve spilled more than a million gallons of oil and toxic chemicals – enough to fill two olympic-sized swimming pools.

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-Thanks to Heather for the audio!

During an interview with a local radio station on Thursday, longtime Alaska Congressman Don Young used the racial slur “wetback” while discussing the economy.

“My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

Maybe Young didn't get the memo from Reince Priebus about the GOP's "minority outreach" program?

Roll Call:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced a $10 million outreach initiative Sunday to better convey the party’s message to voters, particularly minorities.

Priebus said the GOP’s “unprecedented” self-evaluation has shown that it has a “quality of context” problem with relating to voters, largely because of “parachuting” into communities months before an election rather than building grass-roots support.

"Quality of context" sounds pretty vague...I suppose it could include being racist asshats.

Heather reported just recently that Rachel Maddow said that this new "outreach" program was going to be "easier said than done":

As she noted, if what we saw in reaction to the nomination of Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin or Rand Paul and his incorrect assumptions about Latino voters are any indication, it's probably not going to go very well for them.

If Congressman Young is any indication at all, no, the GOP doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

And be sure to read BuzzFeed's article on the Republican minority outreach. Here's a snippet:

One former RNC field staffer, who is Hispanic, described a culture of cynicism among his predominantly white colleagues when it came to minority outreach. He said that in his office, whenever they were notified of a new Republican outreach effort, they would pass around a Beanie Baby — which they had dubbed the "pander bear" — and make fun of the "tokenism."

James Balog, one of the world’s premier nature photographers, joins Bill to explain how “the earth is having a fever.” At tremendous risk to his own safety, Balog has been documenting the erosion of glaciers in Switzerland, Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska. Now he joins Bill to share his amazing photos, discoveries, and self-discoveries – including his transformation from climate change skeptic to true believer, and his mission to capture footage of these destructive environmental consequences before it’s too late. Balog’s soon-to-be-released film, Chasing Ice, is a breathtaking account of climate change in action.

“What made me a skeptic 30 years ago was that I didn’t have it in my head that it was possible that our species, homo sapiens, was capable of so profoundly altering the basic physics and chemistry of the planet,” Balog tells Bill. “And of course the revelation that we can alter the physics and chemistry so profoundly is something that has just emerged in the scientific community in the past ten or 15 years… It’s a really revolutionary idea.”

Watch the trailer for Chasing Ice:

Full transcript of the show available here.

The mayor and other residents of Point Hope, Alaska share their concerns about Shell's offshore drilling plans in the Arctic. Residents of this town, also known as "Tikigaq," have survived for generations off the bounty of the Chukchi Sea, which is now threatened by pollution, noise, and the risk of an oil spill that would come with offshore drilling.

As one woman puts it, "The ocean, to us, is our garden. I really don't want drilling in my garden."

Oh, boo-hoo! BP investors will not be heartened by the unexpectedly severe loss Europe’s second-largest oil company experienced over the three-month period that ended June 30, as the company had already been lacking performance-wise lately. BP reported a loss of $1.4 billion, which it chalked up to a delayed Alaska project, the United States’ taking advantage of its shale gas assets, and $4.8 billion in write-downs on some of their refineries. “This is a very, very disappointing set of results; they missed across all fronts by a wide margin,” said one London oil analyst. BP’s CEO, Bob Dudley, is struggling to perform under the weight of problems he inherited from predecessor Tony Hayward after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

More at the NYT.

The Arctic ice we all depend on is disappearing. Fast. Soon it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. This would be not only devastating for the people, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and other species that live there - but for the rest of us too.

Oil companies are using melting sea ice to drill for more of the oil that is causing global warming in the first place. In fact, Shell’s Arctic fleet will be arriving any day now to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska this summer. That's just madness. It's time for us to take back sanity from those who have lost the plot.

Our leaders won't listen to her, but they'll listen to you. What do you have to say to those who want to destroy the Arctic?

Greenpeace, Jude Law, Radiohead and hundreds of thousands of people around the world are coming together to demand we save the Arctic from oil drilling, industrial fishing and militarization. Join us at http://www.savethearctic.org

Shell is due to begin exploratory drilling at two offshore sites in the Alaskan Arctic in the coming weeks. If Shell is successful this summer, an Arctic oil rush will be sparked and the push to carve up the region will accelerate. Russian oil giant Gazprom is also pushing into the offshore Arctic this year.

It is time to Save the Arctic.