Chief Justice Roberts has been gunning for the Voting Rights Act since he was in short pants. If you want to know the sordid history, which began when Roberts worked in the Reagan Administration, Adam Serwer has the recap. You should be very concerned. During oral arguments, today, Justice Scalia elicited audible gaffes when he said that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”
That’s right. Section 5 compels areas of the country with a documented history of race-based voter suppression to get permission from the Justice Department if they want to change their elections laws. The law says people of all “races” are entitled to vote. If you deny certain races that right by, say, intentionally causing eight hour voting lines in minority areas of Florida, then you are taking away something they are “entitled” to. It’s not a racial entitlement, it’s a citizen’s entitlement.
Do we have to lock Scalia in a room and force him to watch Lincoln until he gets this distinction?
The last two times that Scalia has heard a case on Section 5, he has complained that it was reauthorized with no dissenters in the Senate. Supposedly, the unanimous support for a law in Congress marks that law as suspect.
Scalia claimed four years ago that this unopposed vote actually undermines the law: “The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there.”
That was an unusual comment when it was made, but Scalia’s expansion on it today raises concerns that his suspicion of the Act is rooted much more in racial resentment than in a general distrust of unanimous votes. Scalia noted when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, it passed over 19 dissenters. In subsequent reauthorizations, the number of dissenters diminished, until it passed the Senate without dissent seven years ago. Scalia’s comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists.
SCOTUSBlog warns us that we should expect another 5-4 ruling, one that strikes Section 5 from the books. That’s their preliminary analysis after listening to oral arguments today. They don’t think preclearance will be will ruled completely unconstitutional, but the law will have to be redrafted somehow if we’re going to salvage anything.
That a black man, born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, could be a party to such a ruling simply boggles the mind and takes self-loathing to a level probably not seen before outside of an asylum.
They really, really want states to be independent little political entities that separately decide what the rights of American citizens will be.
Welcome to 1859, ya’ll.
Is Scalia going senile? He’s always been biased and bigoted, but I don’t remember him being delusional until recently. Comments like this idea that allowing minorities to vote is “racial privilege” and the ranting about the Cornhusker kickback in the ACA (which wasn’t actually there) make me think something’s come loose inside Scalia’s skull lately.
“Is Scalia going senile?”
He’s 77 years old. You do the math. When his cognitive abilities start to go, all you have left in the man’s head is his towering self-regard, so…
“Scalia’s comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists.”
This is prime evidence that, on this issue, it appears that five Supreme Court Justices have gone full wingnut. Hopefully Scalia’s rhetoric during orals today was so repellent that it causes Kennedy to rethink his considerations.
That’s not usually the way it works, though.
And the reason that Strom Thurmond switched to the Republican Party will have come to pass.
You can thank Arlen Specter’s brilliant defense of Clarence Thomas for one vote in that 5. Of course, Thomas has the rare opportunity to show something other than Uncle Tom obsequiousness. Would he like to make his place in history? (hint, hint)
Answer : no. As with Hannibal Lecter, there’s no name for his pathology.
Just reinforcing Bush v. Gore?
“Lincoln” won’t cure what ails the five regressives on the SCOTUS. They’re cool with subject of “Lincoln,” the 13th Amendment. It’s the 14th that they’re not too keen on.
No, they are not cool with the 13th Amendment. If it was brought before them the argument would be the same…’it might have been needed when it was passed, but it is not needed now’.
Scalia is a racist.
.
Plenty of racists opposed slavery both before and after 1864. Scalia and his ilk just oppose equality under the law for those classes he considers inferior.
Every “progressive” idiot who thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush forgot about the destruction that the SCOTUS can do.
Pretty sure Gore would have done better than Alito and Roberts.
Yeah, but would it have Sent a Message?
Because that’s the important thing, sending messages….
Yes, sending messages and electing people who will make sure things get soooooooo bad that the masses finally come to their senses and elect Socialists.
What could possibly go wrong?
