>>> dhenwood
Yeah, but so is education, in theory, but then there was this decision called Brown v. Board of Eduation. By what sophistry can the selection of a president not be a federal question?
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CB: Justin gave a sober answer. Here is an even more sober answer :>).
By what sophistry ? By the state's rights sophistry of this very Supreme Court and its ancestors who thought the secession of the Confederacy was not a federal question.
Since Rehnquist thinks _Brown_ was wrongly decided and _Plessy_ is correct, why not separate but equal methods of checking votes in each county ?
The 14th Amendment is this Court's favorite provision to pervert. The use of it to declare much affirmative action illegal under the reverse discrimination doctrine remains the worst example of this. But now they have added a new reverse discrimination wrinkle: the racist Republicans votes must be equally protected , but not those of Black people and many other people in Florida, all in the same election.
Nathan is right on. How do you spell Jim Crow-2000 ? R-e-h-n-q-u-i-s-t. How do you spell , well, Mussolini ? S-c-a-l-i-a ( "None of y'all have a right to vote for president, and I'm saying it out loud, in your face, open anti-democratic rule, ha, ha")
Nathan said:
What is beautiful about the Jim Crow Five's decision is that it gives a base issue, what John Lewis has called the Selma of our time, that can rally a unified left on a mother-and-apple pie issue, the basics of the right to vote and to have each vote counted. Expanding the franchise, whether to those excluded by intimidation or to new immigrants or to ex-felons who have served their time, is the most basic fight the Left must always fight. And now we can tie it to the actions of a rogue Supreme Court which is issuing authoritarian capitalist decisions by the boatload, neatly tying together political, economic and social campaigns for justice.
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CB: I think there should be a focus on the right to vote/ defects of the electoral system issue right now, and maybe a broader issue movement will come out of it. This is not a revolutionary goal, but a reform. But having a viable reform issue is doing good for these days. Maybe our aim should be to expand the "reform" to big business control of elections at critical junctures as an ordinary fundamental of the system as it really works. Maybe we lefts should be stretching our rhetoric to make that connection with the Florida events. This is a truism, but maybe it won't seem such a mundane complaint in this context. As most know, the electoral college, the jag through state legislatures, and now this abrupt intrusion by the gang of five ( with two somehow twisting to concur in the order ?) are all rooted in the old story of our betters keeping a collar on us in the rabble.
If we keep struggling on this some, maybe we can make more movement out of it than it seems. Afterall, who on Nov. 6 would have thought that there would be this "tie" or that it would caused as much of a stir as it has. But we should be sober in assessing the limit on the movement potential of this, too.
The "irregularities" in voting are pretty common place. So, one theme is to emphasize that the Florida events were not some kind of exception. There is a basic "clean up" the clutter aspect. But how do you give such a dull topic staying power with lots of people ? The various typcial defects play a role in most of the people not voting most of the time. Can the larger discontent of the regular non-voting mass be stirred into this mix ?
Some might make something out of inaugural protests.
: http://www.iacenter.org/stop_dmachine.htm )
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-2000121322282.htm