Voting Rights Act To Face Supreme Court

The 1965 Voting Rights Act will go before the Supreme Court this week. “Over a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act,” said Chris Hayes on “Up” this morning. “Which finally ended decades of routine exclusion of people of color from exercising their right to vote.” Section 5 of the act, which requires Federal scrutiny on voting law changes in southern states, is the specific language being challenged. The argument against Section 5 is that it diminishes the sovereignty of southern states and that the south has changed since the era of Jim Crow.

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The Conservative Republican Delusion

There are some Republicans who recognize that their party needs to change if it’s going to be competitive in future presidential elections. Yes, Republicans still hold a majority in the House of Representatives, and Republicans will be able to easily win a number of Senate and House races for years to come, but it’s the top office in the land where the math is not in their favor. When you’ve lost California’s 55 electoral votes before the contest has even begun, that’s a problem.

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Chris Hayes: The basic reality of American politics

The “black vote” isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic because they are biased. It’s not blacks who are the problem in this equation, it’s the Republican Party that is the problem. There was a time when blacks did vote Republican in large numbers, but that was before the civil rights movement that was embraced by the Democratic Party, the party that had been the party of many southern white racists. This is the reason the south shifted from blue to red. The south used to be where Democrats could expect to win votes but now the south is where Republicans are in control, and the reason is the civil rights movement. White racists left the Democratic Party and they joined the Republican Party which apparently welcomed them with open arms.

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North Carolina Constitutional Ban On Same-Sex Marriage Passes Popular Vote

Who would have thought a southern state would vote to limit rights? In a display of intolerance and backwards thinking, North Carolina voters went to the polls on Tuesday and voted for “Amendment 1” which will amend the state constitution to say the only recognized “domestic legal partnership” is between a man and a woman. It also strips away civil union rights which were recognized in some jurisdictions in the state.

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