President Obama will try again to close Gitmo.
Also, the president backs the way the FBI handled the Boston bombers.
Victims ID’d in Afghanistan cargo plane crash.
Witnesses and satellite photos show extent of Nigerian massacre.
It’s Markey vs. Gomez in Massachusetts primary for the Senate.
FDA says morning-after pill safe for 15 and up.
The Tony nominations are out. (Missed again.)
R.I.P. Deanna Durbin, 91, film star of the ’40′s.
The Tigers beat the Twins 6-1.
Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.
If you are looking for a prime example of fetid racism masquerading as legal opinion emanating from the highest court in the land, I present Antonin Scalia and his views on the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Antonin Scalia this week escalated his criticism of the Voting Rights Act ahead of a Supreme Court decision expected within the next two months — raising the likelihood that he and perhaps a majority of justices will overturn the landmark law.
Speaking on Monday night at the University of California’s Washington Center, in D.C, Scalia described a centerpiece of the 1965 law as an “embedded” form of “racial preferment,” in remarks captured by the Wall Street Journal. He reportedly warned that the law would be reauthorized into perpetuity unless the courts invalidate it.
The Supreme Court is poised to rule on the constitutionality of the Voting Right Act’s Section 5, which requires state and local governments with a history of racial discrimination to receive federal pre-approval before changing their voting laws. Civil rights advocates warn that portion of the law is key to protecting minorities from discrimination.
During oral arguments in the case, Shelby County v. Holder, in late February, Scalia said that portion of the law — and its repeated renewal by Congress — reflects a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” The other conservatives justices were also deeply skeptical that Section 5 of the law remains valid given the changing times.
On Monday, Scalia also characterized the law as unfair because federal law doesn’t make similar efforts to protect whites from racial discrimination, according to the Journal.
The “emergency response” to the situation he’s referring to — the systemic denial of equal rights to citizens — had been embedded, so to speak, in the laws and traditions of this nation since its founding. And given the recent attempts by Republicans in the several states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and of course the remnants of the Confederacy, the emergency still exists.
But as far as he is concerned, it’s the white men in this country who are in danger of losing their place at the top of the heap.
North Carolina won’t have a state religion after all. Well, at least not this year. Yet.
North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis’ office said Thursday that a resolution asserting North Carolina has the power to set an official state religion is dead, and won’t go any further.
The resolution, filed by two Republicans from Rowan County, declared “each state is sovereign and may independently determine how the state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion” – thereby claiming the federal government and courts have no authority to decide what is constitutional.
The bill’s primary sponsors were Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, a tea party member. Eleven other legislators signed the resolution. Legislators introduce hundreds or even thousands of resolutions every year, honoring constituents or declaring their stances on issues, but they carry little legal weight.
Warren said in a statement that the bill was only intended to allow Rowan County officials to open their meetings with prayer, not to establish a state religion.
Instead, they’ve turned their attention to another GOP obsession (no, not gay sex): voter suppression.
A bill filed in the state Senate Tuesday would carry a tax penalty for parents whose children register to vote at their college address.
Senate Bill 667, known as “Equalize Voter Rights,” would remove the tax exemption for dependents who register to vote at any address other than their parents’ home.
“If the voter is a dependent of the voter’s parent or legal guardian, is 18 years of age or older and the voter has registered at an address other than that of the parent or legal guardian, the parent or legal guardian will not be allowed to claim the voter as a dependent for state income tax purposes,” the bill says.
The measure would affect only state income tax, so it wouldn’t have much effect on out-of-state students. But it could effectively cut student voting in counties like Watauga and Orange, where college voters have been a key part of the Democratic Party’s dominance.
The bill would also require voters to have their vehicles registered at the same address as their voter registration. That also could cut down on college student registration, since many students maintain their vehicle registration in their home counties.
Between state-mandated Christianity and tax hikes to punish college-age voters and their families, the Republicans in North Carolina sure have a strange view of smaller government and freedom. Apparently it only applies to white straight Christian men.
President Obama heads to the Middle East.
Seven Marines killed in Nevada training exercise.
Rescue workers reach 19 trapped miners in Poland.
Cyprus bailout deal collapses over taxing savings.
Computer networks crashed in South Korea.
The assault weapons ban is out of the gun control bill in the Senate.
South Carolina — Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert Busch get primary wins for Congress.
It looks like the vote-rigging plans of some folks in the GOP aren’t getting very far. Virginia’s plan didn’t make it out of committee, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a “real concern” about plans in his state to change the way electoral votes are counted.
I’m pretty sure the only reason they’re backing away from it is because other people like us found out about it and raised a stink. If they could do it without being caught, they’d do it without hesitation.
Josh Marshall explains why the Republicans’ plan in Virginia to re-wire the Electoral College system is a very big deal.
The US electoral college system is based on winner take all delegate allocation in all but two states. If you get just one more vote than the other candidate you get all the electoral votes. One way to change the system is go to proportional allocation. That would still give some advantage to the overall winner. But not much. The key to the Republican plan is to do this but only in Democratic leaning swing states — not in any of the states where Republicans win. That means you take away all the advantage Dems win by winning states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and so forth.
But the Republican plan goes a step further.
