Wrote Fox News political analyst, Juan Williams in September, a few short months after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder:
The big surprise at the Republican National Committee’s lunch celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington was the loud ovation for an elderly white conservative.
The tall, 70-year-old Congressman hobbled to the front of the room with a cane. He had to be helped up the stairs to the stage. But once he reached the microphone, his call for Congress to restore the full power of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) had the crowd scrambling to get to their feet and applaud him.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) defied political stereotypes and several other Republicans when he announced an end-of-the-year deadline for reviving the pre-clearance provision of the VRA.
“I am committed to restoring the Voting Rights Act as an effective tool to prevent discrimination,” said Sensenbrenner to repeated cheers. He was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when a bipartisan group approved reauthorization of the VRA in 2006.
“This is something that has to be done by the end of the year so that a revised and constitutional Voting Rights Act is in place by the 2014 elections — both the primaries and general election,” Sensenbrenner told his largely black Republican audience.
End of the year. That what's Sensenbrenner said. Wow, the RNC must really like the Voting Rights Act.
Now, there is word that Sensenbrenner is working with the NAACP on a new formulation of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act eviscerated by Shelby County v. Holder in June, working hand-in-hand with the likes of Hilary Shelton, Washington Bureau Directorof NAACP, a giant of a civil rights worker.
But drafting, introducing and passing restorative Voting Right Act legislation in the House in 2013 is not going to happen.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner has scheduled only a handful of legislative days for the rest of the year, to no objection from Sensenbrenner, giving his members of Congress some more long paid vacations.
In any event there is no way the House is going to lift its collective finger on repairing the GOP justices' damage to the Voting Rights Act, and there is no way Sensenbrenner is going to do anything beyond lip service when introduction occurs.
In August 2013, Sensenbrenner had a change of heart on commenting on state voter obstruction laws after Attorney General Holder said he was going to challenge Texas' onerous Photo Voter ID law under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: "I regret that the Department of Justice
announced its intent to file a lawsuit against Texas’ Voter ID law
citing Section 2 to the Voting Rights Act. The Texas legislature passed
Voter ID, and Governor Perry signed this legislation into law in 2011. Voter
ID laws are an essential element in protecting the integrity of our
electoral process and do not have a discriminatory intent or effect," intoned Sensenbrenner.
Sensenbrenner was the chair of House Committee on the Judiciary from 2001-2007 when the Voting Right Act came up for reauthorization, and it was virtually assured passage, facing opposition only from southern racist Republicans.
In 2005-06, Sensenbrenner was chair of the House Judiciary Committee so he likes to preen that he was the champion of the renewal of the various sections of the Voting Rights Act that passed 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate and, history should remember, was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
In fact, Bush did one hell of a job of conjuring LBJ in the White House, and as noted by Gary May and Joseph Morgan Kousser cajoled Congress into passing a 25-year reauthorization in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Writes May:
(D)uring his second term Bush found it necessary to court black voters. The president's slow response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, which hurt blacks disproportionally and revealed again the presence of widespread poverty in the South, damaged Bush's standing. In an attempt to recoup his political fortunes as congressional elections approached in 2006, Bush turned to the black community. On a trip to Memphis visited the Loraine Motel and stood on the balcony where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. He also agreed to address the NAACP's annual convention, which he had ignored for six years. There Bush was received coolly but won a standing ovation when he expressed his support for the Voting Rights Act, urging congress to enact it then, one year before it was due to expire. This was not simply rhetoric. Behind the scenes Bush's staff encouraged Republicans, who now controlled both houses of Congress, to extend the Act. And this time the Republican congressional leadership in both the House and Senate were receptive to such appeals because if you weren't a southerner, there was no political payoff for attacking the now-iconic Voting Right Act. (pp 273-274)
So, House Judiciary Committee Sensenbrenner was going to defy Bush and Rove on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization of 2006? Right.
Sensenbrenner is no champion of the Voting Rights Act. Sensenbrenner is a fraud of the worst kind, in this writer's harsh opinion. Not withstanding Sensenbrenner negotiating with the NAACP this Autumn, no chance will he cross his party's leadership and the Tea Party.
On a final note, to give you an idea of the utter incompetence of Congress, after culling through legislative databases looking for legislation, I called Rep. John Lewis' office asking the person answering the phone if he could transfer me to someone who could confirm no bill had been introduced repairing Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The kid did not know what the Voting Rights Act is.
I talked to a staffer as House Judiciary Committee posing the same question. I received another, "I don't know."
Several other phone calls yielded similar protestations of ignorance of whether the crown jewel of the civil rights movement may have had a bill introduced to repair the obscene act committed by the five GOP partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
I don't care for the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court and corrupt members of Congress, but at least they are not as fracking dumb as staffers in Congress.
