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By Brad Friedman on 9/3/2013 6:05am PT  

Note 1: Pardon the herky-jerky Skype web cam video.

Note 2: The BRAD BLOG article about Eric Holder that I believe my friend Mike Papantonio cited during our conversation, was actually written by our legal analyst Ernest Canning. But, of course, I'm proud to stand behind it 100%! Just wanted to give credit where due.

Note 2a: There are several different issues currently in court between TX and the DoJ, and they get a bit conflated during my conversation with Pap. One issue is the filing by the DoJ asking the court to order that the state of Texas be added, or "bailed in", to the list of jurisdictions requiring federal preclearance for all new voting-related laws, given their history of purposeful discrimination with such laws. The current list of jurisdictions is now empty, since the U.S. Supreme Court killed the Voting Rights Act formula used to determine who should be on that list. The other TX/DoJ case we discuss is the DoJ's suit to block the TX GOP's disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction. That law, though it was found discriminatory in 2012 by both the DoJ and a federal court, was re-enacted by TX immediately after SCOTUS gutted the VRA. The DoJ, and other parties, are now suing to block it under the still-existing Section 2 of the VRA, as well as on Constitutional grounds. (We hope to have more details on the lawsuits against the TX GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction law soon. And, I'll add, our coverage should offer some pretty encouraging news for voting rights advocates who, unlike Ernest Canning, may not have dug into all the legal details and already-established facts of the case. --- UPDATE: That article is now here, and offers some very encouraging news indeed about the likelihood that the TX Photo ID law is already doomed in court!)

Note 3: Enjoy!

* * *
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PLUS: EFF's Trevor Timm on FISA Court and the U.S. Secrecy State...
By Brad Friedman on 8/28/2013 8:20pm PT  

What was the one, most important takeaway from today and Saturday's 50th Anniversary commemoration of MLK's "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom"? The one issue that seemed to make it into the remarks of just about everyone who spoke?

That's what we discussed during the first part of today's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, along with sound clip highlights from some of the most notable speakers. (Hint: If you didn't hear the fiery remarks of Rep. John Lewis --- the youngest speaker at the original 1963 remarks --- on Saturday, you'll now get to hear them in full.)

In the second part of the show, we were joined by Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation to discuss the release of the secret FISA Court's 2011 decision finding the government had misled the court multiple times, and collected the emails of tens of thousands of Americans not involved in terrorism in any way; and about the massive secrecy state we discussed in The BRAD BLOG's special investigative report this week.

Also, Desi Doyen joined us as usual with the latest Green News Report, the one with one of my favorite all-time endings! Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...




By Brad Friedman on 8/27/2013 7:26pm PT  

Warren Rojas at Roll Call reported some encouraging news yesterday.

Jason Thigpen, a rookie Republican candidate for the U.S. House in North Carolina, is swimming against the GOP tide. He is describing the state's new voter suppression law --- passed on party lines by a super-majority Republican legislature and signed by the state's new Republican Governor --- for what it is: a "turd" meant to keep legal voters (certain ones, the ones who tend to vote for Democrats) from casting their legal vote.

He's also been able to see through the GOP/Fox "News" smokescreen about the facts in regard to in-person impersonation polling place voter fraud, namely, that it is virtually non-existent.

We've called NC's new law the worst voter suppression law since the Jim Crow era. But Thigpen, described as a "political newcomer looking to unseat Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC)" in next year's primary, was even far more direct than that...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




50 years later, the message remains...And so does this man's sign!...
By Brad Friedman on 8/24/2013 2:42pm PT  




By Brad Friedman on 8/23/2013 6:05am PT  

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Texas under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The complaint was filed in hopes of blocking the state's polling place Photo ID restriction law, newly re-enacted by TX Attorney General Greg Abbott just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the very heart of the VRA (the Section 4 formula used to determine jurisdictions covered by its Section 5 preclearance requirements for new voting laws) last June.

How did the TX AG respond to the DoJ suit?

