At The Daily Caller, a powerful opinion piece from Charles Butler, a man who lived in the Jim Crow era. 

Voter ID in Pennsylvania – update as it works through the legislature

Wall Street Journal on Voter ID

The Chicago Tribune reports that the Rev. Jesse Jackson focused on photo ID laws at the kickoff of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s 40th annual conference. 

He called on the Justice Department to investigate the legality of state voter identification laws, which vary across different states from requirements from government-issued IDs to any photo ID. 

“It is their job.  It is their duty to intervene,” Jackson said, about federal officials. 

After decrying the increased number of black majority seats from 18 to 44 since 1980 under the Voting Rights Act because it  may have advantaged Republicans, Cynthia Tucker strikes again. At Yahoo News, she argues that supporting voter identification at the polls is un-American.

A bit over the top?  Don’t bet the mortgage waiting for a Wasserman Schultz sequel where the Chair of the Democratic National Committee reversed herself on the Voter ID equal Jim Crow, blocked polls, poll tax accusation that she smeared on her colleagues and the 75% of the nation that supports the idea.      

Washington Post.  Let this be a lesson to other states – don’t submit plans to DOJ; go straight to court.  The court case caused DOJ to behave themselves.

St. Louis Post Dispatch.  Governor Jay Nixon (D) vetos the new voter ID law.

Kirsten Clarke, et al, in a letter to Chris Herren, Voting Section Chief of at the Justice Department, requests DOJ to object to the new Florida law designed to cut down on mischief involving Acorn-style voter registration drives.  The Florida law does three primary things: 1) limit the time Acorn-style groups can sit on voter registration forms they have collected, 2) compress the dates of early voting but keep the same number of hours, and 3) require voters who no longer live where they are registered to cast a provisional ballot to be verified later in the precinct they have moved to but failed to move their voter registration.  These three requirements, according to Clarke and the NAACP, are racially discriminatory.  Read the full letter here.

Florida may have gravely miscalculated by sending this law to the Justice Department for approval.  Instead, Florida could have gone straight to the United States District Court in D.C. for approval by a judge.  Because Florida instead chose to submit to Eric Holder’s Justice Department, it opened the door for lobbying by Clarke and other well connected racial interest groups.  Consider Virginia.  Virginia knew that it was a bad idea to submit only to the DOJ and instead also went to court for approval of its redistricting plan, which it got yesterday.  Because the case was before the court, badgering by Clarke and others were effectively ignored.  The DOJ felt the heat of the court imposed timetable, and other heat, and approved the plan.

Florida may not enjoy the same fate as Virginia because it did not sue in court for approval.  At a minimum, Florida will probably be burdened with more information requests, a range of questions which could otherwise only be obtained in discovery, and general hostility toward the Florida plan. 

I and others will be writing more shortly about the particular advantages that Virginia enjoyed by submitting their plan to district court, and the limits of bad behavior DOJ endured because the court supervised the issue, not bureaucrats.

Triparish Times: “The Terrebonne Parish Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People vows to file a federal suit seeking to have one seat on the 32nd Judicial District bench designated for minorities after a similar measure suffered defeat last Tuesday on the state House floor.”

Latest at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment: Taxpayer funded beer bash, ball games and scavenger hunt at DOJ.