The High Court has lost its purpose and credibility!
After his incredulous statement, Justice Scalia's qualifications for wearing the 'Black Robe' are once again being challenged. His reference to broccoli was innocuous compared to his newest, racially charged, utterance.
Recent statements by the Italian-American member of the Supreme Court have prompted discourse about his partiality and the damage that one-sidedness has done to the country. The court's bias is also under constant scrutiny.
But Scalia is not the only Supreme Court Justice whose positions have come under fire.
Will the court make a big mistake as they near a decision on voting rights?
They've heard arguments on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder and will render a decision on whether the preclearance obligation has run its course; whether voter discrimination has been eradicated after all these years in the offensive states and counties -- mostly southern.
Scalia's statement, citing dangers of 'racial entitlement' on page 47 of the argument transcript, implies an end to bigotry and oppression with regard to voting; that these dehumanizing characteristics no longer exist in the South. That the impropriety of voting discrimination no longer exists. An inference that couldn't be further from the truth given the voter suppression efforts spawned by ALEC leading up to the 2012 elections.
Voter suppression and violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are alive and well in the tainted white-wing world of politics; in the Republican universe of thievery, suppression, and judicial interdiction, driven by an unscrupulous and overzealous desire to win elections.
Given the current electoral climate and demographic shifts throughout the nation Republicans are counting on the Supreme Court to ignore their judicial obligation in favor of nullification -- as they did in the Citizens United ruling.
And that's what it would take to overturn VRA or even the protections of Section 5 given the extreme and blatant violations over the past year: poll taxes in the form of fees to obtain voter IDs in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, which is a clear violation of the 24th Amendment; the attempted purge of voter rolls in Florida (with limited ability and time to appeal wrongful removal); shameful and biased attempts to suppress voting (mostly Democratic) by Ohio Secretary of State, John Husted.
In Wisconsin they reduced registration hours and eliminated locations where voters could register for their ID's, mostly in Democratic districts. In Florida it was revealed that most of the names to be purged on Rick Scott's lists were actually eligible to vote. In Ohio and Florida they eliminated early voting days, especially those that were most important to African Americans.
These rampant and egregious violations of voting rights prove the need for continuance and expansion of the preclearance obligation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It's evident today that the protections of the 15th and 24th Amendments are not adequate to prevent the voter discrimination for which they were intended.
States like Alabama and counties like Shelby complain about the restrictions imposed on them by the 48 year old statute despite being master violators of the Act.
Alabama's Attorney General, Luther Strange, in bringing suit wants the court to believe that disenfranchisement has abated in Shelby County and that the formula in Section 4 that shackles Shelby and Alabama is antiquated, unreasonable, and, therefore, no longer valid despite Shelby County's more than 200 discriminatory voting irregularities blocked by Section 5 objections.
Justice Sotomayor questioned, "You may be the wrong party bringing this," and continued, "why would we vote in favor of a county whose record is the epitome of what caused the passage of this law to start with?"
Justice Kagan further posited, "you're objecting to a formula, but under any formula that Congress could devise, it would capture Alabama."
Has the South changed enough to no longer warrant preclearance by the Department of Justice; or to be bound by the 'preclearance obligation' imposed under Section 5?
Surely, Justice Scalia, though attempting to impart an intellectual argument of the potential danger of continual extension of a statute such as this, can see that his use of the word 'entitlement' especially combined with 'racial' confuses the Constitutional 'right' to vote with the word 'privilege.' It should be obvious to him that covered jurisdictions continue to abuse their sovereign powers, thereby requiring the oversight of Section 5.
The question before the court is whether the Shelby challenge has merit? The broader question is whether this case should have been brought before the Court.
Given the new second generation devices employed by Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, the need for Section 5 is as great now as when it was first enacted.
So, 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.
In order for the court to maintain its integrity they must rule that states, especially Alabama, still engage in voter dilution and abridgment, therefore, Section 5 and the formula imposed by Congress to determine covered jurisdictions shall remain in place and continue unchanged.
Any other ruling would be supremely fallacious!