As for Sensenbrenner, action and passed legislation do speak louder than words.
The Republican strategy to employ total gridlock to ensure that nothing coming from representative government benefits President Barack Obama is a form of governmental sabotage that has reached the popular culture.
Now, mainstream journalists are naming the names and reading the crimes.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) makes the list of "45 House Republicans most willing to grind government to a
halt, based on an analysis of six votes this year by the Washington Post blog The Fix."
Sensenbrenner is one of two figures from Wisconsin's five-member GOP House delegation to make the list', as he pretends to be a civil rights champion while supporting GOP state governments blocking voters from voting.
Disappointingly, Rep. Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac) is on the list as well.
Both members have been in Congress a long time (since 1979), and both are virtually guaranteed reelection in safe districts.
Expecting these two congressional veterans to be the adults in the House of Representatives is expecting too much apparently.
Not your parents' Republican Party anymore.
As Jonathan Chait writes, "The reign of the Republican House has not yet inflicted any deep or
permanent disaster on the country, but it looks like it is just a matter
of time."
Sensenbrenner's efforts to repair the damage wrought by his GOP colleagues in the judiciary should not be accepted as genuine until Sensenbrenner acknowledges and calls for a reversal of his Party's war on voting, a crime against democracy committed at the state level.
And for that matter, he should condemn the social engineering that the five Supreme Court justices committed in Shelby County v. Holder.
Pocan has introduced a Constitutional amendment that would guarantee citizens' right to vote, protecting Americans against the ever-changing voter obstruction efforts now plaguing our nation, and committed by one political party—the Republican Party.
Pocan's amendment would also change the balance of power -- by altering the legal calculus for showing voters' rights are violated -- in favor of voters. As Pocan said, "There is no explicit right to vote in the Constitution. If we had an
explicit right to vote, any state that passes a law that makes it harder
to vote would have to prove that they’re not harming someone’s ability
to vote rather than the opposite. Right now a person has
to prove that they’ve been harmed by a state law. And it really changes
the burden of proof on those states that pass these laws that really
make it harder for people to vote."
Sensenbrenner refuses to join Pocan, both in condemning voter obstruction at the state level, and in refusing to support Pocan's proposed Right-to-Vote constitutional amendment
What Sensenbrenner is pursuing is a cynical inside/out con game in which Sensenbrenner takes no political risks in seeking to repair the eviscerated Voting Rights Act, while supporting Republican voter obstruction efforts on the state level.
In the last 60 years people have given their very lives in pursuit of this dream of voting in a democracy, culminating finally in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As Gary May writes:
The signing into law of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was the culmination of a struggle almost one hundred years in the making. Prior to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, only five states—all in New England—allowed black men to vote, and when New York joined their ranks, it required that they own property.
It is not asking much of Sensenbrenner to demand of his own party that it stop its shameful voter obstruction efforts.
Don't be fooled by James Sensenbrenner and the Republican Party.
Some Republicans are crying crocodile tears over the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by their allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and the Republicans could not care any less that minorities, college kids and homeless veterans are prevented from voting by GOP voter obstruction laws
Asked in April 2011 why Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a self-proclaimed voting rights supporter, didn't speak out against current GOP-passed laws in states [like Wisconsin and its restrictive Voter ID law] enshrining voter obstruction, Sensenbrenner's office's response was: "I don’t have a comment for you on this, as it [Wisconsin's Voter ID ] is a state law. But you are correct in pointing out that he was responsible for getting the VRA [Voting Rights Act] reauthorization passed through Congress in 2006 when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee."
The Voting Rights Act was constructed and passed precisely to stop local and state laws from obstructing voters, but Sensenbrenner's office claims the good Congressman cannot comment because Voter ID is a state law.
For the GOP, it's the Grand Ole Party first. And Americans' voting rights are in the way of the Party.
The take-away from this is that Sensenbrenner is a phony.
In the future, the GOP will likely engage in a shell game pretending to care about voting rights while they use some newly proposed version of the Voting Rights Act to tyr to enact voter obstruction legislation nationally and get as many Democrats as possible to absolve the Republicans of their crimes against democracy in the GOP's voter obstruction project.
Sensenbrenner and some other Republicans say they love the VRA, but like Sensenbrenner toe the GOP line on state Republican voter obstruction efforts, calling them "common-sense efforts to ensure the identity and citizenship of voters," (July 2012) words written after Sensenbrenner's office said he cannot comment on state laws from which the VRA protects Americans' right to vote.
You really trust these people? Voter obstruction is common sense to the GOP.
When presented with evidence of massive voter disfranchisement through voter ID (as occurred in the legislative committee hearings in Wisconsin), the GOP has no comment.
Ahhh, voter ID is common sense.
Yes, well what about people being denied their right to vote" Voter ID is common sense.
- Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act. Most of the cases arising under Section 2 since its enactment involved challenges to at-large election schemes, but the section's prohibition against discrimination in voting applies nationwide to any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Section 2 is permanent and has no expiration date as do certain other provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
But suppose the DoJ begins employing Section Two widely; see how enthusiastic Sensenbrenner and the Republicans support the VRA at that point.
Even as the GOP advances its PR campaign claiming a historic reaching out to minorities, its unAmerican project of stopping minorities from voting continues.
One might think this later project would tend to disconfirm the credibility of the former campaign, but not in American, pretend journalism.
African-Americans voted at a higher rate than whites in 2012 for the first time in American history, thanks to the work of civil rights groups knocking down or temporarily halting the GOP's anti-voting bills passed by the GOP (and only by the GOP) in party-line votes in states where the GOP controlled the legislature and executive.
Fearing this development of them voting, for years the GOP has fabricated phantom massive voter fraud, a lie seen as needed to justify restrictive voter IDs (other initiatives include restricting early voting, ending same-day registration; shortening poling hours, and other GOP schemes) to stop alleged voter impersonation at the polls.
No great need for this lie, politically.
The GOP could contend a massive number of space aliens are voting at the polls, argue we need restrictive anti-voter impersonation voter ID laws, and no GOP politicos would dissent, the corporate press would play along, and most people would not notice.
The American corporate media (with notable exceptions) went along with the GOP, denying that the GOP's anti-voting program is a verifiable fact, and presenting voter fraud as a problem needing a solution.
The legal justification used in the courts is the integrity of our elections.
Fortunately, we are served by the work of citizen groups, such as the Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program, battling the GOP's war against voting. Reads the Advancement Project:
The voting booth is the one place where all are presumed equal, yet the reality is that the playing field is far from level. Citizens are still denied an equal opportunity to cast a ballot and have it counted, disproportionately voters of color. Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program works to identify and eliminate systemic barriers to voting in the hopes of achieving a more just democracy – one in which all voices have an opportunity to be heard.
Many African-Americans were offended by the GOP's effort to stop them from voting the last several years, and with the first African-American president at the top of the ticket outvoted GOP whites.
In Wisconsin, as with the national GOP and with no exception, the GOP is determined not to see this happen again.
Scott Walker, James Sensenbrenner (a voting rightsposer; c'mon, you're almost 70 years old, man, time to grow up and do the right thing), and the whole GOP bunch call stopping voting "common sense," with virtually no challenge from the press.
'GOP still battling blacks and browns in effort against voting,' reads no news headline.
Why is stopping people from voting common sense in a democracy, as the GOP claims?
In the wake of Justice Scalia's outrageous comment that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization is a "perpetuation of racial entitlement," a civil rights leader predicted the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the VRA, 5-4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy voting with a majority.
On the Lawrence O'Donnell show last might, civil rights leader Judith Browne-Dianis, a "a prominent civil rights litigator and experienced racial justice advocate" of The Advancement Project predicted Kennedy—reagarded as the right-leaning, swing vote on the Court—will join the four rule-of-law justices and uphold the Voting Rights Act, first enacted in 1965 and reauthorized four times since, including in 2006.
Ms. Browne-Dianis is virtually alone in her prediction.
Said Browne of Justice Kennedy:
My prediction is that he (Kennedy) will side with us on this (the VRA); that he will uphold it. Because at the end of the day, Justice Kennedy actually sometimes has broken, you know, ways with the conservative bloc. And he actually believes in fairness. ... I think that at the end of the day, fairness will rule; that there was enough information before Congress in 2006 to say that we still need the Voting Rights Act.
The information Ms. Browne-Dianis refers to is the 10,000s of pages of social scientific evidence Congress accumulated in hearings before it passed the 2006 Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization.
Social scientific findings were first referenced in civil rights legal cases in the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, based upon the work of Kenneth Clark, that outlawed school segregation.
Kenneth B. Clark concluded that systematic racism "inevitably destroys and damages human beings," and the Supreme Court opinion called his work "key" to its decision.
Later, in racial, housing discrimination actions in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, social scientific findings were also prominently used in voluminous legal cases, largely based upon the work of Karl Taeuber, professor of Sociology, Emeritus (University of Wisconsin-Madison [Off campus]).
The significance of social scientific findings in the voting rights case now before the Court can be found, among other sources, in the brief filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that references the widespread unconstitutional conduct in the jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act, and other pernicious action directed against minorities in civic life.
As recently as 2012, the U.S. Dept of Justice blocked discriminatory measures in Florida, Texas, and South Carolina under the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans are virtually unanimous in the covered jurisdictions in saying racism no longer exists and no longer presents an obstruction to Americans' voting, a position echoed by most Republicans the nation-over.
