Ed Morrissey:
The Attorney General’s approach to the enforcement of law at least has the virtue of novelty. Usually, the Department of Justice abides by Supreme Court rulings on matters of law, especially when it strikes down statutes that — at least in theory — prevent the government from enforcing them. If the Obama administration can ignore existing statutory law on the employer mandate for ObamaCare, though, perhaps the DoJ can enforce statutory laws that no longer exist.
I wonder if the federal courts will be willing to go along with that:
The Justice Department is preparing to take fresh legal action in a string of voting rights cases across the nation, U.S. officials said, part of a new attempt to blunt the impact of a Supreme Court ruling that the Obama administration has warned will imperil minority representation.
The decision to challenge state officials marks an aggressive effort to continue policing voting rights issues and follows a ruling by the court last month that invalidated a critical part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Justices threw out a part of the act that required certain states with a history of discrimination to be granted Justice Department or court approval before making voting law changes.
In the coming weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce that the Justice Department is using other sections of the Voting Rights Act to bring lawsuits or take other legal action to prevent states from implementing certain laws, including requirements to present certain kinds of identification in order to vote. The department is also expected to try to force certain states to get approval, or “pre-clearance,” before they can change their election laws.
“Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the Court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to subject states to pre-clearance as necessary,” Holder said in a speech Thursday morning in Philadelphia. “My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found.”
Holder’s problem here, though, is that it’s the pre-clearance criteria in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down as irrational and outdated. The court left Section 5 in place, which has the enforcement mechanisms for the DoJ to use if Congress provides a rational formula for singling out states and other jurisdictions for the intrusive level of scrutiny pre-clearance imposes. However, with Section 4 invalidated, the DoJ literally has no jurisdiction at all to use Section 5 any longer anywhere, not until Congress provides it.
What Holder proposes to do is to tell Texas to get DoJ approval for its voting (and redistricting) laws before putting them in force, right after the Supreme Court told Texas and the other Section 4 states that they don’t need to do so.
@Tom:
Hehehehe…and when you cannot refute that with which you disagree, you fall back on the liberal ploy of “You conservatives are just too stupid to understand.”
Just because you want to believe that voter ID laws are designed to suppress minority votes does not make it true. You still cannot come up with a single instance of voter ID laws causing such an event in any of the states where such laws exist, despite feverish attempts by leftist advocacy groups to find any. You deride voter ID supporters claiming that the number of confirmed voter fraud convictions are inconsequential and should not be a cause for concern, yet I am quite certain that if there was even a single confirmed case of voter suppression from a voter ID law, you would be up in arms demanding heads roll.
And all the while smugly denying your hypocrisy and telling us how stupid we conservatives are.
@Pete:
Bingo.
Conservatives believe that minorities are smart enough to take care of themselves. Progressives (for there are no true liberals anyone in the Democrat Party) believe that minorities must be taken care of because they are too stupid to take care of themselves.
@Pete:
Blah,blah, blah Founder Blah,blah, blah leftists Blah,blah, blah “progressive parade” Blah,blah, blah racism Blah,blah, blah Illegal aliens Blah,blah, blah progressives. Blah,blah, blah LOL.
Does it ever get old, never expressing an original thought, always being so painfully predictable?
@retire05:
You must be under the impression I haven’t read anything you’ve written about Trayvon Martin’s family.
@Tom:
Pot meet kettle.
How much more vacuous can you truly be?
@Tom: This administration places the new Black Panthers at polling places to keep white voters with ID from voting. Isn’t it interesting that some precincts exceeded 100% of registered voters in the last election?
@Tom:
Which has exactly what to do with Voter I.D. requirements in Texas? And which means what?
And yes, I have been critical of Trayvon Martin’s parents. They are either willful dupes of Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump, or they are greedy, money hungry vultures trying to profit off their son’s death.
Trayvon Martin had one positive influence in his life; his step mother, Alicia Stanley, I believe her name is. She raised him, as her own, for 13 of his 17 years. His father, Tracy Martin, spoke to her with regularity when the incident first happened, but then he dumped her and refused to talk to her anymore. When she showed up at Trayvon’s funeral, she wanted to sit in the front row with the family of the son she had raised. Sybrina Fulton would have none of it. So the woman who stepped up to the plate, when Sybrina Fulton refused to do the job she was tasked with, being a mother to Trayvon, wanted all the attention. No sign of gratitude to Ms. Stanley who actually did the job. The respect I have for Alicia Stanley is monumental.
When your son is killed, you don’t go out the next day and hire a team of lawyers and a PR manager. At least, not in my world.
But once again, it has nothing to do with Texas’ voter I.D. laws. But you have no good response so like any programmed progressive, you now try to obfuscate the entire thread by going in another direction.
@Randy Fritz:
Prove that link between the administration and voter suppression, and then maybe you’ll have an argument, rather than ugly speculation.
@retire05:
Feeling rather defensive, are we? With your track record, it’s probably not a good idea to throw around baseless accusations of racism. Of course this advice presupposes credibility matters to you, or that it’s even attainable at this point.
@Pete:
I don’t know, I could throw out something trite like “pot meet kettle”?
@Tom:
Not at all. You’re the one who cannot back up your argument with solid facts, not me.
Oh, goody, goody. Tom throws out more dog whistles. Typical leftist tactic; when all else fails, shout “racism.”
Try again, Tom. You could start by answering what Trayvon Martin, or his parents, or his admirable step-mother have to do with Texas voter I.D. laws.
Well, we already know that you have no credibility. Only pre-packaged talking points fed to you by your handlers. Perhaps you should check with MoveOn.org to see how to answer questions put to you because you are quite clearly out of your league.
So………………………….want to try again?
don’t y’all worry about small tom boy, he is here only to make trouble to all the blogger,
he is only a pest, we know him by now, because he repeat the same sentence,
that kind of stunt brain
follow up definitely non-discriminatory voting laws enacted for definitely non-partisan political reasons.
Buncombe GOP official who referred to ‘lazy blacks’ on ‘Daily Show’ resigns
So let me get this straight…..
Having a valid photo ID to vote, where one can get a free ID under the law if one can prove one does not have the resources to pay $15-20 for the ID is somehow racist, but requiring photo ID to use one’s obamacare insurance is not racist?
And you want to make hay out of a GOP official who said “if it hurts whites, so be it. If it hurts lazy blacks, so be it….” Who ended up resigning for his thoughtless comment in less than 24 hours? But you have nothing critical to say about Holder dropping the Black Panther voter intimidation case in Philadelphia when they have video evidence of the intimidation? Nor do you seem to have anything critical to say about the democrat former mayor of San Diego, Filthy Filner, who was known to be sexually molesting and intimidating women for years, who took months to resign after more than 18 women came forward to support the allegations against him?
What the NC GOP state rep said was entirely stupid and racist in calling blacks lazy. However, even in his stupidity, he still theoretically applied the voter ID law to whites as well as blacks. The idea that photo ID laws are racist presumes that minorities cannot manage to do what non-minorities have to do to get photo ID. That in itself is racist. The only reason demos oppose photo ID laws for voting is they help prevent voter fraud, and they think we are all too stupid to recognize the race card play for the egregious political ploy that it is. Otherwise dems would not have included the requirement for photo ID for use of obamacare.