First Tweets from TX Supreme Court argument

Texas AG Abbott tweets that the SCOTUS Justices concerned about lower court ruling.  Kennedy seemed supportive of Texas.  


“Blumen v. FEC and the Infield Fly Rule”

Brad Smith, former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) blogs:

This morning the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the decision of a 3 judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Blumen v. Federal Election Commission, upholding the power of government to bar political contributions to parties, PACs, and candidates from non-resident aliens. The decision was no surprise here or elsewhere.

…Professor Hasen claims that the decision is contrary to the logic of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, citing to language in that decision that suggests that the identity of the speaker doesn’t matter. The result, he claims, is “doctrinal incoherence.” But this is only because he insists on reading Citizens United on his terms, rather than the Court’s terms.

There is substantial precedent for holding that non-resident aliens lack all the rights of U.S. citizens. Simply put, Citizens United stands for the proposition that the identity of U.S. citizens and permanent resident speakers was irrelevant to their speech rights. The decision, on its own terms, specifically said that it was not considering the law prohibiting contributions and expenditures by non-resident aliens.

Full story at the link.

Photo ID required to buy Drano

 More here.  “While Illinois now has a law requiring government-issued identification to buy Drano to protect the citizenry, it lacks similar means to protect them from voter fraud.

There is currently proposed legislation to require photo identification in order to vote, but a similar bill died in committee in 2008 on a partisan vote. As leadership has not changed hands since then, it can be expected that the current bills will languish. State Representative Jack Franks (D-Woodstock), the mind and the will behind the Liquid-Plumr Limitation, did not serve in the committee that tabled the voter ID measure but was a member of the legislature at the time.”

Holder’s Texas Intrusion: Supreme Court will rule on a racial redistricting ploy

The Wall Street Journal blasts the Holder Department of Justice. 

…Enter Mr. Holder’s Justice Department, which insists that Texas must add more minority-dominated districts to take account of a growing Hispanic population. Civil-rights groups like the NAACP claim that at least three of the four new districts should be minority districts.

That kind of raw proportional representation has already been shot down by the Supreme Court. In 1996’s Abrams v. Johnson, the Court ruled that similar claims that a Georgia redistricting had diluted minority voting strength didn’t hold water. In the opinion, by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the High Court wrote that when a court is tasked with drawing judicial lines, it “should be guided by the legislative policies underlying the existing plan.”

…As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his classic dissent in 1994’s Holder v. Hall, “few devices could be better designed to exacerbate racial tensions than the consciously segregated districting system currently being constructed in the name of the Voting Rights Act. . . . Our drive to segregate political districts by race can only serve to deepen racial divisions by destroying any need for voters or candidates to build bridges between racial groups or to form voting coalitions.”

Redistricting has always been a political process, and unless a court finds a violation of law it owes deference to the elected state legislature. The Justice Department’s position is a federal intrusion to elect more Democrats, not improve racial harmony