"Congress renewed the special provisions of the Act in 2006 as part of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Cesar E. Chavez, Barbara Jordan, William Velazquez and Dr. Hector Garcia Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act," notes the U.S. DoJ Voting Right Act webpage.
President Lyndon Johnson reaches to shake the hand of
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after signing the
Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. (AP file photo)
Rights v. GOP Power—The vindication of Sen. Edward Kennedy
Will the GOP Supreme Court justices invite the social turmoil that would come by dismantling the legislative remedy to the GOP program to stop Americans from voting?
One vote, that of Justice Anthony Kennedy's, will likely decide this question.
Sen. Edward Kennedy warned the nation in 1987 that should radical statists like Robert Bork, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts and their ilk be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, "the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans."
Twenty-five years later, Anthony Kennedy—who replaced Bork as the nominee to the Supreme Court—will decide whether the courts may use the Voting Rights Act to secure their American right to vote, or as Sen. Kennedy feared: The courts will slam the door shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.
A decision is expected in June 2013.
The GOP has grown increasingly afraid over the last eight years that Americans of differing shades of color and other nonGOP-voting citizens will vote the Republican Party out of office.
The Party (the White Party) sees itself as entitled to rule, in opposition to the tenets of representative democracy and the U.S. Constitution.
As the 2012 campaign demonstrated anew, the GOP appeal to racism remains a central tenet of its electoral strategy, and its obstruction of voters is a self-consciously planned program.
Combine this despicable political attack—from which no elected Republican will publicly dissent—with a dismantling of the legislative regime codifying the right to vote and we see the outlines of the GOP program to remain in power in its gerrymandered state and federal legislative districts, and its more dubious effort to retake the office of the U.S. presidency.
The Voting Rights Act remains the most successful law to secure the rights of Americans to vote, in the face of GOP efforts to deny these rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to vote even if an American is black.
Black.
Republicans today despise the 15th Amendment, with a particular animus towards the Voting Rights Act, written specifically to secure the rights of the 15th Amendment.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires districts with a history of disenfranchising people of color to get federal approval before changing their voting procedures, is currently under review by the Supreme Court. As Nation writer Ari Berman argues, the petition against Section 5 is part of a growing movement to suppress the minority vote. “You’ve had a concerted effort to pour a lot of money into groups whose express goal and purpose is to challenge laws like the Voting Rights Act,” he says. Appearing on Washington Journal, Berman goes head-to-head with the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky [The man who has stoked fear and lied about impostors at the polls (Mayer)].
Voting Rights Act - An act to enforce the
fifteenth amendment to the
Constitution of the United States,
and for other purposes.
Update: Justice Scalia said: Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization is "perpetuation of racial entitlement," to audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge.
"It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country." - President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965
Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court appeared today poised to strike down the historic Section Five of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)—long regarded as a monumental achievement of the American civil rights movement.
The Act was passed after an extraordinary joint-session congressional address by President Lyndon Johnson, who called upon Congress to enact a voting rights law as a moral imperative to right a historic wrong.
The law was singed into law on August 6, 1965, some 14 months after the murder of civil rights activists, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman.
Sure, there is always room for surprise in the decision expected in June.
But the GOP remains committed to stomping out minorities from voting as a malodorous column (June 2012) from James Sensenbrenner makes clear—arguing in the face of the most intense voter obstruction effort since Jim Crow that Democrats are Politicizing the Voting Rights Act.
President Lyndon Johnson reaches to shake the hand of
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after signing the
Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. (AP file photo)
Though the 2006 Congressional reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act "reveals widespread unconstitutional conduct in the covered jurisdictions," (NAACP Legal Defense Fund brief) the GOP position is to pay no mind to such niceties as the VRA's congressionally mandated stopping of voter obstruction.
As Ralph McGill once wrote of another weak and miserable racist in America—they are but little men "standing alone in (their) own diminishing circle." That's today's Republican Party, white, racist or silent to racism.
Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner live. The Civil Rights movement lives.
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man--a man of God--was killed.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our Democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crises. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression.
But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans; we're met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose.
The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal." "Government by consent of the governed." "Give me liberty or give me death." And those are not just clever words, and those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty risking their lives. Those words are promised to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom. He shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
To apply any other test, to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny Americans and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom. Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish it must be rooted in democracy. This most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country in large measure is the history of expansion of the right to all of our people.
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to insure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.
Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and, if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name, or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state law.
And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books, and I have helped to put three of them there, can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color.
We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath. Wednesday, I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote. The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views and to visit with my former colleagues.
I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow, but which I will submit to the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss the main proposals of this legislation. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections, federal, state and local, which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.
This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution. It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government, if the state officials refuse to register them. It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will insure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting. I will welcome the suggestions from all the members of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective.
But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution. To those who seek to avoid action by their national government in their home communities, who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land. There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.
