Oppose Voting Rights Amendment Act; It's a Sham

Update: Don't worry Republicans, state voter obstruction laws are safe.

Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014: Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 1973a(c)) is amended by striking ‘‘violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment’’ and inserting ‘‘violations of the 14th or 15th Amendment; violations of this Act (other than a violation of section 2(a) which is based on the imposition of a requirement that an individual provide a photo identification as a condition of receiving a ballot for voting in an election for Federal, State, or local office) ... ."
Translated, GOP state photo voter ID laws have been carved out as an exception by the Republicans, and just because the GOP obstructs voters there is no reason for this be considered a violation of the new and fetid VRA.

The Voting Rights Amendment Act, H.R.3899, is a con unprecedented in the modern fight for the right to vote.

The bill would allow for state GOP-crafted voter obstruction laws to pass muster under the Act, language which drew the NAACP's guarded statement that the "NAACP appreciates that the U.S. Congress has made a bipartisan effort to update the Voting Rights Act, however we have serious concerns about the ability of some provisions in this bill to protect ALL voters from discrimination at the polls."

This bill should be opposed, and a real act with teeth that codifies that voting is a federal fundamental right should be passed.

Such as an act exists; it's call the Pocan-Ellison Right to Vote Amendment. Republicans hate it because it protects the right to vote against GOP efforts to obstruct it.

Ari Berman writes: "Voting rights supporters will argue, justifiably, that the new Section 4 formula does not apply to enough states and wrongly treats voter ID laws differently than other discriminatory voting changes. Despite these flaws, the legislation represents a significant improvement over the disastrous post-Shelby status quo, which has seen states like North Carolina and Texas rush to pass or implement blatantly discriminatory voting restrictions after being freed from federal oversight." 

Berman's argument is that state voter obstruction laws are still legal, voter obstruction will occur, and we should still welcome this sham.

Talk about lowering the bar.

Call your congressional representative and register your opposition today. Our congressman here in southcentral Wisconsin, Mark Pocan, can be reached at Rep. Pocan.

Other representatives can be reached through the House of Representatives home page.

In the face of the Republican War on Voting, do some Democrats really believe the GOP has surrendered and suddenly morphed into voting rights champions?

Don't Trust James Sensenbrenner on Voting Right Act

James Sensenbrenner - Protector of
Republican Voter Obstruction

Update II: Sensenbrenner is also one of only six serving in Congress today who opposed the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What a hypocrite.


Update: Pennsylvania Judge Strikes Down GOP's New Voter ID Law, the injunction and opinion is at Applewhite et al v. Pennsylvania.

American democracy—Freedom and the right to vote, the light of the world

No kids, in America the Republican Party is hostile to these rights. For the GOP voting is a privilege reserved for those who vote the correct way, and the GOP continues its assault against the fundamental right of our democracy.

Now, the Republican Party is trying to codify and enshrine its state-level voter obstruction project that it says is perfectly in keeping with its 'fix' to the Voting Rights Act.

The national press is maintaining the pretension that Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-White People) cares about fixing the Voting Rights Act eviscerated by Sensenbrenner's GOP colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court last year in Shelby County v. Holder.

Several liberal writers think it's the only shot at getting a weak repair to the Voting Rights Act through Congress. This effort is a crock.

The Republican voter obstruction project has as one of its primary tools: GOP-crafted state voter ID laws enacted with unanimous GOP support and unanimous opposition from civil rights groups and the Democratic Party.

Voter ID laws make it more difficult to vote for disaffected veterans, minorities, colleges students and other demographics not aware of their duty to vote Republican.

Such state voter obstruction laws are the policy rationale behind the Voting Rights Act (1965) and its reauthorizations.

But Sensenbrenner loves voter obstruction, Voter ID laws, slashing early voting, gerrymandering, and other GOP tricks to keep people from voting.

Steve Benen, writing for MSNBC, is one of the writers who likes to pretend Sensenbrenner is a champion of voting rights, while noting this new 'fix' of the Voting Rights Act is a bill that Sensenbrenner acclaims "includes strong, nationwide anti-discrimination protections and continues to permit states to enact reasonable voter-ID laws. Therefore, it prevents racial-discrimination and gives states the ability to address voter fraud."

That there is virtually no in-person voter fraud is, in the minds of Benen and Sensenbrenner, of no consequence.

As for Voter ID laws, what's "reasonable" in Sensenbrenner's mind? Texas and Wisconsin's restrictive Voter ID laws are.

Here's what Sensenbrenner had to say about Texas in August last year: "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"

There are of course serious efforts to protect voting: The Pocan-Ellison Right to Vote Amendment.

Sensenbrenner supporting this mega voting rights guarantee, and going against his Party's voter obstruction project is as likely as Sarah Palin winning a Nobel Prize in physics.

We noted here last November that 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. What guts.

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.

And Sensenbrenner is now going to declare war on the GOP's war on voting? Right.

Blagojevich's show is his own

Steve Bennen knocks down the mainstream media's pursuit of the non-story of Obama and the "scandal ... threatening to dog him".

Writes Bennen,

Is Obama connected to Blagojevich's scandal? No, but the scandal is 'threatening to dog him.' Has Obama done anything wrong? No, but Republicans are going to 'try to link him to the scandal.'