Here is the very first line of Abbott's embarrassing website response to it posted yesterday...

AUSTIN --- “Just days after the U.S. Department of Justice arrested a Texas woman for illegally voting five times in the same election, the Obama administration is suing to stop Texas’ commonsense voter ID law. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws do not suppress legal votes, but do help prevent illegal votes. Voter IDs have nothing to do with race and they are free to anyone who needs one.

Ya know what else "Voter IDs have nothing to do with"? The absentee ballot fraud committed by the woman cited by Greg Abbott above in the very first line of his response to the DoJ!

Here (courtesy of Ryan Reilly) is the very first page of the indictment against the woman cited by Abbott as a reason why the state needs their polling place Photo ID restriction law. [Red circle added for TX AGs who may have trouble reading their own legal filings]...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Offer new opportunity for AG Holder to make good on promise to use 'every tool' at his disposal to fight discriminatory voting laws...
UPDATE: DoJ filed suit today, seeking to block TX Photo ID Law...
By Ernest A. Canning on 8/22/2013 12:54pm PT  

Last week, civil rights groups filed two lawsuits in a North Carolina U.S. District Court, seeking to block what Brad Friedman aptly described as "the most extreme anti-voter bill passed by any state since the Jim Crow Era."

The Tar Heel State has a sordid history of official discrimination, a history that includes 30 successful challenges to discriminatory voting laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) over the past 30 years. Until the recent Republican takeover of the state, NC had become somewhat more progressive in the area of election law, even allowing for same day registration and voting which is lacking in even most of the more progressive states in the union.

Then, everything changed. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed a sweeping new election "reform" bill. The breadth the new law is unprecedented. It targets "nearly every aspect of the voting process," according to one of the new lawsuits. Both complaints allege that the newly minted Voter Information Verification Act ("VIVA" aka HB 589) reflects nothing less than a deliberate, racially-motivated attempt to deprive African-Americans of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

The two federal lawsuits are NAACP v. McCrory [PDF] and League of Women Voters v. North Carolina [PDF].

The League also filed a separate legal challenge in state court, Currie v. North Carolina [PDF]. The state case alleges that VIVA’s polling place Photo ID restrictions violate the NC Constitution, which treats voting as a "fundamental right." (A legal analysis of the state challenge will be covered in a subsequent article).

Earlier this Summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court carved out the very heart of the federal Voting Right Act with their 5 to 4 Shelby County v. Holder decision, they acknowledged that their ruling "in no way affects the permanent nationwide ban on racial discrimination." The controversial decision rejected the formula established by Congress in the VRA's Section 4, used to identify jurisdictions to be covered by the Act's Section 5 requirement for those covered jurisdictions to receive preclearance from the DoJ or a U.S. District Court before enacting any new election-related laws. The SCOTUS decision did not, however, eliminate the right of individuals, civil rights organizations, or the DoJ to file lawsuits seeking to block discriminatory laws under the VRA's Section 2, which bars discrimination in all 50 states.

Therefore, the new federal lawsuits filed in NC do not, and need not, challenge the Shelby County decision. Their factual allegations, however, suggest that Chief Justice John Roberts was in grave error when asserting, on behalf of the Court's right-wing majority, that "the conditions that originally justified [Section 5 preclearance] no longer characterize voting in covered jurisdictions"...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 8/19/2013 2:35pm PT  

* * *

P.S. Yes, I'm safely out of the mountains and just now beginning to get caught up with --- and make sense of --- the mountains of stuff that I very happily missed over the past week.




By Brad Friedman on 8/10/2013 9:05am PT  

With these 300 fraudulent votes created by one Republican candidate alone, that's 300 more fraudulent votes than have ever been created by ACORN or anybody who has ever worked for them.

But, of course, you're unlikely to hear that, or even this story itself, from the tenacious Fox "News" "voter fraud special investigative unit" or the GOP clowns who help them disinform American voters.

From Nick Wing at Huffington Post...