In case you missed it, Gore won in 2000; so maybe sometime in the second decade after the fact, you’ll assign blame for the outcome of that election where it belongs with SCOTUS and stop your inappropriate DFH bashing.
And for the record before you draw an incorrect conclusion, I voted for Gore in 2000.
Me too. I can’t stand Nader. Not for splitting the vote. I just dislike Nader, the man. But I defend now and forever the right of anyone to vote for him or George Bush or the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan (Joe Walsh?) for that matter. No party owns anyone’s vote. They have to earn them every time.
I don’t know you and you certainly don’t know me or my family at all–but let’s just say that I don’t think I need to provide my hippie bona fides in order to think that people who thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush were idiots. I don’t consider that to be hippie bashing as the main promoters of that nonsense were not hippies.
Now as to the question of voting for Nader–there are a lot of Nader organization alums (myself included) who will tell you that he abuses his workers (many of us were broke, sick, and disillusioned by the time we left) and has engaged in some incredibly shady financial and employment actions. I don’t want him anywhere near the white house. He is completely unfit for public office.
In terms of FL–the fact that it was so close made it much easier to steal. This is always the case. Ask anyone who is involved in voter protection. And why do I need to stop the blame at the Supreme Court? Should I not also blame FL election officials? How about the police who set up blockades to prevent Dem voters from getting to the polls? The machines? The long lines in Dem precincts? May I blame them too or have you determined that I can only blame the Justices who ruled on Bush v. Gore? It is my opinion that there were many factors including the 97,000 voters who chose Nader in FL thereby making it much easier to steal that election. I also think that the constant Gore bashing and false equivalency from the left greatly diminished enthusiasm before the election.
I responded to your comment — which apparently wasn’t exactly honest.
The fact remains that even with all the voter suppression, vote rigging, “butterfly ballot,” and those 97,000 voters that preferred Nader over Gore or Bush in FL 2000 (or maybe chose to vote at all instead of abstaining), Gore won – both the popular and electoral vote. Bush/Cheney had preassembled a legal team to contest a popular vote win and electoral college loss — they had to rejigger it after the results they expected didn’t materialize, fully aware that they couldn’t survive a legitimate recount in FL. So really there is but one entity to blame for the outcome. — all the rest is interesting but irrelevant.
In 2000 and today I like Gore. But I also appreciated Nader’s argument in 2000 and am not convinced that he was wrong. I was merely willing to give Gore and the Democratic Party another chance to prove that they were different. Felt the same in 2008. So far they are failing but it’s not so obvious since the GOP has gone completely bonkers.
I’m sorry that you had to experience first hand how abusive fringe political groups can be. Big fish in small ponds tend to be unpleasant. They also lack the skills and charisma of successful politicians but are happy enough when some will put them on a pedestal anyway.
“all the rest is interesting but irrelevant.”
This is one of the dumbest comments I have ever read–seriously one of the dumbest.
If there hadn’t been voter suppression, culling of the voter lists, problems with machines, long lines, and the 97,000 votes for Nader it wouldn’t have been close enough to even be heard at the Supreme Court. That was an extraordinary occurrence only made possible because the vote was so close.
Do you honestly think that there is not voter suppression, culling of voter lists, tampering with machines and all sorts of other shenanigans in every single election? The key is to make sure that our turnout and our margin of victory is greater than the attempts to steal the election. This is always the case. It was the same in 2004, 2008 and 2012. In 2012 it is estimated that we lost over a million and a half votes and I would bet that this number is far too low.
If Gore hadn’t run such a lousy campaign, FL wouldn’t have been close enough for the vote rigging and voter suppression actions of Jeb! to have been good enough to make it close. Of course that was as irrelevant as all the vote rigging and voter suppression once the voting ended. As were the thousands of votes that Gore lost due to the butterfly ballot. None of that could be replayed or corrected. Therefore, wrt the outcome of the 2000, it was a huge distraction not to limit the public discussion to simply counting the votes in accordance with the law. And that’s where team Gore really screwed up. First in calling for manual recounts limited to counties that they thought would garner more votes for Gore. (And even allowed a bunch of GOP thugs to shut down that manual count in Dade County.) And second, no assets on the ground in all counties to insure that the legally mandated machine recount was conducted appropriately. You realize that there were counties that never did that recount don’t you?