Well, yes, of course they are. That's what political opponents do. We're supposed to have an independent, professional press that helps the public cut through the nonsense and explain why baseless attacks are wrong. Instead, we get an 'analysis' piece like this one.

Obama's 30-Minute Spot Enrages Republicans

Let them whine.

From the Washington Monthly:

On MSNBC yesterday, far-right pundit Willie Geist said Obama's ad reminded him of 'the Soviet invasion,' because it 'take[s] over the airwaves.' Yesterday afternoon, Elisabeth Hasselbeck called the Obama ad 'repulsive.'

Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, said, 'John McCain's only chance is to disqualify Barack Obama. He has seven days. Every day that people are talking about Barack Obama's infomercial is a day that John McCain isn't getting his message out.'

Paul Krugman v. Cokie Roberts

The Washington Monthly has a piece illustrating nicely the analytical brilliance of Paul Krugman and the vacuity of Cokie Roberts, the facile and smug D.C. pundit who was all over the Clintons during the rightwing silly season of Clinton's second term.

In a second piece, Steve Benin notes Krugman's receiving the Nobel Price:

A WELL-DESERVED HONOR FOR PAUL KRUGMAN.... Nearly six years ago, Nicholas Confessore had a fascinating profile of Paul Krugman for the Monthly, noting, among other things, that Krugman has never been part of the in-crowd when it comes to the political establishment. Conservatives had no use for his accuracy and dependence on evidence ...

Watch the video of Roberts and Krugman at This Week included in the exchange captured below in the Monthly.

Today's stupid fake equivalency comes from Cokie Roberts on ABC'S This Week (video). The exchange that follows comes from 3:36 before the end:

Krugman: This is not just about McCain and what he did. The fact of the matter is, for a long time we have had a substantial fraction of the Republican base that just does not regard the idea of Democrats governing as legitimate. Remember the Clinton years. It was craziness, right? They were murderers, they were drug smugglers, and the imminent prospect of what looks like a big Democratic victory would drive a lot of these people crazy even if Sarah Palin wasn't saying these inflammatory things. It's going to be very ugly after the election.

Roberts: On both sides that's true. I think that you've also had a huge number of Democrats who think that the Republicans are illegitimate, and that was particularly true after the 2000 election, and to some degree after 2004. And so you really do have at the core of each party people who are not ready to accept the verdict of the election.

Krugman: I reject the equivalence."

McCain Would Be a Weak Nominee

Update II: McCain Maverick, War Hero, Amnesty Supporter, John McCain

Update: McCain: "simply loathed by many fellow Republicans"

Democrats are looking forward to a John McCain GOP nomination for president.

McCain faces the impossible task of disentangling himself from George W. Bush and presents the close-to-impossible task of bringing along the religious right.

John McCain — "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech).

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly has a column laughing at the contortions McCain performed on taxes and obeying GOP orthodoxy at last night's debate.

Benen writes:

.... In 2001 and 2003, Bush pushed two massive tax-cut packages through Congress, with near-universal Republican support. Indeed, it was something akin to a GOP fealty test -- to vote for the White House taxes cuts was to be a good Republican.

In the Senate, two GOP lawmakers balked -- Lincoln Chafee, who later left the party, and John McCain, who no longer wants to talk about his votes.

When pressed, McCain usually argues that he rejected Bush's tax cuts because there were no accompanying spending cuts to prevent massive deficits. The defense has always been largely incoherent, for at least two reasons. First, McCain now believes tax cuts can pay for themselves (aka, the "Tax Fairy" theory), so there was no need for spending cuts. Second, McCain, at the time, said quite clearly that his opposition to the cuts had nothing to do with spending, and everything to do with Bush's policy being excessively skewed to the wealthy.

At last night's Republican debate in Simi Valley, the LAT's Janet Hook asked for an explanation. McCain responded:

"I was part of the Reagan revolution. I was there with Jack Kemp and Phil Graham and Warren Rudman and all these other first that wanted to change a terrible economic situation in America with 10 percent unemployment and 20 percent interest rates. I was proud to be a foot soldier, support those tax cuts, and they had spending restraints associated with it.

"I made it very clear when I ran in 2000 that I had a package of tax cuts, which were very important and very impactful, but I also had restraints in spending. And I disagreed when spending got out of control, and I disagreed when we had tax cuts without spending restraint. And guess what? Spending got out of control.

"Republicans lost the 2006 election not over the war in Iraq; over spending. Our base became disenchanted."

Does this make any sense at all? The question was rather straightforward: what McCain said in 2001 and 2003 doesn't match what McCain is saying now. He had one rationale for his position then, and a different rationale for his position now. That's not necessarily the end of the world -- candidates can change their mind -- and this was a chance for McCain to explain the pretty obvious inconsistency.

But he responded with a garbled and incoherent mess. Noam Scheiber said McCain's answer was "one of the most incoherent answers I've heard at a presidential debate this campaign season." I'm hard pressed to disagree.
The point I can't get around, though, is that McCain had to realize a question like this was coming. Indeed, after a year of campaigning, he's probably heard it before.

Maybe McCain's vaunted political skills have been exaggerated a bit?

And for sure, McCain straight-talk express that he BSs about has also been exaggerated a bit.

###