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Great piece on the Voting Rights decision by Abby Thernstrom.
The Supreme Court did itself proud on Tuesday when it struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. That is the provision of the law containing the formula that determined which jurisdictions should be kept in the penalty box for suspected discrimination—even after nearly half a century of dramatic and heartening racial progress. While passage of the 1965 act marked the death knell of the Jim Crow South, the elimination of one of the act’s obsolete provisions this week reflects the progress since.
With the court’s decision in ShelbyCounty v. Holder, the “covered” jurisdictions (mostly in the South) are free at last to exercise their constitutional prerogative to regulate their own elections. In killing Section 4, the court made unenforceable the preclearance provision in Section 5 of the act that required certain states and jurisdictions to obtain Justice Department permission for any laws or actions related to voting. So “covered” jurisdictions are no longer covered by Section 4, and the requirement that they get federal approval before even moving a polling place across the street is dead.
The civil rights community is up in arms over Shelby. Get ready for pressure on Congress to respond. But what could lawmakers do? Restore federal powers to review all proposed changes in election procedure—with the burden of proving an absence of discrimination on the jurisdiction itself, as was the case in pre-Shelby law? In theory, Congress could just use the original formula and update it with data from the 2012 elections. The problem: Members of Congress would not like the result.
In 2012, no state in the Union had a total voter turnout rate, for whites or minorities, under 50%—a figure that was the heart of the old formula. The turnout in the six states covered entirely by Section 5 was well above the national average. Mississippi, once the worst of the Jim Crow states, had the highest total turnout rate in the nation. …
We have tried to ignore the Zimmerman trial, but Roger Simon has a good post.
If you still, for some reason, need proof that racism in today’s America is largely a liberal mind game, watch ten minutes of the George Zimmerman trial.
This farce of jurisprudence would never have occurred without leading “liberals” like Al Sharpton and his mainstream media buddies beating the drums endlessly for an indictment in a case the local Florida authorities never wanted to try (and for good reason).
Barack Obama helped out too, injecting the presidency (and race) in an unfortunate, but minor regional death by saying “If I had a son, he’d look just like Trayvon.”
I guess all black people look alike to Obama who, unlike Trayvon, attended the most exclusive private school in Hawaii followed by Occidental, Columbia and Harvard in that order. No such luck for Trayvon and, most likely, not much more had he lived. He wasn’t exactly an honor student and evidently dabbled in petty crime. But he did share something with the president, an attraction for cannibis sativa.
Whatever his or the president’s proclivities, this trial should never have happened. As we now know, with the prosecution’s case wrapped, not only is there no evidence to prove Zimmerman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, there’s virtually no evidence to prove him guilty at all. Farce indeed.
Will we have riots if, as is now widely predicted, Zimmerman is innocent of all charges? Beats me, but what I know is this: if we do, Sharpton should be indicted for incitement. …
More from John Hinderaker.
… The jury has heard Zimmerman tell investigating police officers that Trayvon Martin jumped him, knocked him to the ground, pummeled his face and banged his head repeatedly into the pavement. Fearful of his life, Zimmerman says he pulled his gun from his waistband and fired one shot at Martin, which proved fatal. Zimmerman’s account is supported by Jonathan Good, the only eyewitness to any part of the altercation between the two men, who testified that he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, punching him in the face. Zimmerman’s defense is also supported by his own condition after the altercation–he had a bruised face and a bloody nose, and the back of his head had several sharp horizontal cuts, which could only have been caused by his head being smashed against the pavement, just as Zimmerman said. Further, the testimony of the chief police investigator into the incident showed that the investigation’s findings were consistent with Zimmerman’s account.
So the evidence in favor of Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense is powerful. …
Inept; thy name is obama. Seth Mandel on the obamacare belly flop.