The Florida Supreme Court rescued team Gore from its blunders. Then after having been rejected by a federal district and appeals court, the Supreme Court chose to grant cert to Bush in Bush v. Gore, a suit filed before team Gore’s legal actions in FL. And appallingly stayed the decision of the FL Supreme Court.
Loathe Nader all you want — you seem to have good personal reasons for doing so — but transferring that loathing to 97,000 people that chose to vote for him is presumptuous and arrogant. And maybe, just maybe, they were better informed about all the dreadful legislation championed by Clinton that was indistinguishable from what Republicans supported.
MomSense: “Every “progressive” idiot who thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush forgot about the destruction that the SCOTUS can do.”
After a number of exchanges, Marie2: “Loathe Nader all you want — you seem to have good personal reasons for doing so — but transferring that loathing to 97,000 people that chose to vote for him is presumptuous and arrogant. And maybe, just maybe, they were better informed about all the dreadful legislation championed by Clinton that was indistinguishable from what Republicans supported.”
Well, there we go- MomSense wins.
In the initial comment which began their discussion MomSense said nothing about “Nader-voting” idiots. And for good reason, I believe- there were plenty of “progressive” idiots who didn’t bother to vote at all in 2000 because they were fooled into believing there were no difference between the parties, or between Bush and Gore. In addition to the many voter suppression efforts in Florida and elsewhere, no-shows at the polls were a vital ingredient in the brew that created the final result. Turnout in 2000 was the second-lowest for a Presidential election since 1924. That wasn’t all due to suppression.
Then, this final statement just made me laugh. Look how Marie2 tries to shift the conversation from the very specific issue MomSense started with regarding Supreme Court appointments to a speculative, unprovable assertion that potential Gore voters were demobilized by “dreadful legislation championed by Clinton”. No, no, the goalposts don’t get moved onto another field like that.
Then Marie2 really seals the deal by condescending like crazy, essentially claiming that those who didn’t vote for Gore because they felt he was unworthy of defending and expanding the liberal/progressive movement “were better informed” than other voters.
Really, could there be a better example of counterproductive “progressive” attitudes and actions than this? That was MomSense’s original point exactly.
First, if one must single out some group of voters in FL 2000 and call them idiots, it would be more appropriate to assign that to the 5,330 Palm Beach voters that spoiled their ballots voting for Gore and Buchanan or the estimated 2,900 that intended to vote for Gore but voted for Buchanan. Second, why restrict the blame to Nader voters in Florida? Florida would have been irrelevant if Gore had captured but a third of the NH Nader voters.
Second, exactly how many Americans learned about and remembered those times when the SCOTUS was truly destructive? Can’t forget what one never knew.
Third, assuming that those selected “idiots” should know and remember what precious few voters ever knew, they should have also been able to project the SCOTUS vacancies to come 2001-2004. And there were exactly how many? Oh, that’s right ZERO. But let’s not let facts get in the way of DFH bashing.
I never restricted “progressive idiots” to Nader voters in Florida–you went to Nader voters on your own.
Makes sense to me.
I love this
Also: Fuck Scalia!
The 5 conservative male justices are well aware that our permanently paralyzed Congress is never going to pass a (revised and weakened) section 5 once they strike it down. That’s the whole point.
Their ruling will be effectively permanent, whatever the “theory” of our supposed democracy.
