Citizens United and Shelby County have one key attribute in common. Both are unconstitutional, activist decisions by the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) designed to help Republicans steal elections. The former opened the billionaire floodgates. The latter helps Republicans decide who is allowed to vote. When Chief Injustice Roberts claimed that protecting voting rights was no longer necessary, because things have changed so much, I knew he was lying, However, I could not prove it, until now.
When the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, its main argument was that the law was outdated.
Discrimination against minority voters may have been pervasive in the 1960s when the law was passed, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” In this simplistic account, the law was still punishing states and local governments for sins they supposedly stopped committing years ago.
The chief justice’s destructive cure for this was to throw out the formula Congress devised in 1965 that required all or parts of 16 states with long histories of overt racial discrimination in voting, most in the South, to get approval from the federal government for any proposed change to their voting laws. This process, known as preclearance, stopped hundreds of discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and deterred lawmakers from introducing countless more.
But Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, invalidated the formula because “today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.”
Well, do they? A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.
It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Chick through for more detail. In case you are considering not giving your full support in 2016 to the Democratic Presidential Nominee, whoever it is, consider Citizens United and Shelby County. Also consider that the next two to retire from the Court are two of the four remaining Justices. Imaging having the Straightjacket Seven Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD).
16 Responses to “Roberts Lied to Help Republicans Steal Elections”
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"Voting discrimination no longer takes the form of literacy tests and poll taxes. Instead, it is embodied in voter-ID laws, the closing of polling places in minority neighborhoods, the elimination of early-voting days and hours, and much more." While this is true as far as it goes, I still believe the voter-ID requirement is a poll tax. Sure, many, maybe most, maybe nearly all, have IDs already for some other reason, and for them there is no financial outlay. But it's those who DON'T have the ID already for whom a financial outlay is required. Even making the ID itself available with no charge does not preclude the fact that ordering a duplicate birth certificate or certificate of naturalization may cost plenty. Plus the fact that the search for records can be extremely time consuming, and for people who are working hard but only being paid for time actually spent on the job, time is money, so there is a cost that way.
Now that I think of it, on this basis, the closing of polling places and the elimination of early-voting days and hours would be poll taxes too.
I thank these researchers for giving DEMs who care about this issue more reason to take action in Congress and for providing the ACLU and others the evidence to challenge the new laws on what constitutional SCOTUS allowed to remain.
This video pulls together some of the related pieces on Roberts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72TOVw9tJV4
Remember at Roberts' confirmation hearing he mendaciiously claimed he was only going to be "an umprire calling balls and strikes."
Well, as the years passed, Calvin Trillin wrote an epic poem in recognition of Roberts as "umpire:
http://crooksandliars.com/paul-rosenberg/lying-confirmation-process-beyond-j
Oh, well, about as honest as any other Republican promise!
Thanks for posting this, truer words have not been spoken.
Thanks and blessings for this Nameless – I must remember the name Calvin Trillin, that really is a priceless piece of poetry, perfect in every way except one (of course that is its deeply flawed subject!).
Sorry about the stanzas getting misaligned. It was a copy/paste, and I didn't check their formatting.
TC – Is there anyway you can format your Comments structure so that there would be a chance to Edit them for like 5 minutes? I go to a number of sites that have this feature, and it's really quite nice.
Or if you can't add an Edit option, is there a chance to add a Preview option, so one could see what it looks like before it gets posted?
Certainly don't do it if it's difficult or costs an extra fee. I'm not a bit familiar w/ setting up a blog, but it would seem that maybe they offer some menu options to tailor things more personally.
Roberts does what he is told, he knows why he got the job and he wants to keep it. We definitely need term limits for SCOTUS. I agree with many of the comments on Care 2 about this. The Left and Progressives need to get out and campaign for people who will represent us, not corporations and the 1%,
Excellent article – so very true, but since the Supreme Court is still run by people who rule according to prejudice and money instead of facts, principle and law, I can't see how that will help – those who vote don't seem to care about how law is made these days, or decisions reached. Sigh. Praying daily for a miracle.
Of the original Voting Rights Act, "…Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” But have they?
There is an axiom, almost 200 years old, maybe more, that I was taught years ago which goes like this: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Chief Injustice John Roberts thinks that things have so changed for the better from 50 years ago that the protections of the VRA are no longer pertinent. However, they have not changed for the better. States are enacting voter ID laws; rolling back early voting; redrawing electoral districts to favour one party; rationalising polling stations; purging the voters lists; and changing the rules for registering to vote. All these changes are geered to favouring Republicanus/Teabaggerum candidates by limiting access to voting for people who traditionally vote Democrat. These things serve to put roadblocks in the way, just as there where roadblocks in the way before the VRA.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
We are best to remember that "privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally."
No recourse. He will continue to be rewarded for his deceit by keeping his seat on the Bench until his death or retirement. Sickening!
<i>In case you are considering not giving your full support in 2016 to the Democratic Presidential Nominee, whoever it is…..Imaging having the Straightjacket Seven Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD).</i>
I'll give you an even better motive than that. Imagine President Hillary being able to choose the replacement for Scalia. It would be the best wingnut-exploding-head event ever.
Two years ago Slate had a fun post on "Supreme Court Justice Death Calculator"
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/01/supreme_court_justice_death_calculator_find_out_the_probabilities_that_different.html
It was based on what's known about them and CDC statistics of likelihood an individual Justice – or combination of Justices – would die in the next four years – so by 2017.
The odds of ANY conservative Justice passing away by then was 46.62%, and for a Liberal it was 32.95%.
Scalia led the individual pack at 19.01% and Thomas was at 10.76%. Bader-Ginsburg topped the Liberals at 17.93%, with Sotomayor and Kagan, obviously, the least likely at 1.82% and 1.55% respectively.
Just remember if you use it to DELETE THE HEADSTONE before you pick someone else, otherwise it calculates the odds of BOTH dying. Like the odds of BOTH Scalia AND Thomas dying by 2017 is 1.94%
Pooped pit stip. Thanks to all. Hugs.
The Injustice Roberts is just the messenger boy for the repukkklican clan. He only does what they want SCROTUS to do.
If we don’t get a Democratic President in the next election, we are screwed! We will have a repukkklican SCROTUS! It will be even worse if they get more Injustices like Roberts in there! Oh, the agony of being a BKUE voter in a red state!