We weren’t going to bother with the John Roberts nomination at all. After all, if the Dems had given a damn about it, they should have thought of that last November and December and January when their leadership didn’t feel that the Presidential Election — which they had most likely won — was worth fighting for. They knew that anywhere from two to four seats on the Supreme Court would be opening up this Presidential term, but they and Senator No Surrender were apparently too chickenshit to fight for what was likely rightfully theirs.
So this Supreme Court nomination battle now was just a little too little, a little to late as far as we were concerned.
But now, it’s being reported today that Roberts was a foe of the Voting Rights Act. Whoops, he’s just ticked us off too, in that case!
According to today’s New York Times, Roberts was ardently against Congressional plans “to extend – and strengthen” the Voting Rights Act of 1965 back in the 80’s when he worked for the Reagan Administration. That extension eventually passed in the House by a 389 to 24 margin in 1981.
Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and civil rights leader who was severely beaten during the voting rights campaign of 1965, said he was troubled by Mr. Roberts’s writings from the 1980’s, as they have come to light in recent days. “I think the senators on both sides should really grill him on not just his commitment to the Voting Rights Act, but his understanding of what the fight was all about – the spirit of the act, not just the letter,” Mr. Lewis said.
We’d suggest folks listen to Lewis. He was there on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 and still has the dents in his skull to show for it. (And actually you can listen to both Lewis himself and Congressional Aide Burton Wides, who helped write much of the VRA legislation from 1970 on up through today — on this Saturday’s Special Edition of The BRAD SHOW to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the VRA on August 6th.)
The Times piece goes on to note:
In response, DNC Chair Howard Dean issued the following statement today:
So will the Dems really show up to fight this time? For some reason, we’re not holding our breath.
As mentioned, this Saturday is the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Rainbow/PUSH is holding a huge march and rally in Atlanta. If you’re anywhere near, please get there. We hope to have a live report from the rally on this Saturday’s show from BRAD BLOG perennial, Kira! But we’d also love to hear from anybody else who attends!
Oops – I accidentally posted this on another thread, but meant to put it here. It’s a good one and deserves a double post, anyway.
Voter ID and Fraud: Prove It
[snip] The Century Foundation’s Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform just released a report called Balancing Access and Integrity that makes a number of innovative recommendations for the states to follow in order to comply effectively and fairly with the Help American Vote Act of 2004 in upcoming federal elections. While states are likely to be receptive to many of the suggestions the group makes, in one area the working group is definitely swimming against the tide: the report flatly states that there is no reason for states to go beyond HAVA’s narrow provisions regarding the presentation of identification in order to vote.
Since the passage of that act many states have, in the name of fighting "fraud," plunged forward to enact stricter and stricter identification requirements for voting. Some 20 states now require all voters to present identification in order to cast a ballot—sometimes even mandating that it be a government issued photo identification. Yet the scholars of elections and election law involved in this group unanimously state that there is simply very scant evidence that such measures do anything to combat fraud. While the potential disenfranchising impacts of such requirements also need further study, the report points out that there is some anecdotal evidence that identification requirements serve to disenfranchise major segments of the voting population.
Since the publication of the report, some real data has started to materialize that supports these arguments.
For example, after practically every lawyer in the state scoured the land for fraudulent votes in Washington State because of the election litigation surrounding the gubernatorial race, only six cases of alleged double voting were found.
Similarly, in Ohio—perhaps the only other state to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as Washington—a statewide survey found that of the 9,078,728 votes cast in Ohio’s 2002 and 2004 general elections, a total of four were deemed as ineligible or "fraudulent" and found by the board of elections and county prosecutors to be legally actionable. [snip]
(ACVR, put that in your pipe and smoke it … )
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Robert Novak looked like a train wreck. I think he feels the heavy force of the law coming down on his ass.
Novak should have never co-operated with Rove and Libby, what he did amounts to straight up treason. It allowed a false war based on absolute lies, and bullshit to be carried out. The downing street meetings happened and Novak got paid off as a result.