Since the legislative monstrosity known as ObamaCare was both complex and poorly constructed, its current disastrous rollout should not be too surprising. But it turns out the bill’s critics (most of the country) weren’t the only doubters who foresaw this mess: National Journal points out that the Obama administration also knew exactly what was coming.
The National Journal story includes a chart illustrating how the insurance exchanges work in order to underscore what those who hoped for a seamless debut were up against. But the exchanges are far from the only setback. As Jonathan wrote last week, the administration announced it would postpone by one year the mandate that businesses with more than 50 employees offer them insurance. The mandate is an unbearable financial burden on businesses, so it was delayed until after the midterm elections to give Democrats some breathing space before the economic damage they have done fully sets in.
But there are a couple problems with that. First, the administration’s action is of dubious legality. Second, delaying the employer mandate could drive up the cost of the new law by driving more people seeking insurance into the exchanges. But that’s not how the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill, a point Paul Ryan is making when he asks the CBO to re-score the bill without the first year of the employer mandate–to score the actual law as we have it now, in other words, instead of letting the administration bypass Congress and game the system to fool the CBO. …
Peter Wehner writes on the serial ineptness of our foreign policy. The policy led by the petulant narcissist.
Barack Obama’s serial ineptness in foreign policy is not only continuing; it seems to be accelerating. The most recent example comes from a story in the New York Times in which we read this:
“Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it.”
Remind me again, but wasn’t one of the key selling points of Mr. Obama in 2008 that he would improve America’s relations in the world; that he would sit down with other leaders and reach agreements his predecessor did not; and that Afghanistan was the “good war” that America would prevail in under his inspired leadership? …
Washington Post article goes a long way to explain why the food stamp program has exploded.
A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.
Her destination on a recent morning was a 55-and-over community in central Florida, where single-wide trailers surround a parched golf course. On the drive, Nerios, 56, reviewed techniques she had learned for connecting with some of Florida’s most desperate senior citizens during two years on the job. Touch a shoulder. Hold eye contact. Listen for as long as it takes. “Some seniors haven’t had anyone to talk to in some time,” one of the state-issued training manuals reads. “Make each person feel like the only one who matters.
In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.
Nerios prefers to think of her job in more simple terms: “Help is available,” she tells hundreds of seniors each week. “You deserve it. So, yes or no?”
In Florida and everywhere else, the answer in 2013 is almost always yes. A record 47 million Americans now rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, available for people with annual incomes below about $15,000. The program grew during the economic collapse because 10 million more Americans dropped into poverty. It has continued to expand four years into the recovery because state governments and their partner organizations have become active promoters, creating official “SNAP outreach plans” and hiring hundreds of recruiters like Nerios. …
Andrew Malcolm reports on an al Jazeera story on the night Bin Laden assumed room temperature.
… The report on the al Jazeera website also describes how:
The SEALs achieved complete surprise. Although the team had trained for a fierce firefight, anticipating booby traps and possibly a mined roof, the family said it never expected an attack, possibly lulled by nearly a decade of successful seclusion.
The assault came on a quiet, dark night when Amal left the other wives to go upstairs to bin Laden’s small bedroom. She said he did reach for a weapon during the assault, which began shortly before 1 a.m. And he ordered all family out of his room, but they refused.
She’s the one who rushed a SEAL and was shot in the knee. She was left on a bed while other family were taken and searched by the men. In 37 minutes the foreigners were gone.
The report tells of the family’s confined lives in the compound’s cramped rooms, how the custom buildings had numerous electricity meters to mask their substantial usage and how when one servant’s daughter recognized bin Laden on TV, women were banned from ever watching.
It also reveals how bin Laden feared a nearby tree grove could harbor spies. And an almost humorously incongruous detail that whenever bin Laden exercised outdoors in the courtyard, he wore a large cowboy hat to cover his face. Not exactly the ideal head-covering to blend into a turbaned society.
It tells of their movements around Pakistan before settling into the custom compound in 2005, about the time Pakistan officially closed the books on its bin Laden hunt. …