Prison-Industrial Complex Watch: End Mandatory Minimum Sentences For Non-Violent Drug Offenses

It’s time for Americans to pay attention to what we are doing to so many non-violent drug offenders. We put them in jail, take away their right to vote when they get out, in many cases for minor offenses, that probably shouldn’t be illegal in the first place. Americans need to see the forest for the trees when it comes to U.S. drug laws. Why is it so hard to change failed policy?

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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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PA Rep. Daryl Metcalfe: People are “Too Lazy” to get the “ID They Need”

Daryl Metcalfe (R) - Pennsylvania Rep.Pennsylvania Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R), sponsor of PA’s voter ID law, says a lot of people are “too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need.” Just as they [Republicans] have no proof of widespread voter fraud, they also have no proof that “a lot of people” are lazy. It’s simply an invented narrative, and it is pervasive on the Right.

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Know Your Voting Rights: Election Day is Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Vote - photo by Ann DouglasVoting rights are under attack in America by a Republican Party that sees its odds of winning future elections hinge on the ability to suppress the minority vote. The country is growing increasingly diverse and by 2050 whites will no longer be in the majority. The Republican Party is going in the opposite direction. The party of Abraham Lincoln is now nearly unrecognizable. While the Republican Party should be able to recruit minorities with a conservative message, that message is overshadowed by a party that is hostile towards immigrants and people who they view as “different” or “foreign.” Just ask President Obama.

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Nicole Austin-Hillery: Voting In This Country Is A Right

Voting in this country is a right, and we should never allow it to be compared to things that are not rights (in the context of the voter ID law debate). We all know this, well at least those of us who value equal rights. The following quote is an excellent statement on the right to vote in America. It comes from Nicole Austin-Hillery (Director of the Brennan Center D.C. Office) on Saturday’s Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC.

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