If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Detroit has seen its better days, but the latest national trending news is the most disheartening story that anybody could tell.
As long as the right keeps doing what it keeps doing, the great conservative crack-up will bring two big winners: Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
With public attention focused on the Voting Rights Act, many have overlooked a second critical voting case that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.
If skepticism from the Supreme Court's conservative wing is any indication, a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could be struck down this year. This should alarm anyone who views voting as a fundamental right and not a "racial entitlement."
Scalia has a right to believe voting rights are a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" for blacks and Hispanics, but should promote this repellent and biased view on conservative talk radio, not the court.
To be sure some Republicans have come out of the closet for gay marriage and are talking about immigration reform in a way that does not involve putting ten million people on a bus bound for the nearest border. But that is just cosmetic blather as they still must cling to their base.
Commonly known as the "Motor Voter Act," the NVRA streamlined voter registration. If the Supreme Court rules against the NVRA, states would be free to pass laws that could restrict voter registration activities and thereby prevent eligible citizens from registering to vote.
Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that our current system of federalism is an 18th century anachronism at best, at worst a constitutional ploy that has historically enabled the majority to tyrannize minorities.
The efforts by state officials around the country to suppress the vote in the lead-up to the 2012 election were an outrage. But what's happening in the Supreme Court in 2013 could end up being even more significant.
While the entire nation fights to retain their democratic rights the Supreme Court wastes time hearing a plea from Alabama, a state that has spent years trying to subvert the vote and supplant democracy.
To uphold standing for a litigant whose record is so bad that it would be swept in under any law implies that those who would uphold Alabama in this case effectively oppose all voting rights for any Americans.
It is deeply troubling that in 2013, our work is not done and the need to continue this fight remains. If we've learned one thing from the recent attempts to disenfranchise voters around the country, it's that the Voting Rights Act continues to be a vital tool in the fight.
The remark was so off-base, it's truly disturbing to remember that it was not made by some Joe the Plumber off the street, your old, staunchly conservative Uncle Antonin at the family barbecue, but rather by a legislator who has a unique say in the life or death of the VRA.
At the heart of the discussion about the need for both VAWA and the Voting Rights Act is a fundamental disagreement about what governments should do about discrimination, and, even more so, what they shouldn't do.
The trouble with history is time. Lost time. Too many people tinker with history and if they have no memory, the facts and remembrances of a significant event tend to get lost or twisted.
I find myself disgusted by the southerners and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia who continue to nitpick at the legitimacy of the historic legislation that ensures African Americans the right to vote.
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