In the midst of his 2012 GOP primary campaign for a Massachusetts state House seat, Jack Villamaino changed the party affiliation of nearly 300 people in his town of East Longmeadow. Days later, the same number of absentee ballot requests were dropped off at the town clerk’s office, a list that was almost a “name-for-name match” for those whose registration information Villamaino had altered.

Earlier this week, Villamaino pleaded guilty to felony charges of stealing ballots and changing the party affiliation of 280 Democrats during his campaign for state representative. A judge sentenced him to a year in jail, only four months of which he'll be forced to serve behind bars.

The remainder of that sentence will be suspended, and Villamaino will also be required to serve a year of probation.

According to the article, "Villamaino, a former East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen chairman who resigned last year amid the scandal, ultimately lost his Republican primary, and the GOP candidate subsequently lost to the Democrat in the race."

Three very quick points of note here...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 8/8/2013 5:05pm PT  

From UC Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen's blog last night...

Only in America

Texas defends itself against claims it discriminated against minority voters by claiming it discriminated against Democrats (p. 19):

DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats. It is perfectly constitutional for a Republican-controlled legislature to make partisan districting decisions, even if there are incidental effects on minority voters who support Democratic candidates.

Lovely, Texas.

Our own Ernie Canning covered the DoJ's recent federal court filing seeking to require preclearance for all new election laws in Texas, given their recent history of racial discrimination in election-related laws. The move by DoJ comes on the heels of the Supreme Court's June decision in Shelby County v. Holder which otherwise tossed out the list of racially discriminating jurisdictions (Texas had been one of them) previously covered by the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance requirement.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog offers a very good summary of both the case and Texas' response filed this week.

Hasen characterizes the Texas response as an "overreach" in their attempt to hide behind the Shelby County decision. However, Hasen also cautions that the Texas argument "could well find a receptive audience at the Supreme Court." And, I should also mention, the final paragraph of Hasen's article is chilling.

* * *
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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 8/8/2013 3:49pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record breaking weather extremes are the new normal; Surprise! 'Conservative' media disinforms the public; Fossil fuel industry showers Republicans with campaign cash; Seattle's community solar; PLUS: The FATBERG that threatened London ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Wisconsin Republican becomes unlikely champion of voting rights, in direct contrast with his own party's shameful leadership...
By Brad Friedman on 8/5/2013 2:51pm PT  

[This article cross-published by Salon...]

Full Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG has not been shy in calling out Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) for some fairly outrageous stuff over the years.

Who can forget, for example, the time when, as Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2005, he shut down the microphones and lights in the middle of an oversight hearing on the PATRIOT Act when he did not approve of the testimony offered by witnesses called by Democrats?

It was outrageous, it was inappropriate, and we reported it as such at the time, just as we did in 2011 when, in a bit of déjà vu, he similarly shut down a town hall event in WI after protesters there expressed outrage over the Republicans' radical anti-union law recently adopted in the state.

So it is with much sincerity and great appreciation that we "call him out" today, not for outrageous behavior, but for his outspoken and unwavering support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, after the very heart of that landmark civil rights legislation has been violently carved out by a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




But what it is ain't exactly clear...
By Brad Friedman on 8/1/2013 6:05am PT  

On this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, I covered both the nation's most extreme voter suppression law in North Carolina (and the facts behind its passage) and the precedent setting verdict in the Bradley Manning case.

But at the heart of it all is something else --- a primal, patriot scream perhaps, as exemplified by the arrest of 83-year old Robert Plummer, Jr. at the state capitol in NC last week (Plummer is a Korean War hero who was also arrested on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Martin Luther King on Bloody Sunday in Selma, AL during the 1965 march for voting rights, and by the arrests of 80- and 85-year old Joan and Tom Kemble for singing in the Wisconsin state capitol in the same dark week.

The Kembles joined me live on the show to talk about their arrests at the daily sing-along that has been going on every day since Gov. Scott Walker's radical anti-union bill was passed two years ago, and to sing a song or two before their next trip to the pokey for peacefully singing in protest to petition their government for redress of grievances. (Please help all of the WI arrestees pay their legal bills and fines at SolidaritySingAlong.org!)