There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer. But the last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections. That civil rights bill was passed after eight long months of debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated.
This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no compromise with our purpose. We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in.
And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill. We have already waited 100 years and more and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours and nights and weekends, if necessary, to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly, for, from the window where I sit, with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.
But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed--more than 100 years--since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln--a great President of another party--signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact.
A century has passed--more than 100 years--since equality was promised, and yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise, and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American. For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated? How many white families have lived in stark poverty? How many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we wasted energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror?
And so I say to all of you here and to all in the nation tonight that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. This great rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all--all, black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor.
And these enemies too--poverty, disease and ignorance--we shall overcome.
Now let none of us in any section look with prideful righteousness on the troubles in another section or the problems of our neighbors. There is really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept. In Buffalo as well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as Selma, Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom.
This is one nation. What happens in Selma and Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American. But let each of us look within our own hearts and our own communities and let each of us put our shoulder to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists. As we meet here in this peaceful historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to the far corners of the world and who brought it back without a stain on it, men from the east and from the west are all fighting together without regard to religion or color or region in Vietnam.
Men from every region fought for us across the world 20 years ago. And now in these common dangers, in these common sacrifices, the South made its contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region in the great republic.
And in some instances, a great many of them, more. And I have not the slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along the Atlantic, will rally now together in this cause to vindicate the freedom of all Americans. For all of us owe this duty and I believe that all of us will respond to it.
Your president makes that request of every American.
The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety, and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change; designed to stir reform. He has been called upon to make good the promise of America.
And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery and his faith in American democracy? For at the real heart of the battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends, not on the force of arms or tear gas, but depends upon the force of moral right--not on recourse to violence, but on respect for law and order.
There have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go. But I pledge to you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought--in the courts, and in the Congress, and the hearts of men. We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it--as has been said--the right to holler fire in a crowded theatre.
We must preserve the right to free assembly. But free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have a right to protest. And a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the Constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office.
We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek--progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values. In Selma, as elsewhere, we seek and pray for peace. We seek order, we seek unity, but we will not accept the peace of stifled rights or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest--for peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.
In Selma tonight--and we had a good day there--as in every city we are working for a just and peaceful settlement. We must all remember after this speech I'm making tonight, after the police and the F.B.I. and the Marshals have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of Selma and the other cities of the nation must still live and work together.
And when the attention of the nation has gone elsewhere they must try to heal the wounds and to build a new community. This cannot be easily done on a battleground of violence as the history of the South itself shows. It is in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days--last Tuesday and again today.
The bill I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races, because all Americans just must have the right to vote, and we are going to give them that right.
All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship, regardless of race, and they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.
But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal rights. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home and the chance to find a job and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.
Of course people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write; if their bodies are stunted from hunger; if their sickness goes untended; if their life is spent in hopeless poverty, just drawing a welfare check.
So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we're also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates. My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes.
I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that I might help them against the hardships that lay ahead. And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.
I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students, and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance.
And I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.
This is the richest, most powerful country which ever occupied this globe. The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to be the president who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.
I want to be the president who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax eaters. I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election. I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions and all parties. I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.
And so, at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from Montana, the Majority Leader, the Senator from Illinois, the Minority Leader, Mr. McCullock and other members of both parties, I came here tonight, not as President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a bonus bill; not as President Truman came down one time to urge passage of a railroad bill, but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me. And to share it with the people that we both work for.
I want this to be the Congress--Republicans and Democrats alike--which did all these things for all these people. Beyond this great chamber--out yonder
Above the pyramid on the Great Seal of the United States it says in latin, "God has favored our undertaking." God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help but believe that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.
Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner;
murdered in 1964 for fighting for voting rights
Update: As of April 2013,Sensenbrenner refuses to challenge the GOP's attack on voting as more GOP states enact laws intended to obstruct the right to vote. ---Sensenbrenner attaches name on brief weeks before landmark case's orals before U.S. Supreme Court
Sensenbrenner has long portrayed himself as a champion of voting rights, posturing belied by his refusal to criticize current GOP voter obstruction efforts.
Critically, Sensenbrenner and his colleagues note this month the social scientific evidence compiled by Congress when it passed the reauthorization in 2006.
Rightwing commentators and jurists have pretended that such evidence of voter obstruction and past federal attempts to protect the right to vote does not exist.
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) is the crown jewel of civil rights laws. It protects our most fundamental right—the right to vote. This law has empowered minorities to participate in the election process, but the threat of discrimination is not yet extinct. In 2006, the House compiled 12,000 pages of extensive testimony. This record shows Section 5 not only worked to correct past injustices, but is unmistakably central to the continued protection of minorities’ right to vote in covered districts. I am proud of this law, and join my colleagues in ardently defending its constitutionality.