No more of the lies, and oh we have **every right** to call a Grand Jury and investigate John Roberts. He is a liar, and if there was nothing to hide which is bullshit- They would hand over the documents. The documents need to be inspected, **PERIOD** No alternatives given. Why were the documents not handed over on Bolton’s involvement with DSM? Why did they REFUSE? Hand them over, or we’re going to tear down the wall.
Doug
Good Reason for Voting Rights Act Paranoia
Pacific News Service, Commentary,
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Aug 04, 2005
Editor’s Note: A long history of GOP efforts to deny the vote to African Americans has black America watching closely the debate over the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
**MORE**
Photo ID? How effective is that at stopping underage folk from getting into bars?
And why do we need a solution to a problem that apparently doesn’t exist?
Instead of solutions to problems that apparently do exist.
As for frustration with the Dems, boy do I feel that. I’ve been defending Kerry since the election, but no longer. Almost none of the Dems seem to give a d**n that our votes are being stolen, yet every chance they get they send me fundraising letters and emails.
Now, whenever I get those I send them back with the stipulation that when they start showing that they care about the sanctity of my vote, I’ll start showing that I care about their need for resources. Until then, what sense does it make for me to pour good money after bad?
Why don’t you demonstrate some integrity and post exactly what Roberts objected to in the legislation he opposed?
You make it sound as if he wants to deny the vote to blacks. Your blog is getting to be as bad as Limbaugh’s show, as far as spin goes.
Tell us what he said, specifically. Or would that be too difficult?
Petunia: How about this?
"Just 26 when he joined the Justice Department as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, Roberts was almost immediately entrusted to counsel senior department officials on such incendiary matters of the day as school desegregation, voting rules and government antidotes to bias in housing and hiring.
As a Justice Department lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr. backed limits on remedies for alleged bias. (By Melina Mara — The Washington Post)
Roberts Dossier: Key Documents
On Tuesday, July 19, President Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to be associate justice of the Supreme Court. John G. Roberts Jr., 50, has long been considered one of the Republicans’ heavyweights amid the largely Democratic Washington legal establishment. Roberts was appointed to the U.S……….
In prolific missives of a few pages and densely written 30-page legal memos, Roberts — who co-workers recall had primary responsibility for civil rights matters in his office — consistently sought to bolster the legal reasoning for the administration’s new stances and to burnish its presentation of the policies to Congress and the public."
STORY
Is that good enough for you? Does that possibly make it anymore clear!??
Doug E
Ummm Doug – if petunia had read Brads article and followed the links she could have answered her own question.
Funny how the righties always say "lefties don’t do research!" Ain’t it just too obvious they are Blame Shifters? This is elementary schoolyard bully tactic #1.
Typo correction: Brad’s article
Doug,
Are you that stupid? I asked for what Roberts actually said, not some vague summary from some vague source. You don’t have any idea what he said, as your post aptly demonstrates.
Just another idiot jumping on a bandwagon they know very little about.
Petunia,
Why don’t you read all the article before assuming things?
And by the way, **nobody can post what he said exactly** because nobody put the 30 pages of documents with his testimony on the internet.
Have they even been inspected? Has the senate even read all the documents?
Doug E.
Doug & all:
Roberts’ Past Involves Polarizing Cases
[snip] In one of the targeted cases, Rust v. Sullivan, Roberts co-authored a brief urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. In another, Roberts was the lead attorney in Metro Broadcasting Inc. v. FCC, maintaining that the government should not favor minorities in the awarding of broadcast licenses.
… Roberts’ criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his tenure as a White House lawyer during the Reagan administration has alarmed civil rights groups. The records in the Metro Broadcasting case, and two others involving school desegregation, could shed more light on his civil rights views.
In another case from Roberts’ service as deputy solicitor general, he helped win a ruling limiting appeals of inmates who claim they have new evidence of innocence. That matter is back before the Supreme Court, which will decide next year whether to loosen the standard and allow new DNA evidence.
…In one case, Roberts and other Bush lawyers argued that schools and school officials could not face damage lawsuits for sexual discrimination under Title IX. A unanimous Supreme Court disagreed.
