The U.S. Supreme Court has recently upheld three out of four voter ID laws, in the states of Ohio, North Carolina, and now, Texas, while striking down a photo ID requirement in Wisconsin. Statistically speaking, while Meat Loaf once assured us that two out of three ain’t bad, (the equation) three out of four most definitely is (bad). The most recent holding, a mere three days ago (October 18th), is particularly disturbing because the Court upheld the quite conservative Fifth Circuit’s overturning of a lengthy District Court opinion that issued an injunction against a Texas law which will likely result in 600,000 eligible and registered voters, a disproportionately large percentage of them black and Hispanic (America’s juridical riffraff), being denied the right to vote in the upcoming November 4th elections. The law surrounding these cases is complicated and can’t be exhaustively explained in a Facebook post, but since the unconscionably horrible 5-4 vote by the Court in the 2013 case of Shelby County v. Holder, striking down the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and thereby allowing states to change their voting eligibility requirements without federal approval, under the Court’s astonishing rationale that, in essence, concluded we are now a post-racial society), states have gone Republican wild, seeking sundry and nefarious ways to keep the aforementioned riffraff from voting, what with the disturbingly tenacious habit of minority electors to cast votes in overwhelming numbers for Democrats, who, however horrible they are (and they are), consistently treat said minorities somewhat less pejoratively than do the Republicans, all too many of which party’s members, beyond the performance of menial labor for the rich, simply cannot abide the presence of minority citizens among us. In the Texas case, Veasey v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that, while the law may later be found unconstitutional, it cannot be judicially enjoined (barred from implementation) this close to an election. The Court then, is telling us that a law may indeed be unconstitutional and deny hundreds of thousands of voters the fundamental right to cast ballots on election day, but it (the Court) won’t uphold a lower court ruling that comprehensively explained why the law is discriminatory, this close to an election. More disturbing, the vote here was not the usual 5-4 conservative death grip on the Constitution (and please, please, please reader, criticize anything I say or do, but I beg you not to tell me Kennedy is a “swing” vote), but in Veasey was 6-3, with Stephen Breyer joining the Vichy-like Special Section that the bloc of five fundamentalists has become. The only bright light in this latest sordid Supreme Court miscarriage of due process and decency, is that Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, wrote a scathing dissent, that with laser-like precision pointed out the lack of democratic clothing with which this naked juridical holding was unadorned. (Do men still deny that women are wiser and more compassionate creatures, and although exceptions exist, would run a vastly more egalitarian, humane and peaceful governmental ship, if ever able to seize the reigns of power?) But alas, as my old friend Forrest Gump has repeatedly told me, this notion being particularly applicable to the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court: “Fascism is as fascism does.” Attached, find an article about the ruling and Justice Ginsburg’s dissent: Explanatory article: thenation/blog/183561/supreme-court-eviscerates-voting-rights-act-texas-voter-id-decision Dissent: supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14a393_08m1.pdf
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 12:50:43 +0000
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