The "crown jewel" and "our most fundamental right.'
That's great stuff on voting. Attaching his name on a brief two weeks before oral arguments is commendable.
Asked in April 2012 why Sensenbrenner didn't speak out against the current efforts of states [like Wisconsin] enacting voter obstruction laws, Sensenbrenner's spokeperson's response is:
"I don’t have a comment for you on this, as it is a state law. But you are correct in pointing out that he was responsible for getting the VRA reauthorization passed through Congress in 2006 when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee."
That the whole point of the VRA: Challenging state laws (and other jurisdictions') that obstruct voters.
The feds have to protect voters against state civil rights violations.
So, for Sensenbrenner's office to say they cannot be involved or comment because a law is a state law is ludicrous. And VRA champion Sensenbrenner must know this.
---
On a related note, Doug Kendall reports today that a bipartisan group of former U.S. Dept. of Justice officials including Dick Thornburgh—attorney general under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—filed an extraordinary amicus brief in February eviscerating rightwingers (including the fetid Hans von Spakovsky who argues that the Supreme Court needs to strike down the Voting Rights Act.)
Notes Kendall:
"Summarizing its beef with von Spakovsky et al., the Thornburgh brief explains that:"
The Voting Rights Act is hailed across the political spectrum as the crown jewel of American liberties and a monumental legislative accomplishment. Congress recently reenacted it with overwhelming majorities. Like any statute, it is not vulnerable to challenge on the basis of baseless speculation about potential misinterpretation or wrongful enforcement. (Emphasis added)
"Ouch. To give one more specific example, Thornburgh’s brief takes dead aim at von Spakovsky’s distortions of the recent enforcement actions involving voter ID laws:"
[V]on Spakovsky . . . is wrong on both the facts and the law. First of all, among the photo ID laws passed by covered jurisdictions since 2006, more have been cleared (New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan) than not (Texas and South Carolina, the latter blocked for the 2012 election only).
Second, as a legal matter, amici’s argument relies on a misinterpretation of this Court’s decision in Crawford v. Marion County . . . . Crawford does not grant an automatic constitutional pass to any and all photo ID requirement. Rather, in rejecting a facial challenge . . . the Court’s analysis focused on the burden imposed on Indiana voters, which it found to be minimal; the required photo IDs were free and widely available.
By contrast, where a photo ID law imposes a disproportionate burden on minority voters and does not provide any means to mitigate that burden, Section 5 will bar its enforcement.
Concludes Kendall: "It’s not that often in Supreme Court practice that you see one amicus brief respond directly to another. But such a thoroughgoing rebuke by a conservative Republican former Attorney General against conservatives trying to make the case against the constitutionality of a federal law? We’ve never seen anything like it. Which makes the Thornburgh brief a must read for anyone following the debate over Shelby County v. Holder."
Social Scientific Evidence
The significance of the lack of social scientific evidence presented in Crawford (many jurists believe the 2008 challenge to Indiana's law as unconstitutional on its face was poor legal strategy) is that Sensenbrenner actually cites the mountain of social scientific evidence ("12,000 pages of extensive testimony") upon which Congress relied in reauthorizing the VRA.
If you take a look at challenges to Wisconsin's voter obstruction law, a mountain of social scientific evidence has been gathered so that no court could find that voters were not being obstructed illegally, per the Wisconsin and U.S. constitutions.
So, for example we read of the efforts that found military veterans (and African Americans and college students) being unable to vote because the Wisconsin GOP crafted its unconstitutional voter ID law in a highly restrictive manner—ignoring all input from good government, civil rights groups and Democratic Party members expressing alarm that registered, constitutionally qualified citizens were prevented from voting because the GOP did not like the way these voters were likely to vote—an assault against the fundamental right of our democracy that the GOP and Sensenbrenner blatantly ignore to this day.
The Tea Party and the Republican Party will not give up on their program of voter obstruction, aimed against human beings of color and other perceived undesirables.
And the imbecilic, immoral project of the Republican Party (the white party) ought to be viewed in a historical perspective.
Watched the The Abolitionists the other night, a three-part series airing January 8, 15 and 22, 2013.
Wonder who the Republicans and Tea Party idiots regard as the heroes of our history.
I couldn't help but wonder watching the likes of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimké if Republicans might grow a conscience after a viewing.
The makers of The Abolitionists describe
making a film about a "transformative moment
in American history that stemmed from
the actions of ordinary individuals."
The series is that moving.
Maybe human rights, civil rights and voting rights are worth fighting and dying for, and not fighting against.
It's rare for Republicans like Steve Schmidt, a former senior strategist for John McCain (a despicable liar himself), to admit the lie and sinful action that Schmidt's Party and candidate engage in against people of color.
