National Review: “Liberal groups may very soon see a provision of the Voting Rights Act they cherish and exploit declared unconstitutional because they would not listen to the Supreme Court’s warning about its deficiencies. Instead, they engaged in a reactionary defense of a sweeping federal power that badly needed updating and retooling. Now they may lose it all, if Wednesday’s hearing before the Supreme Court on Shelby County v. Holder, a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, provides any clues. . . .
I’ll put it more bluntly. Congress has now renewed Section 5’s provisions without any changes a total of four times, in large part because members who voted against renewing it were bound to be criticized as racists. In other words, the votes to renew Section 5 were legislators at their least courageous. . . .
The reality today is that Section 5 has become a politicized weapon wielded by the Justice Department, which last year, for example, used it to block South Carolina’s adoption of a voter-ID law. A federal court found Justice’s objection to be without merit and based on dubious evidence of discrimination; the court ordered that South Carolina be reimbursed for its legal costs. As Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation notes: “Of the 12,000 covered states, municipalities, counties, city governments, in the last ten years, there have only been 37 objections under Section 5.””