As usual, there was much more, including Desi Doyen and the latest Green News Report, in between. I hope you'll give it a listen. I think you'll enjoy it.

Download MP3 or listen online below...




Files papers seeking requirement of federal preclearance for voting laws in TX, promises similarly aggressive action elsewhere...
By Ernest A. Canning on 7/29/2013 1:47pm PT  

The Department of Justice (DoJ) will not idly remain on the sidelines as the GOP seeks to illegally game the electoral system in the wake of what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder referred to as the "deeply disappointing and flawed" Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

That decision, which carved out the very heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by finding unconstitutional the formula used to determine which jurisdictions with a long history of racial discrimination are required to "pre-clear" new election laws with the federal government before they can be enacted, has been a dramatic "setback", as Holder described it, to the voting rights movement, and has even proven to be a great leap forward for vote suppressors.

But, in a speech last week to the National Urban League Conference in Philadelphia, Holder signaled his intentions to fight back against the activist Court:

I have already directed the Department’s Civil Rights Division to shift resources to the enforcement of a number of federal voting laws not affected by the Supreme Court’s decision --- including the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act [VRA], prohibiting voting discrimination based on race, color, or language.

And today I am announcing that the Justice Department will ask a federal court in Texas to subject the State of Texas to a preclearance regime similar to the one required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act...based on the evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented last year in the redistricting case, Texas v. Holder – as well as the history of pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities that the Supreme Court itself has recognized – we believe that the State of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices.

The DoJ then promptly filed a July 25, 2013 "Statement of Interest" in Perez v. Texas, a federal court case challenging the imposition of new Congressional redistricting maps in the wake of the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, despite the fact that both the DoJ and a panel of federal judges nixed the same map last year after it was found to have been purposefully discriminatory just last year.

The DoJ argued in its filing last week that, because the evidence presented both in Perez and in Texas v. United States, revealed intentional violations of the 14th and 15th amendments in the redistricting schemes at issue, the court should impose a ten year preclearance requirement upon the State of Texas as an equitable remedy available pursuant to Section 3(c) of the VRA.

In short, while SCOTUS gutted the VRA's existing Section 4 formula for determining jurisdictions to be covered by Section 5 pre-clearance requirements, it left Section 3, which allows for jurisdictions to be added or "bailed in" to the list of those subject to preclearance intact. The DoJ now wants Texas added to the list of such jurisdictions.

It is of critical importance to note, however, that Holder's Urban League speech made clear that his intentions of pushing back were neither limited to Texas nor to Section 3.

"This is the Department’s first action to protect voting rights following the Shelby County decision, but it will not be our last," Holder vowed.

He then stated (emphasis added): "My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against discrimination wherever it is found."

As observed by University of California Irvine Law Prof. Rick Hasen, Holder's pledge to have the DoJ "use whatever tools it has remaining in its arsenal to protect minority voting rights" is "a big deal."

It's a "big deal" not just because of the creative use of Section 3 in Perez, but also because the DoJ is joining a case originally brought "under Section 2 of the [VRA] to enforce the guarantees of the [14th & 15th] Amendments against racial discrimination in voting." The DoJ's actions here suggests that they are finally prepared to add the power and resources of the federal government to legal efforts to protect the right to vote that had been primarily made during the last election cycle by privately-funded, public interest groups like the ACLU and League of Women Voters...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




UPDATE: Arrestee identified as Korean War hero, also arrested in 1965 Selma, AL voting rights march with Martin Luther King...
By Brad Friedman on 7/27/2013 6:25pm PT  

So this is what it's come to, North Carolina? Really?...

[Hat-tips @utbrp and @enmarshall.]

* * *

UPDATE 7/29/13: The arrestee seen above has now been identified, as 83-year old Robert Plummer, Jr. of Carthage NC. He is, according to We Act Radio, "a Korean War Vet who was one of the first African-American Navy UDT divers (AKA Frogmen, the precursors to the US Navy SEALs)."