Rather than going by the overall vote in a state, they’d allocate by congressional district. And this is where it gets real good, or bad, depending on your point of view. Democrats are now increasingly concentrated in urban areas and Republicans did an extremely successful round of gerrymandering in 2010, enough to enable them to hold on to a substantial House majority even though they got fewer votes in House races than Democrats.
In other words, the new plan is to make the electoral college as wired for Republicans as the House currently is. But only in Dem leaning states. In Republican states just keep it winner take all. So Dems get no electoral votes at all.
Another way of looking at this is that the new system makes the votes of whites count for much more than non-whites — which is a helpful thing if you’re overwhelmingly dependent on white votes in a country that is increasingly non-white.
This all sounds pretty crazy. But it gets even crazier when you see the actual numbers. Here’s a very illustrative example. They’re already pushing a bill to do this in the Virginia legislature. Remember, Barack Obama won Virginia and got 13 electoral votes. But as Benjy Sarlin reported today in a series of posts, if the plan now being worked on would have been in place last November, Mitt Romney would have lost the state but still got 9 electoral votes to Obama’s 4. Think of that, two-thirds of the electoral votes for losing the state. If the Virginia plan had been in place across the country, as Republicans are now planning to do, Mitt Romney would have been elected president even though he lost by more than 5 million votes.
They will do this. Count on it. And the possibility of it changing the next election so that the loser wins is very likely.
What further proof do you need that there are people in that party who will do anything — anything — to win and then serve up a lecture of pious patriotism about how anyone who questions the true destiny of America at the hands of the only party that really cares about freedom and liberty is a terrorist or something.
As Josh says, this is happening.
After their vote earlier this week to re-draw the districts of the state, the Virginia legislature is on the verge of voting to change the way their Electoral College votes to favor Republicans.
Legislation that would apportion Virginia’s electoral votes by the winner of each congressional district, instead of the current winner-take-all system, emerged from a Senate subcommittee today without a recommendation.
[...]
Critics of the legislation, this time around mostly Democrats, have labeled the bill and others like it “sore losers bills” considering the victory of President Barack Obama in the commonwealth in 2012.
The new same old GOP mantra: If you can’t win honestly, then cheat.
Rachel Maddow has been all over this story.
Further updating the Republicans’ plans to steal more elections:
In a classic Kinsley gaffe, the Republican State Leadership Committee released a report boasting that the only reason the GOP controls the House of Representatives is because they gerrymandered congressional districts in blue states.
The RSLC’s admission came in a shockingly candid report entitled, “How a Strategy of Targeting State Legislative Races in 2010 Led to a Republican U.S. House Majority in 2013″. It details how the group spent $30 million in the 2010 election cycle to sweep up low-cost state legislature races in blue states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Their efforts were so successful, in fact, that Republicans went from controlling both legislative chambers in 14 states before Election Day to 25 states afterward.
In turn, the new Republican majorities would be tasked with redrawing congressional districts for the 2012 election. “The rationale was straightforward,” the report reads. “Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn.”
In Virginia, they’re not even waiting. Yesterday, while a Democratic member of the legislature was in Washington for the inauguration, the Republicans pushed a plan through the state senate that would mandate a re-drawing of districts in their favor.
The state Senate is split 20-20 between Republicans and Democrats. On Monday, while state Sen. Henry Marsh (D) — a 79-year-old civil rights veteran — was reportedly in Washington to attend President Obama’s second inaugural, GOP senators forced through a mid-term redistricting plan that Democrats say will make it easier for Republicans to gain a majority.
With Marsh’s absence, Senate Republicans in Richmond had one more vote than Senate Democrats and could push the measure through. The new redistricting map revises the districts created under the 2011 map and would take effect before the next state Senate elections in Virginia and would redraw district lines to maximize the number of safe GOP seats.
The move was a surprise to just about everyone, including Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell who has not yet pledged to endorse the new district lines, which must now go through the GOP-controlled House of Delegates and finally across McDonnell’s desk before final approval.
Classy; very classy.
The last two presidential elections showed the Republicans that their ideas and candidates are having a tough time winning a majority of the American electorate. The simple solution would be to come up with better ideas and more palatable candidates. So far, though, their solution has make it harder for people to vote with phony scare tactics about voter fraud and gerrymandering districts, sometimes house by house, so that even if the Democrats win the majority of the votes in the state, the GOP still wins the Congressional district.
Now they’re working on a way to fix it so that even the presidential election is rigged in their favor.
The RNC chair is encouraging Republican governors and legislators—who, thanks to the “Republican wave” election of 2010, still control many battleground states that backed Obama and the Democrats in 2012—to game the system.
“I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue [Democratic in presidential politics] that are fully controlled red [in the statehouse] ought to be considering,” Priebus says with regard to the schemes for distributing electoral votes by district rather than the traditional awarding of the votes of each state (except Nebraska and Maine, which have historically used narrowly defined district plans) to the winner.
Pennsylvania — the state that has already been to court over its voter ID law that was supposed to “guarantee the election for Mitt Romney” — is thinking about it, as are several other states like Ohio and Virginia, both of which were won by Barack Obama in the last two elections. (It goes without saying that something will be in the works here in Florida. They’ve got nothing better to do.)
Democracy: it was fun while it lasted.
