Skip to main content

Jump Jim Crow

By



Jim Crow rears his ugly head again in a devastating Supreme Court decision that allows state voter ID laws and a number of other discriminatory state voting laws, after the federal government fought so hard to defeat these pernicious laws in the lead up to the 2012 election.  "Chief Justice" Roberts calls Section 4 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act "outdated," and that it needs to be modernized, yet cites examples where the section has helped many voters gain access to the voting booth where they otherwise wouldn't.  "Justice" Alito rolled his eyes when Ginsburg issued her statement in opposition to the decision.  The biggest surprise is Anthony Kennedy, who had what appears to be the deciding vote and voted for the repeal of Section 4.

Not surprisingly, this challenge to the Voting Rights Act came from Shelby, Alabama.  Congress had voted to uphold the Voting Rights Act in 2006, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, but here is Roberts saying Congress needs to review the provisions of Section 4, which Southern states have repeatedly defied and challenged since 1965.

One can only shrug one's shoulders at the decisions that have been rendered by this Supreme Court ever since Roberts was confirmed as the Court's top judge.  At times, he has seemed impartial, as witnessed on his position on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, but when it comes to voting rights he has consistently voted the Republican hard line, making one wonder what, if any, impartiality this current court has.  It seems bought and paid for by conservative business interests, which want to skew the electoral process in their favor.  If Congress was so worried about an outdated electoral process, how about overturning the Electoral College.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more