Free Republic

Those who’ve found it difficult to connect with the racial history of post-Civil War America – when Black Americans were stripped of the citizenship rights they gained right after that conflict – should pay special attention to the national political arena now. Because the conservative movement, in its desperate mania to destroy Barack Obama’s presidency and neutralize the growing political clout of Americans of color, is dramatizing how that betrayal and the construction of a post-slavery racist society was accomplished. The tricked–up claims of “voter fraud” by state legislatures in order to deny Blacks access to the ballot box. Federal...

I wrote here about Rand Paul’s unconstitutional plan to propose federal legislation that would enfranchise some felons. Now, Sen. Paul has addressedthe constitutional issue posed by such legislation. He argues, in essence, that states decide who votes in state elections, but the federal government has the final say on who can vote in federal elections. Roger Clegg makes short work of Paul’s contention: The U.S. Constitution itself explicitly gives the authority to decide who votes in federal elections to the states (consistent, of course, with other constitutional guarantees, like the prohibition of poll taxes). And the recent Supreme Court decision...

In a rare gesture, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) applauded Tea Party favorite Rand Paul on the Senate floor Tuesday to express his approval for Paul’s proposal to restore voting rights to ex-felons. Paul, the junior Republican from Kentucky, plans to introduce legislation to restore voting rights to people convicted of nonviolent felonies. Reid beamed over the development and noted that he introduced similar legislation earlier in this career. “I want to congratulate Rand Paul,” Reid said. “About 15 years ago … I offered an amendment here on the Senate floor that said if someone has been convicted of...

Imagine if a state didn’t let someone vote in an election because their grandfather wasn’t the correct race. Surely lawyers in Eric Holder’s Justice Department would be typing up a lawsuit as fast as fingers could fly across the keyboard. After all, Obama is the president who boasted he was a champion for voting rights, falsely we’d later learn. Eric Holder compared voter ID to a modern version of Jim Crow. But a recent federal court opinion shows Jim Crow is alive and well, and living in paradise. This week, the United States District Court in the Commonwealth of the...

An Alameda County judge has ruled that Secretary of State Debra Bowen erred when she told California election officials to forbid some 42,000 former prisoners and other felons from registering to vote. Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo’s decision Wednesday likely comes too late to permit former state inmates and others put under community supervision because of the state’s prison overcrowding to register in time to vote in the state’s primary elections. […] The case centers on Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision in 2011 to make room in the state’s crowded prisons by creating new classes of offenders—low-level felons who serve their...

On June 10, a blistering new book on the Justice Department and the shenanigans inside the DOJ Voting Section is released. "Obama's Enforcer" by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky will detail abuses of power at Holder's Justice Department. It has disturbing stories from inside the Department about Justice Department staff both giving a pass to criminal election activity as well as naming the names of those inside the Civil Rights Division who engaged in criminal activity. Amazon link here.

Tayna Fogle sat just behind Sen. Rand Paul, nodding her head and listening as he pressed the case with Kentucky state senators to restore felon voting rights.

Conservatives hoping to celebrate the departure of Attorney General Eric Holder might be in for a long wait. The attorney general’s position has looked perilous at various points during his tenure. But these days, he seems resurgent, pushing states to strike down voting restrictions on ex-felons and fighting hard to restore some of the key powers of the Voting Rights Act. It has been an uphill climb. In 2012, Holder became the first attorney general to be held in contempt by the House of Representatives while, the year before, he had to retreat from his earlier insistence that suspects in...

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday urged states to repeal laws that prohibit felons from voting, a move that would restore the right to vote to millions of people. The call was mostly symbolic — Mr. Holder has no authority to enact these changes himself — but it marked the attorney general’s latest effort to eliminate laws that he says disproportionately keep minorities from the polls. “It is unwise, it is unjust, and it is not in keeping with our democratic values,” Mr. Holder said at civil rights conference at Georgetown University. These laws deserve to...