When asked about his voting rights concerns in NC, as seen their video posted below, Plummer responds: "I am very despondent on that matter, because that's what I went to war for --- for protection of voting rights. And I can't see us going and saving democracy all over the world when our voting rights are being deteriorated right here in the United States."

He also says his arrest last week was not his first run in with the law. He says he was arrested on the Edmund Pettus bridge with Martin Luther King during the 1965 march for voting rights on Bloody Sunday in Selma, AL. Though, when asked for details by the reporter in the video, he demurred, saying, "I don't want to go back that far. I'm a young man!"

When asked if he was going to keep fighting for voting rights, he responded: "Most emphatically"...

* * *

UPDATE 7/30/2013: I've now spoken to Plummer, to invite him on to my radio show. Unfortunately, he has bible class tomorrow at his church, where he is a Deacon, and won't be able to join me. But he was an extraordinarily pleasant man, with a sharp sense of humor. He confirmed the information above, and added these thoughts during our conversation when I asked why he was willing to be arrested at the Capitol. His reply:

I'm willing to get arrested, because I can see the wheel is turning is turning in an opposite way. We were going in a progressive way, but now it's going backwards. It could still change if our legislators turn another way, and I may have to get real kind of biblical on them. On everything, unemployment, healthcare, voting rights the whole nine yards has been eroded so egregiously.

The good Lord is looking down on us, and saying "why?" And we have no pertinent answer to give to the Lord because we are all trying to abide by the mosiac of laws. Even though the ten commandments were supposed to have been changed with the crucifixion of Jesus, but still, I see a form a crucifixion being done on our poor, disabled, youth, and our middle class.

He also added, as he was looking up the phone number of his church for me on his iPad and his new "32gigabites iPhone", that he is "half way up to speed on what is going on," because, after all, he says, "I'm an old pirate, man."




U.S. Supreme Court gutting of Voting Rights Act paves way for radical new restrictions on democracy in Tar Heel State...
By Brad Friedman on 7/25/2013 11:49pm PT  

[This article now cross-published by Salon.]

Late Thursday night, the North Carolina state legislature approved a radical voter suppression bill on a party line vote. The measure, easily the most extreme anti-voter bill passed by any state since the Jim Crow Era, now heads to Republican Governor Pat McCrory for his signature. Court challenges, many of them, will most assuredly follow.

I discussed the Tar Heel State Republicans' horrendous voter suppression law as it moved through the state legislature earlier this week in an article focused on the public pushback against both it, and other radical laws being hurriedly enacted in the state while the Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the state house, as well as the Governorship there. It's the first time in 150 years that that has been the case, and the GOP is making all they can of it, voters be damned.

I also discussed the bill on this week's KPFK BradCast. But I want to highlight just how draconian this massive restriction on voting rights actually is in North Carolina, which, until the complete Republican takeover of the state government in 2012 (thanks to gerrymandering in 2010), had actually been a fairly progressive state by southeast standards, particularly in regard to voting laws.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent gutting of the important pre-clearance provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act --- the provision which had required states with histories of racial discrimination, like NC, to obtain federal approval before making any changes to voting laws --- NC and other states now "freed" from the yoke of not being able to discriminate, have been on a tear to pass discriminatory laws previously denied under the VRA.

NC has now done that in a way that no other state has yet even tried. They have, in essence, included in this bill every conceivable voter suppression tactic that has ever been dreamed up over the past decade by the Republican Party --- and then some.

UC Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen described the bill as "a nightmare for voting-rights advocates."

It includes draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions (despite any evidence of polling place impersonation in the state), shortens the early voting period and eliminates NC's very successful same-day voter registration program. "But," Hasen adds, "it’s also a laundry list of ways to make it harder for people to vote, and which cannot plausibly be justified on antifraud grounds."

Just take a look at the list of some of the other provisions including in this "nightmare" of an anti-democratic --- as well as anti-Democratic --- voter suppression bill...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




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