Obama Weekly Address: Reaffirming Our Commitment to Protecting the Right to Vote Saturday August 8, 2015

In this week's address, the President celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act by underscoring the importance of one of the most fundamental rights of our democracy – that all of us are created equal and that each of us deserves a voice. The enactment of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t easy – it was the product of sacrifice from countless men and women who risked so much to protect every person’s right to vote.

The President reminded us about their struggle and that while our country is a better place because of it, there is still work to be done. He promised to continue to push Congress for new legislation to protect everyone’s right to the polls, and asked that all Americans, regardless of party, use every opportunity possible to exercise the fundamental right to vote.

Via: White House

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Cokie Roberts: ‘What’s Going on With Voter Rights is Downright Evil’

ANOTHER HACK POSING AS A REPORTER

On This Week With George StephanopoulosSunday morning, Cokie Roberts attacked the GOP’s recent slew of legislation increasing voting restrictions as “downright evil,” and argued that it threatened to undue the progress made since the civil rights movement.

“Having grown up in the deep south in the era of Jim Crow, the difference is dramatic,” Roberts said. “The fact that Andy Young was Mayor of Atlanta and John Lewis is a member of Congress from Georgia, is a great testament to the fact that when you do something like pass a voting rights bill, that it makes a difference.”

“Which is why, at the moment, what’s going on about voting rights, is downright evil,” Roberts continued. “Because it is something that really needs to keep going forward, not backward.”

The Supreme Court recently invalidated key portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, allowing a group of mostly southern states to pass legislation increasing requirements for voting without Justice Department approval, laws which many say are intended to keep minorities from voting.

Watch the full clip below, via ABC News:

Via: Mediaite

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MADDOW'S DISHONEST SCARE PARADE ON NC VOTING

Last night the great David Webb filled in for Sean Hannity on Fox News. Webb put on Allen West and Juan Williams to talk about urban malaise. The visuals at Fox must have been too much for Rachel Maddow, because she put up an hour-long show designed to scare people about voting rights. Her already small audience might have been even smaller otherwise.

The hour-long Maddow special, done with a live remote in North Carolina, was designed to scare voters that their voting rights were about to vanish.

The special was full of intellectually dishonest scare tactics, hyperbole, false statements, leading questions for reporters, and outright fear mongering.  

Of course, nobody was invited on the show to name the dishonesty.

Naturally, the show featured a parade of college democrats and academics out of central casting, including professor and Castro apologist Renee Scherlen. Notice the sign behind Scherlen deliberately placed on camera. Read all about the totalitarian history of "En Cada Barrio" in Cuba. Hanging a sign for En Cada Barrio is the equivalent of hanging a recruiting poster for the S.A.    

Democrat activist student Mollie Clawson also complained that her flip flops might fall off if she had to walk through the grass to her polling place. Such are the complaints of the grievance generation.

What the Maddow show didn't have was any dissent. Not a single guest appeared to rebut any of her false charges.  

That's standard operating procedure for Maddow. Her skill is preaching to the choir, not having vigorous intellectual debate about ideas. Dissent is forbidden, sort of like En Cada Barrio. That's why if you want actual debate between both sides of an issue, you need to turn to Hannity—or, last night, to David Webb.

Via: Breitbart

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Holder looking to require Texas to get federal approval before changing voting laws, citing a history of racism

In response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision that states are innocent of institutional racism until proven guilty, Attorney General Eric Holder is arguing that Texas’ “history of pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities” should make its voting laws subject to the Department of Justice’s oversight indefinitely.

While speaking before the National Urban League in Philadelphia on Thursday, Holder said his agency would ask a federal judge to require Texas to submit all its voting laws to the DOJ for review before they can be legally enacted because the state has a supposed history of discrimination and racism.

“And today I am announcing that the Justice Department will ask a federal court in Texas to subject the State of Texas to a pre-clearance regime similar to the one required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” Holder said at the organization’s annual conference.

The Attorney General cited “evidence of intentional racial discrimination” found following the case Texas v. Holder, in addition to a ”history of pervasive voting-related discrimination against racial minorities.” He continued, saying the state would need to acquire “pre-approval” from either the Department of Justice or a federal court before implementing any future changes in voting laws.

In the case Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act, which defined a formula to single out states to undergo a pre-clearance for voting laws based on previous discriminatory practices — much like that alleged in the case Texas v. Holder — was unconstitutional. Without this provision, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act — which Holder referenced in his remarks — becomes near impossible to implement until Congress outlines a new formula, which it has yet to do.

Via: Red Alert

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