RALEIGH — State NAACP President William J. Barber II laid out goals for a diverse coalition of groups Saturday afternoon at a rally attended by thousands of people from all over the state and the nation who marched, sang, chanted, cheered and even danced through downtown Raleigh. Organizers said the “Mass Moral March” was intended to push back against last year’s Republican-led legislation in North Carolina. Barber called for well-funded public education, anti-poverty policies, affordable health care for all that includes the expansion of Medicaid, an end to disparities in the criminal justice system on the basis of class and...

“I really think this was the worst year for voting rights since 1877 when federal troops pulled out of the south and ended reconstruction.” He goes on to say it’s not a similar situation. But then he goes on to say it’s totally the same thing. Harris-Perry tries to somehow moderate Ari’s outrageous comparison toward the end of the above clip by putting the words in his mouth that this isn’t exactly the same but sort of the same, but differenty. Or something.

<p>He was born of a mixed race parentage, who graduated from Columbia University, and worked as a community organizer, before being elected president. He has now announced his resignation.</p>

Voting Rights: While the Department of Justice sues Texas over its Voter ID law, analysis of Georgia's 2008 statute shows turnout increased among all groups, including blacks and Hispanics. Jim Crow, call your office. When on June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court freed southern states from the most onerous part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ruling that continuing certain requirements could not be justifiably based on past voter suppression but could be justified only if current discrimination against minorities could be proved, the decision did not sit well with Eric Holder's Department of Justice. In August, DOJ's civil rights...

Hillary Clinton is not alone. This week former secretary of state Colin Powell and ABC’s Cokie Roberts chimed in to agree that asking people to prove they are who they say they are when they show up to vote is completely beyond the pale. Then the Department of Justice joined in, launching a lawsuit against Texas over its voter-ID law last Thursday. Colin Powell is not known for his expertise in this area. But that didn’t stop him from saying that requirements like voter ID “are being put in place to slow the process down and make it likely that...

“This issue transcends partisanship, and we must work together,” said AG Eric Holder in a speech before the National Urban League in Philadephia a week ago. (1) The “issue” Holder referred to was the overthrow by the Supreme Court of the preclearance requirement–Sections 4, 5–of the Voting Rights Act. Thanks to the ruling in Shelby County v Holder it will no longer be necessary for selected states and jurisdictions to have all proposed changes to voting procedure approved (precleared) by the Department of Justice or the DC District Court. And how has the Attorney General decided to “transcend partisanship” and...

Al Sharpton claims he has briefed Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act decision. The MSNBC host took to the Huffington Post to criticize Bill O'Reilly for speaking out against black on black crime in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. In his post, Sharpton draws a contrast between the crime issue and the recent decision rolling back portions of the Voting Rights Act. As Sharpton bragged about his critical insight and influence at the highest levels of power, he revealed that he has briefed the President, the Attorney General and...

After a key provision in the Voting Rights Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in June, the Obama Administration turned to another tactic to seek pre-clearance for changes to election laws, starting with the Lone Star State. In Texas, following Holder's announcement, the DOJ claimed clear evidence of discrimination both in the past and present, and asked a federal court to impose at least 10 years of required pre-clearance. Holder also pledged to block a Texas voter ID law passed in 2011 that state Attorney General Greg Abbott had green-lighted immediately following the Supreme Court’s Shelby County ruling...

Kansas laws could be targeted as the U.S. attorney general on Thursday announced a new federal offensive against state restrictions on voting rights. Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that he is shifting resources in the Justice Department to pursue more legal action against state-by-state voting restrictions. He said his efforts will begin with Texas and expand to other states where voting issues have surfaced. Joan Wagnon, chairwoman of the Kansas Democratic Party, applauded Holder’s speech and said she’s considering contacting the Justice Department over the issue of more than 12,000 Kansas voters whose registration is “in suspense” because of...

State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities — who tend to vote Democratic — to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll...

Justice Antonin Scalia shocked liberal sensibilities during oral arguments in the recently decided Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, voting rights case. Providing his analysis of the 98-0, 2006 Senate vote to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act (VRA) for an additional 25 years, Scalia said: “Now, I don’t think [the lop-sided vote] is attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this [law]. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult...