Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday that the Justice Department will seek to recapture Texas and return it to federal oversight for approval of all election law changes such as photo voter identification. Holder’s move comes after the Supreme Court in June freed Texas and other states from the requirement that all state election laws be approved in Washington, D.C. Holder’s move prompted outrage from Texas Senators Ted Cruz, John Cornyn and Governor Rick Perry. The three should also be angry with the Republican National Committee. PJ Tatler has learned that staff at the RNC have been spending RNC donations...

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...

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Thursday that the Justice Department would ask a court to require Texas to get permission from the federal government before making voting changes in that state. The move opens a new chapter in the political struggle over election rules after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act last month. In a speech before the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Mr. Holder also indicated that the filing, expected later on Thursday, was most likely just an opening salvo in a new Obama administration strategy to try...

Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder is continuing a "longstanding pattern of refusing to follow the law" with his decision to disregard the U.S. Supreme Court and force Texas to seek federal approval for changes to voting laws. The Texas Republican's comment came in a stern statement in which he also accused Holder of politicizing the Justice Department. "Holder's refusal to accept the judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding preclearance continues the department's longstanding pattern of refusing to follow the law," Cruz said. He was referring to the high court's June 25 decision declaring as...

Rep. John Lewis praised Attorney General Eric Holder's push to place the state of Texas under pre-clearance requirements for voting laws under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. In an interview with the AJC today, the Atlanta Democrat said he thinks North Carolina should be next. "I'm very encouraged to see the Attorney General and the Department of Justice take this position. I think it's long overdue. ... Without Section 4 I think it's so fitting and appropriate for the Department of Justice to take the action. And I wish they would take a serious look at what has...

The Obama administration embarked on a new strategy on Thursday to challenge voting laws it says discriminate by race, an effort to counter a Supreme Court ruling last month that freed states from the strictest federal oversight. Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to start in Texas, a conservative stronghold. Texas' voter ID law requires voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot, a measure its supporters, mostly Republicans, said is necessary to prevent fraud. Democrats said it would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities because even getting a free photo ID would require travel to a state office...

Obama doubled down on his approach in 2012: division, polarization and moving to the left. Much like in 2012, the President placed little emphasis on tax reform or growth. The President emphasized redistribution above all else, but with, again, no long-term plan as to how he would finally make this approach an effective one.

A liberal civil rights hero and a conservative Wisconsin Republican joined forces Wednesday in an uphill fight to restore the voting protections shot down last month by the Supreme Court. Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.), and James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) urged a Senate panel to bury partisan differences and update the Voting Rights Act, a 48-year-old law designed to protect voter access in states with histories of racial discrimination. "The responsibility to combat racial discrimination in electoral practices is one of the most important constitutional duties of Congress," Lewis told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The burden cannot be on those...

The United States Supreme Court has spoken. The country’s highest court has essentially ruled that racism is a thing of the past in America. Gone are the times when black people were hunted down and lynched, times when Congress had to provide African-Americans with legislative protection, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the greatest achievement of the US civil rights movement. … “Our nation has made great strides,” Chief Justice John Roberts, born in Buffalo, New York, wrote in the majority decision. But has it? Certainly. The situation today is nowhere near as bad as it was during the...

"Character, not circumstance, makes the person." -- Booker T. Washington The Supreme Court's narrow 5-4 decision to strike down a central component of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, "freeing nine states, mostly in the South," writes the New York Times, "to change their election laws without advance federal approval," is a welcome recognition that times have changed and that especially Southern states must not forever bear a "mark of Cain" for past discrimination against racial minorities. Reaction from "civil rights groups" and liberal media outlets was predictable. Writing in the Washington Post, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) accused the Court of...

Will the Left ever stop playing the race card? Not in my lifetime, it won't. The Obama Left in this country acts like we're still living in 1960, when racism was legally, socially and morally sanctioned across the South and elsewhere. Here's a newsflash, folks. It's 2013. Racism is not extinct and never will be as long as human beings walk the Earth. But despite President Obama's constant efforts to persuade his low-information constituencies otherwise, examples of overt or institutionalized racism are harder to find in America today than a rotary pay phone or a Studebaker. Of course, this reality...

A leading House Republican is calling on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act just a day after the Supreme Court neutered its central provision. Warning that "the threat of discrimination still exists," Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) is urging lawmakers from both parties to cast aside partisanship and restore the law for the sake of protecting voters' rights. "The Voting Rights Act is vital to America’s commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process," Sensenbrenner, the second-ranked Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in a statement. "This is going to take time and will...

Meet Ryan Patrick Winkler. He's a 37-year-old liberal Minnesota state legislator with a B.A. in history from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. He's also a coward, a bigot, a liar and a textbook example of plantation progressivism. On Tuesday, Winkler took to Twitter to rant about the Supreme Court's decision to strike down an onerous section of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 ruling overturned an unconstitutional requirement that states win federal preclearance approval of any changes to their election laws and procedures. Winkler fumed: "VRA majority is four accomplices to race discrimination...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a civil rights law that requires some states to get federal permission to change their voting rules, but it struck down the formula for which jurisdictions are covered — leaving it to Congress to redraw the map. The opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. The vote was 5-4. “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” Roberts wrote for the court. Under the law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965,...

The Supreme Court has decided Shelby v. Holder. It is one of the most important decisions in decades. Now, federal preclearance of state election procedures seems to be forever dead and buried. While some Congressional Republicans had vowed to enact new legislation to “fix” any coverage formula deemed unconstitutional, the Court opinion today offers almost no room to do so. They would have to decide what’s more important: the Republican Party, or the Constitution? Section 5 required states to obtain preclearance approval for any change involving elections — any change, even moving a polling place 20 feet. Only 15 states...

In a statement, President Obama called today's Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act a "setback." "I am deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision today. For nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act – enacted and repeatedly renewed by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress – has helped secure the right to vote for millions of Americans. Today’s decision invalidating one of its core provisions upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent," reads Obama's statement.

Am I the only one who has noticed an increasing penchant for the Supreme Court to return non-answers to critical issues? The latest "Voter Rights" decision leaves the Federal Government in charge of determining when minority rights are violated, but now must be done procedurally, not discriminatorily toward us "raaaaaacist" states. Honestly, how hard is it to actually rely on the Constitution and principles of clear thinking to come up with the fact that a state has decided to reserve marriage to only a man and a woman? Either they can or they can't. But who wants to bet that...

Per Drudge - FLASH: Section 4 of Voting Rights Act unconstitutional...

The fate of the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court may hinge on whether it's right."Is it the government's submission that the citizens of the South are more racist than the citizens of the North?" John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, asked that in February during oral arguments over the fate of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 civil rights law. Donald Verrilli, the government's chief lawyer, said no. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration was not willing to assert that citizens in Southern states were statistically more likely to hold racist beliefs. Without making such a...

As the Supreme Court heads into its summer recess at the end of June, we're still awaiting decisions this week in four landmark cases. "In the court’s modern history, I don’t think there has ever been one week with so much at stake,” said Tom Goldstein, founder of the respected SCOTUSblog website. “We have four pending cases that may be cited for at least a century.” Affirmative Action: Fisher v. University of Texas Petitioner Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin for the Fall 2008 entering class. Fisher sued the university, arguing...