Activism For Me, Not Thee

This, yesterday.

Why any surprise? The case was accepted three days after Obama's re-election, and little signals soon were given off.

Having worked toward this his whole career, Roberts declared racism over. Officials in the particularly non-racist states wasted no time in proving just how dead it is.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg begs to differ. Her daring give a history lesson is accompanied by face-making.

Some perspectives on the damage.

Sam Seder's conversation with Ari Berman is very useful, on the GOP's getting the cops out of the way while stepping up voter suppression. Discriminatory redistricting and voter ID laws, says Berman, have proved the need for enforcing Section 5 enforcement, and if there is any law the Court should support, it's one that Congress has re-authorized again and again. This decision only points to the hypocrisy, Seder says, of the Court's pretense of always wanting to "defer to the legislature": here the Court has destroyed the legislature's work. The finding is on no constitutional grounds, but claims of "an outdated formula," and that "fact finders are finding the fact of racism wrongly."

Seder notes the conservatives perceive the Voting Rights Act "as punishment, not a mechanism to ensure justice... they see this as some kind of reparations, instead of ensuring people are whole." Justice Ginsburg felt compelled to deliver a history lesson, says Berman, because of her colleagues who choose to believe racism is "a debt already repaid." With the burden of proving discrimination shifted onto voters, outside groups, not the federal government, will have to find the resources to pursue cases. This, says Berman, makes it "the most radical voting rights Supreme Court court decision since they upheld poll tax and literacy tests in 1903." That's not to forget the other radically anti-democratic actions of this Court, in the number of big business-friendly decisions to date, and the increase in Chamber of Commerce-brought cases it chooses to take.

Roy Edroso on yesterday's decision as filtered through the right wing media: a decision greeted by cheering "black leaders," while

...out in the world, it took Texas about 90 seconds after the ruling to move to put in voter ID laws from which the VRA can no longer protect citizens. These will require prospective black voters to spell chrysanthemum.

Somewhere a Tea Party group imminently expecting tax exempt status is preparing a suit to get SCOTUS to give Paula Deen her job back.

Racism is dead, as even the unending coverage of celebrity stories shows. Here we have a fine family—and a real Lady—that treats the help real nice.