commentaries

"The 2006 House vote was 390-33, the Senate vote was 98-0"... And the act previously found constitutional... The most interesting part of this decision will be if the mindless proponents of "elected majority knows best" sitting on the right of the USSC decides that such huge margins in the Congress doesn't mean that majority knows best. Can those whose cases were lost at the USSC due to rulings on the basis of "majority knows best" and were not a matter for the court, then asked to have their cases re-heard because the right wing of the court has those principles only when it meets the right wing of the court's own social agenda?

Re: "The 2006 House vote was 390-33, the Senate vote was 98-0; obviously, the political class’s piety about the act has extinguished thought about its necessity." Section 5 is a protection clause, designed to forestall attempts to discriminate. Any covered state--or individual counties of covered states can bail out of Section 5 by demonstrating nondiscriminatory behavior for 10 years prior to filing for bail out and by demonstrating that it has/they have taken affirmative steps to improve minority voting opportunities. Without Section 5, covered jurisdictions which discriminate would be subject to remediation.

Re: "[T]he most recent data used in 2006 was from 1972." That stat should read "the most recent voter registration data" because in 2006 Congress held 21 hearings, heard from 90 witnesses, and produced a 15,000 page record on other voting rights violations which clearly showed that voting discrimination remains concentrated in Alabama and the other covered states. While covered jurisdictions account for 25% of the population, 80% of voting rights cases where discrimination was shown occurred in covered jurisdictions.

"This expresses two tenets of progressivism’s racialism. One is identity politics: Your race is your political identity. The other is categorical representation: Members of a race can be understood and represented only by members of this race."............ Indeed! Which is precisely why Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, J.C. Watt and Herman Cain aren't "Black", Michele Bachmann, Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin aren't "women", and Marco Rubio and Suzana Martinez aren't "Hispanic". It is the politics, not the reality, that matters. Progressivism is the politics of division. And given that, it becomes obvious that all "Progressives" can offer America is conflict rather than reconciliation. We heal as a nation, or we perish as factions. And Progressivism is factionalism defined.

"Progressivism is the politics of division." Spot on. Martin Luther King jr. would be appalled to hear the democrats, liberals and so-called progressives continuing to use the color of a persons skin to divide the country. We live in a time where a man of color has been elected president by a white majority and yet they continually play the race card. I am sick and tired of the relentless racist attacks made by liberals, democrats and so-called progressives on people of color that do subscribe to their ideology. It is never used by the right - only the left.