I suppose one could create a real riff on the Old South, Uncle Clarence, the Conservative Plantation and cruel Massa Scalia, but I think I’ll decline…
The Voting Rights Act will be struck down, this has been known for some time and there is absolutely no coherent legal argument for doing so. It is just another reminder that our Supreme Court is no longer a “court” in any sense of precedents and reasoned doctrines, but simply a collection of 5 conservative male activists masquerading as “justices” doing exactly what they want. Amazingly, the law always turns out to be exactly what a conservative activist would wish it to be. Remarkable!
Our Supreme Court is now a laughing stock as a legal institution and a dispenser of justice, and has no standing in the rest of the world. In its current guise it is clearly is a rightwing partisan institution that consistently rules to advance “conservative” political interests and corporate/plutocrat interests.
The 5 “conservative” justices have an agenda that is hostile to democratic values, and has been for quite some time, starting with Bush v Gore, where 5 Repubs bent over backward to ensure that the popularly elected candidate was not seated. This was followed by rulings permitting any and all state gerrymandering and allowing states to demand photo ID at polls even when the stated goal of the law was to reduce minority voting. And of course the 5 conservatives ruled in Citizens United that corporate CEOs have a constitutional right to use corporate treasuries to throw any state or federal election they wish. And there will be more rulings like this to come, the “conservatives” are in complete control and there is nothing that can be done about that now.
The “conservatives” can see that the Repub party needs to be given structural benefits to enable it to rig elections and unfairly prevail, and the majority is committed to aiding the Repub Party regain political control, whatever the harm to “democracy”, which is a nasty word to them. Today’s conservatives are not about protecting democracy. Far from it.
So tossing out one of the greatest accomplishments of our democratic society and history—Congressional power to require racist state legislatures to grant equal voting rights—is par for the course for these democracy hating turds. That a (Repub!) Congress re-authorized this law in 2006 almost without dissent is meaningless for these inconceivably activist “judges”.
The time is long past to start blowing the whistle on what the 5 “conservative” males are pulling, and trying to impress on the braindead public that this is the “Court” that you get when you elect Repub presidents.
Thirty years ago, the Old South became Real America, and vice versa.
The rest of us who aren’t God-blessed to live there just have to take our fake-America lumps I guess.
I knew there was a problem when I saw Confederate battle flags decorating the windows of pickups in the high school parking lots of the same Maine towns where one male in six or seven never came back from the Civil War…..
How about we lock Scalia in a room and apply everything up to but short of a 2nd Amendment solution to convince him of his errors?
I doubt anything else will work.
Except to simply outvote again and again the know nothings who keep that crap thinking in power.
Wow, you’re going all Gitmo over the senile Opus Dei justice.
I do my part in voting; it just doesn’t seem to have any results.
Well neither you or I will get him in a room to share a cupcake or go Gitmo on him.
All we can do is vote and do everything we can to make sure our side gets at least one more vote every time.
What the hell? What about the 15th Amendment? Are they just ignoring it? What am I missing?
Scalia met no opposition from the committee. The full Senate debated Scalia’s nomination only briefly, and he was confirmed 98-0 on September 17, 1986.
If he could, that racist muthafucka would reinstitute slavery.
There have been slave catchers like him for forever and a day, BooMan
Holy shit, even for Uncle Ruckus that was pretty harsh hatred for his heritage.
Yet, it doesn’t appear possible that Clarence’s own self-loathing could be any less. Maybe a young Clarence treated himself to “Blazing Saddles”, watched the moment at 2:05 in the clip linked below, and thought wistfully, “if only I could scrub my skin light!”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcokL59jeqU
By the way, I just fully digested one of the main stories Thomas tells in order to explain his opposition to affirmative action: after getting his degree from Yale Law School, he interviewed with prospective firms. He felt they treated his degree with skepticism, based on his interpretation that the firms dismissed him as just another affirmative action case. He ended up claiming that he felt his Yale degree was worthless.
I swear to God, the psychodrama someone is living out when they experience such racism (accepting his word, which I only do for the purposes of this consideration) and decide in response that it’s affirmative action that’s the problem, not institutionalized prejudice?
The mind reels.