Maybe Wisconsin's Jim Sensenbrenner will develop a sense of shame as the Voting Rights Act is now under siege; and GOP voter obstruction laws aim to deny civil rights to American people, with no major Republican and Tea Partier standing up and shouting: Enough. Stop now!
Radicals. Agitators. Troublemakers. Liberators. Called by many names, the abolitionists tore the nation apart in order to make a more perfect union. Men and women, black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy, these passionate antislavery activists fought body and soul in the most important civil rights crusade in American history. What began as a pacifist movement fueled by persuasion and prayer became a fiery and furious struggle that forever changed the nation.
Bringing to life the intertwined stories of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown, The Abolitionists takes place during some of the most violent and contentious decades in American history, amid white-hot religious passions that set souls on fire, and bitter debates over the meaning of the Constitution and the nature of race. The documentary reveals how the movement shaped history by exposing the fatal flaw of a republic founded on liberty for some and bondage for others, setting the nation on a collision course. In the face of personal risks -- beatings, imprisonment, even death -- abolitionists held fast to their cause, laying the civil rights groundwork for the future and raising weighty constitutional and moral questions that are with us still.
Part One
The opening hour of The Abolitionists features the documentary's five principal characters, whose intertwined lives and shared beliefs came together to form a powerful movement that forever changed the nation.
In the 1820s and 30s, Frederick Douglass was a young slave growing up in Maryland who became hopeful when he heard about abolitionists and their push to end slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison found his life's purpose in the crusade against slavery, founding the newspaper The Liberator in 1831. The paper would become a powerful voice for the movement.
Angelina Grimké, the outspoken daughter of a wealthy Charleston, South Carolina plantation family, abandoned her life of privilege and moved to the North in 1829, where she would become a persuasive and authentic public speaker against slavery.
In 1833, Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed the brutality of slavery in her first trip to the South. The searing memory of what she saw changed her forever and impacted her greatest work, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Multiple business failures coupled with the murder of an antislavery activist in 1837 galvanized John Brown, and he devoted the rest of his life to the cause.
By 1840, the growing abolitionist movement these activists helped create had fragmented; increasing violence had raised doubts as to the efficacy of its pacifist tactics.
Part Two
In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped slavery, eventually joining William Lloyd Garrison in the antislavery movement. In the North, Douglass became a powerful orator, and reached tens of thousands more with the 1845 publication of his autobiography. When threatened with capture by his former owner, Douglass fled to England, where he experienced life as a free man for the first time. Returning to the U.S. in 1847, he launched his own antislavery paper, The North Star, out of Rochester, New York, causing a rift with his mentor Garrison. Later that year, John Brown met with Douglass in Springfield, Massachusetts, and revealed his radical plan to raise an army, supply them with arms, and free the slaves. Douglass did not share Brown's enthusiasm for such violent tactics.
In 1852, following the tragic death of her own young son and moved by the plight of slave families being torn apart by the Fugitive Slave Law, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. An instant best seller that became wildly successful as a play, this influential fictional story helped change the hearts and minds of millions of Americans by depicting slavery through the eyes of its victims.
In the spring of 1854, fugitive slave Anthony Burns was held in Boston's city jail, where he became a focal point for both pro- and antislavery advocates. Angry Bostonians attempted to free him, but President Franklin Pierce, an ardent Southern sympathizer, sent in the military to escort him to a ship in the harbor and eventually back to enslavement.
All the attempts at compromise and resolution had only deepened the divide between North and South, touching off a crisis that was about to careen out of control.
Part Three
By 1854, the battle over admitting new territories to the Union had reached a fever pitch. Kansas was the front line of a bloody battle between pro-slavery and free-soil contingents. In 1859, John Brown summoned Frederick Douglass to a secret meeting in Chambersburg, PA, and revealed his plan to capture the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, VA, and start a revolution; Douglass refused to join him. Brown went ahead with the raid, and was injured and captured. Before being executed, he managed to turn himself into a public figure and a martyr for the cause.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. As Southern states seceded from the Union, the country continued its descent into chaos, and by the following spring, the Civil War had begun. What was almost universally expected to be a quick and bloodless conflict dragged on. On the 22nd of September 1862, news broke that Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. For Lincoln, the carnage was unendurable unless it could be given over to a higher purpose.
On New Years Day 1863, Bostonians gathered at two celebrations: William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe attended a concert at the Music Hall; Frederick Douglass was at Tremont Temple. Near midnight, the crowds erupted with joy when the announcement came that Lincoln has emancipated the slaves in rebel territory. Not only were slaves free, but African American men could now enlist in the Union forces. Two of Douglass' sons went to war; and even William Lloyd Garrison, the "ultra peace man," allowed his first born to sign up.
In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, banning slavery in all the states -- forever. For almost four decades, the abolitionists had dedicated their lives to this moment. It is a triumph of perseverance, of steadfastness, and in the logic and moral power of a movement that had never wavered.
Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner;
murdered in 1964 for fighting for voting rights
Update II: Rep. Sensenbrenner has finally spoken on the attempts of his party to strike down the Voting Rights Act. Critically, Sensenbrenner notes the social scientific evidence complied by Congress when it passed the reauthorization in 2006. Sensenbrenner joined a bi-partisan group of judiciary committee members filing an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder (docket 12-96).
Writes Sensenbrenner: “The Voting Rights Act is the crown jewel of civil rights laws. It protects our most fundamental right—the right to vote. This law has empowered minorities to participate in the election process, but the threat of discrimination is not yet extinct. In 2006, the House compiled 12,000 pages of extensive testimony. This record shows Section 5 not only worked to correct past injustices, but is unmistakably central to the continued protection of minorities’ right to vote in covered districts. I am proud of this law, and join my colleagues in ardently defending its constitutionality.”
As the GOP challenge to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, don't look for Republicans, Wisconsin's Jim Sensenbrenner, or any Republican legislator who voted for VRA reauthorization in 2006 to file an amicus brief arguing the Court uphold this pillar of civil rights protection.
Republicans and its Tea Party can read the writing on the wall: Stop Americans from voting or lose elections, and the VRA is in the way.
Desperate state gerrymandering and voter obstructions laws will buy the Republicans some time, so the corrupt Five on the U.S. Supreme Court will make an effort to disappear the Voting Rights Act (VRA),Section Five and likely targeting Section Two, maybe the whole act.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear a challenge to a main provision, the "pre-clearance" or Section Five, of the Voting Rights Act in February.
Rick Hasen at the Election Law blog has a piece on the GOP challenge to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) noting Texas Republicans in their amicus brief omitted mention that Texas has been found by a federal court to have engaged in "purposeful discrimination" to stop non-desirable Americans from voting, and purposeful attempts to diminish the votes of such non-desirable Americans.
Maybe the state of Texas just forgot.
Speaking of forgetfulness, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner who likes to pretend that he is a champion of the Voting Rights Act—voting for the 2006 renewal of the Voting Rights Act—seems to have forgotten as well the purpose behind stopping states from obstructing voting.
The VRA and its reauthorizations were passed to stop state voter obstruction efforts, mainly in the southern U.S., and especially aimed at southern state white power structures that turned even more murderous in the 1950s and 60s. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and many more gave their lives to the civil rights effort.
But voter obstruction and fighting voting rights are a national Republican project now.
In Sensenbrenner's own words, he writes last July that the VRA is "the civil rights law [that] sought to end decades of racial discrimination that prevented minorities from fully exercising their constitutional right to vote.
Asked in April last year why Sensenbrenner didn't speak out against the current efforts of states [like Wisconsin] enacting voter obstruction laws, Sensenbrenner's office's response is:
"I don’t have a comment for you on this, as it is a state law. But you are correct in pointing out that he was responsible for getting the VRA reauthorization passed through Congress in 2006 when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee."
What are these people thinking? The VRA stops states and their voter obstruction laws. So, you cannot speak to state law because they are state laws? Sensenbrenner-GOP logic.
So, Sensenbrenner claims he loves the VRA, but now he toes the GOP line on state Republican voter obstruction efforts, calling them "common-sense efforts to ensure the identity and citizenship of voters," (July 2012) words written after his office said he cannot comment on state laws from which the VRA protects Americans' right to vote.
Sensenbrenner is what constitutional law experts refer to as a shameless, goddamn liar.
As the VRA makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, don't look for Sensenbrenner to file an amicus brief arguing the Court upholds this pillar of civil rights legalisation that Sensenbrenner says he champions.
Updated:"There is no right more fundamental than the right to vote. It is the core of our democratic system of government, and its effective exercise preserves all other rights," said Wisconsin's U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner.
Now, the Republican Party has decided to become the party of voter obstruction instituting voter-control measures in all states that they have the power to disenfranchise.
Texas is arguing that the landmark civil rights legislation, [Section 5] of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, is unconstitutional in a case that looks likely to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court
Contacted in early April for comment, his press office remains silent, not returning promised calls. [Update: Sensenbrenner's office: "I don’t have a comment for you on this, as it is a state law. But you are correct in pointing out that he was responsible for getting the VRA reauthorization passed through Congress in 2006 when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee."]
Weird. The VRA and its reauthorizations were passed to stop state voter obstruction efforts, but recent state voter obstruction efforts don't merit comment from the champion of the 2006 VRA.
For a time, I thought maybe Sensenbrenner would actually stick up for a principle of democracy.
A 2006 study by the Brennan Center for Justice reports that 11 percent of U.S. citizens do not possess any government-issued photo ID. Point being that the GOP says they are not entitled to vote.
