Let the latest from Ryan Reilly remind Republicans flirting with aiding the NAACP with any amendment to Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act – your “allies” in the leftist media will still attack you no matter what you do.  The latest ideological and inaccurate piece from Reilly begins:

The best hope for replacing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act is a white Republican lawyer from Wisconsin who supports voter ID laws, thinks the Justice Department went easy on the New Black Panther Party, played a key role in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and once said first lady Michelle Obama has a “big butt.” 

Republicans should take careful note – the race groups seeking your support for a Section 4 fix will have nice things to say about you only until the ink dries on the President’s signature.  Reilly slipped up and provided an early preview of what happens after the ink dries.

What do they have in common?  John Fund has the answer.

Indeed, voter registration is among the goals of the folks hawking Obamacare. The People’s World newspaper reports: “California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.” It seems as if some Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.

Here’s my prediction on a “fix” post-Shelby.

Yesterday demonstrated that the defenders of the unconstitutional law aren’t familiar with bipartisan compromise.  “Bipartisanship” to them means Republicans giving Democrats whatever they want.  Worse, their handmaidens in the left-wing press like Andrew Cohen and the peculiarly dishonest Ari Berman saw fit to personally attack people (Me, Chairman Franks, Steve King, Hans von Spakovsky) rather than debate our ideas.  Slate misquoted my testimony, flagrantly.  This demonstrates an ill will that might have worked when Democrats held the majority.

The most telling moment of the entire hearing is when Rep, Jim Sensenbrenner left the room.  The Democrat’s beachhead into the GOP withdrew. Sure, there was as “scheduling conflict” but priorities are priorities.

Unless Democrats and their shills like Berman tone down the rhetoric and accusations – absolutely nothing will move through Congress post-Shelby. 

If Nadler and others approach the matter in good faith, and are willing to make concessions, perhaps on the Section 5 standards relating to the insertion of the word “any” into 5, then a revision of Section 3 is possible to include discriminatory results, and maybe more.

Given the fact that handmaidens like Berman and Cohen are hard wired to attack, and given the fact that groups have vowed to get “loud” (cf reasonable and approachable) I suspect nothing will happen. Moving a Shelby fix through Congress will depend on whether or not the scorpions can stop being scorpions, and I know how that story ends.

 Link

Yesterday I testified at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.  Also testifying was Robert Kengle.  A couple of comments about his testimony.

First, in describing Shelby, he indicated that the Court did not strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and said it was constitutional. Well, not really.  In fact, the plaintiff in the case deliberately never challenged Section 5, so the issue was not even before the Court.  Section 5 was only at issue in the case is so far as it informed the amount of burden a state faces under Section 4.  And on that score, Kengle was doubly wrong because the Court spoke directly to the heavier burden of the reauthorized Section 5.  Because we can’t expect most in the media or academics to correct testimony from one of their own, here was a relevant portion of my written testimony:

The Court in Shelby also concluded that Congress weakened the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements in 2006 when it altered the Section 5 standards.  Beginning in 2006, submitting jurisdictions were forced to prove a negative.  Congress required them to prove the absence of “any” discriminatory effect by inserting “any” into Section 5.  Any means any.  The Justice Department Civil Rights Division has taken the 2006 amendments literally when reviewing submissions like Georgia’s proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote, or South Carolina’s voter identification law.  The DOJ adopted a de minimis trigger for interposing an objection despite mitigating facts and objected in multiple instances – including in Georgia and South Carolina.

Here is the video stream of the hearing on the Voting Rights Act yesterday in case you missed it.  The fun starts around minute 36.

Carolina May has this story at the Daily Caller how the DOJ Civil Rights Division is circumventing Congressional opposition to giving the controversial component more lawyers.  Just make them work for free!!

Project Vote, the George Soros funded organization is nothing if not predictable.  Today it published this paper opposing the practice of states checking their voter rolls with other states to see if people are registered twice.  Worse, the paper characterizes enforcement of federal law, namely Section 8 of the NVRA, as “bullying.” 

Julie Fernandes (once of the Justice Department, now at Soros’ Open Society Foundation) was also against enforcement of Section 8 and removing ineligible voters through court decree.  But federal law is federal law.  And if states enter into agreement to share data to discover illegal voters, that’s something all Americans should applaud.  Unfortunately, in some places, lawlessness is preferred.

The video of the sentencing of Melowese Richardson has it all: race, belligerence, excuses, women in a coma, lawlessness and all of the psychological traits that fuel voter fraud.  Behold:

Another bad idea from the left: Base new triggers on the existence of racial polaraization.

The problem? Racial polarization coefficients are always highest in the black community.  At what point should rewards follow racial block voting?  If the white coefficients were higher than black coefficients, this idea might have more steam.  Otherwise, it’s a rancid reward for block voting behavior.