This is a pattern with Eric Holder’s Justice Department.  Unlike the Bush Civil Rights Division, the Holder Voting Section seems adverse to actual work litigating cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  Instead, they like to appear where and when they don’t have to work. 

The latest example is the Ninth Circuit argument in Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch.  Indian Country Today misses this circumstance in praising DOJ in this piece:

“When Erin Flynn introduced herself, I was thrilled,” said Blackfeet tribal member Tom Rodgers, an advocate for Native Americans and whistleblower in the Jack Abramoff scandal. “The United States is on our side.”

It hasn’t always felt that way.”

The irony was lost on the writer.  The big question is why didn’t the Justice Department Voting Section file a Section 2 case when it could have, and instead decided to appear only on appeal as amicus?  The plaintiffs lost the case below, and DOJ was nowhere to be seen.

But when it comes time to file an appeal, DOJ joins in, and writes a single brief, and flies to arguments.  That’s doing things the easy way.  That’s doing things for PR purposes, and not to win hard litigation.

Maybe Stephanie Woodward can ask the tough questions of DOJ next time. Namely: why so late to the game? Why didn’t you sue in the first place?

 Link.

We have yet more evidence that parts of academia are fully engaged in dividing Americans along racial lines and indoctrinating students with fringe and toxic racial ideas. From the Cornell Daily Sun: Kimberle Crenshaw ’81, Critical Race Theorist, Returns to The Hill (emphasis all mine):

Visiting Cornell, a prominent theorist on issues of race and gender equality said recent Supreme Court cases addressing affirmative action and voting rights have devastated the progress of the civil rights era at a lecture Thursday.

Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw ’81, law, University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia Law School spoke as part of her five-day visit at Cornell, where she studied government and Africana studies when she was an undergraduate. During the course of her visit, Crenshaw will be meeting with faculty and students.

Crenshaw focused on recent major Supreme Court decisions made primarily this summer, including Shelby County v. Holder, Hollingsworth v. Perry and Fischer v. University of Texas. . . .

Crenshaw said the decision of Shelby County v. Holder –– which was designed to prevent discrimination by striking down the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act –– “was truly ugly in the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The crown jewel of the civil rights movement … it will surely suppress the voting rights of tens of thousands, perhaps millions of voters of color.” 

Millions? This is an outright lie, and either the professor knows it or is not grounded in reality.  There hasn’t been a single voter “disenfranchised” by the Shelby decision.   It gets worse:

Crenshaw focused on the arguments of colorblindness that were brought up through this case.

Crenshaw explained that the rationale of “colorblindness” — the idea that society has become race-neutral and does not have to redesign status quo institutions to prevent discrimination — is used to disguise a defense of the status quo. Crenshaw argued that substantive changes are necessary to be truly post-racial. [Specific institutions please?] . . .

“Colorblindness has been resurrected to roll back the social infrastructure enacted during the civil rights movement,” Crenshaw said.

Crenshaw said these setbacks were the result of decisions made by the Supreme Court under Justice John Roberts, since 2005. She said that the Roberts court ended active restructuring of social structures to prevent racial discrimination, pointing to the Parents Involved v. Seattle case where, she said, “the Supreme Court ends active school desegregation.” [the case that said race could not be used to assign children to schools, sort of like the desegregation cases in the 1960s.]

[And this truly Orwellian moment she] said the legal move toward race neutrality is reminiscent of much discriminatory policy like grandfather clauses and literacy tests, “efforts to suppress access to the franchise has always used measures that were formally race neutral.”

Crenshaw concluded by saying truly combating racism requires scrutinizing the structures that perpetuate racism and confronting inequality with the status quo.

Renee Alexander ’74, associate dean of students and director of intercultural programs, worked to bring Crenshaw to Cornell after being inspired by a previous presentation she had seen Crenshaw give.”

This is what passes for credible on elite college campuses today – the idea that treating individuals without regard to race or color but rather as individuals with divine dignity is somehow racially discriminatory. These are not just nutty notions, they are dangerous notions. They attempt to undo and unraveling the meaning of words. They defy the truth. Treating people without regard to race is deconstructed to mean racism. Oceania has always been at war with East Asia, except when it wasn’t.

Beware, these nutty and dangerous notions aren’t confined to places like Cornell or in Crenshaw’s classroom in Los Angeles. They are en vogue among growing numbers of lawyers and those who hold power. We saw it on display last week at the Supreme Court when Shanta Driver stood before the Justices and proclaimed that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to whites. Driver wasn’t ashamed. Her and thousands of other share the same toxic belief. We see the belief manifest in the policies of the Justice Department. 

Pay attention, Driver’s client was “By Any Means Necessary.”  They claimed that Michigan’s ban on racial discrimination was, in fact, racial discrimination.

Freedom is slavery.

The structure that racialists like Driver and Crenshaw seek to undo is the primacy of truth.  They seek to deconstruct the meaning of words.  They seek to alter the meaning of the promises of equality in the Constitution.  They defy truth. They disdain the individual dignity of every human, without regard to race.  History is full of people like Driver and Crenshaw, and they are a menace to individual freedom.  Sadly, college professors these days seem enamored with ideas that have created so much destruction across time. 

Judge Posner is proving once again that the only time partisan law professors or the media quotes a conservative on election integrity issues is when the conservative defects or wobbles.  Once they defect, conservatives are featured in the New York Times.  No surprise.  Hans von Spakovsky has this on Judge Posner at National Review.

“The Left’s well-oiled propaganda machine is in overdrive again. Partisan law professors and the liberal media are trumpeting Judge Richard Posner’s “admission” that he regrets the majority opinion he wrote upholding Indiana’s voter-ID law. . . . Well, if it’s factual information Judge Posner wants, let’s give it to him.”

Full story at link above

“Watkins found 104 who still seemed to be registered in other states, and sent them all letters. She did Internet searches on some. She wound up taking 104 of them off the voter rolls.

In Stafford, Registrar Greg Riddlemoser submitted a description of his process that the lawyers for the SBE filed as part of their court documents this week.

In that document, Riddlemoser said the Crosscheck program being used by the SBE, as well as other programs, are “welcome tools that the general registrar community has been long requesting to meet the federal and state legal requirements to maintain accurate voter registration rolls.”

Link here.

Link to analysis on the ruling here.

Link.

Ed Whelan at National Review lays out the fact that Judge Posner believes that public opinion regards photo ID as voter suppression and one of his reasons for quasi-regret:

In his new book Reflections on Judging, Posner asserts that the
law is of “a type … now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression
rather than of fraud prevention.”

…The few words he writes—that the law “was a type of law now widely
regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud
prevention”—seem sloppy and ill-considered. In a book replete with
footnotes, he doesn’t bother to cite any support for his proposition.

Judge Poser wasn’t just sloppy, he is just plain wrong.  In this public opinion poll in 2012 on photo ID, over 73% of Americans believe Photo ID is non-discriminatory.  Of course, if all you listened to was academics and the media, you might believe that it was, but that assertion would be wrong.

No regrets from the author of the 6-3 decision. Link to Wall Street Journal.

Another in a long line of court victories for Voter ID.