**MORE**
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Coalition Calls on Senate to Grill Nominee on Newly Documented Views
"What we already know of Roberts’ record on civil rights is deeply troubling," said Nancy Zirkin, LCCR’s deputy director. "Americans want their Senators to ask the hard questions – and get meaningful answers – about where John Roberts stands on their basic individual rights and freedoms. But before our senators can do that, they need access to all requested documents."
**MORE**
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In regard to the following story: Wouldn’t gee-dubya’s reported drug habit put him in the same category as the large segment of the disenfranchised voting population who have been scrubbed from voter rolls because of felony drug convictions?
Locked Out of Democracy
Sasha Abramsky is a Senior Fellow at Demos , a national, nonpartisan public policy and advocacy organization based in New York. His book, Conned, on felon disenfranchisement will be published by The New Press in early 2006.
In the weeks since President Bush nominated John Roberts to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, civil rights groups have sounded alarm bells about the vulnerability of laws protecting legal abortion, affirmative action and environmental regulation.
There is another crucial American right that has, however, received scant attention: fair, universal access to the ballot box. Sure, a smattering of articles have looked at memos the young Roberts wrote back in the early 1980’s urging a limited interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Civil rights organizations, progressives and Democratic politicians have questioned this. But they haven’t addressed what is arguably a central challenge to participation in modern America’s democracy. The main challenge is no longer the straightforward, racial disempowerment engineered by supremacist state politicians and terror groups such as the KKK—the Voting Rights Act has indeed relegated those abuses to history. Today, one of the chief threats to minority voting rights comes from the practice of disfranchising individuals with felony convictions, and it is a threat that the legal system—all the way up to the Supreme Court—has conspicuously failed to recognize.
As more and more crimes, especially drug offenses, have been defined as felonies during decades of "tough on crime" rhetoric and populist politicking, the number of felony convictions is increasing. Until this year, a half-dozen states—mainly in the South-permanently disenfranchised people with felony convictions. There have been some victories-like when Nebraska and Iowa jettisoned their permanent disenfranchisement laws earlier this year. But in the United States today, 48 out of 50 states still deny voting rights to people based on conviction status. Maine and Vermont stand alone as never denying ballot access based on felony status.
**MORE**
If Roberts had been nominated by a Dem, you would be falling all over yourselves to support him. He was picked by Bush so you will spend your hours on the internet looking for ways to make him appear evil. You don’t have a clue what he’s about. You know it and I know it.
Can you give me any reason why a Democrat would nominate him? You could say the same thing about David Duke, just to pick an example out of the air, but I don’t see why a Democrat would nominate David Duke, and I don’t see why you think that anyone would or should automatically support a nominee just because of who did the nominating. However, I do see why a person would start out being suspicious of someone and try to do a little research just because of who did the nominating. Just insert the name Clinton and tell me a whole lot of rightwingers wouldn’t be falling all over themselves looking for reasons to discredit his nominee.
No, I can’t. Dems nominate people who are pro abortion, pro IRS, pro strong government, pro affirmative action, and anti middleclass worker.
Both GOP & Dems are for the status quo. That’s why you don’t find any of them trying to reform our ridiculous and fraudulent tax structure, just for one example.
Petunia:
How wrong you are. The DLC is PNAC, and we are not talking about them. We’re talking about Howard Dean and we’re talking about **US**
And we have done is formulated real strategies that tackle all the problems, including the tax problem. What you have to do, is get up off your ass to see it. THAT SIMPLE!
RIGHT HERE
Help fix the situation, instead of complaining and losing.
Doug E.
Doug,
I checked out your reference. Put "tax reform" in search, to see what the Progressives policy is. Gee, they want to raise our income tax rates.
What a strategy. Take more money from us. I don’t think so. You need something better than that, Doug.
Brad – you want a conspiracy? The votegate scandal aint shit compared to this.
Conspiracy: The cases of Asher Karni and Ryan G. Anderson
By Curtis B Maynard
http://scrutiny.blogeasy.com/ar...rticleID=93617