“Shelby County offers Roberts an opportunity to complete a mission he began three decades ago. When the chief justice was a young lawyer, in 1981, Southern legislators hoped an ascendant conservative movement could pressure Reagan into opposing an extension of the VRA. In June of that year, Reagan wrote a letter to Attorney General William French Smith requesting an “assessment” of the law. “I am sensitive to the controversy which has attached itself to some of the Act’s provisions, in particular those provisions which impose burdens unequally upon different parts of the nation,” Reagan wrote. “But I am sensitive also to the fact that the spirit of the Act marks this nation’s commitment to full equality for all Americans, regardless of race, color, or national origin.” Reagan didn’t go as far as former segregationist and then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) by opposing the Voting Rights Act in its entirety, but his administration fought efforts to strengthen the law.”
There’s just one problem with bringing up Thurmond’s ghost: he voted for the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act. But you’d hardly know it from the piece.
When Thurmond voted for the 1982 amendments at issue in the Mother Jones piece, and particularly as it relates to young John Roberts (note that 1965 Thurmond parachutes into the discussion of 1982), Thurmond said he had “concerns” about the bill — and had long been vocal about it only applying to Southern states — but said “I must take into account the common perception that a vote against the bill indicates opposition to the right to vote.” See the book Strom by Jack Bass and Marilyn Thompson, page 297, 194.
This is standard fare from the author of the piece. Another lie is here. Whether or not “racism” exists has relevance to Shelby only to the moronic or those that would incite them, and if it did, the whole country should be covered by Section 5.
Facts are sometimes convenient, sometimes not, and as in this case, sometimes helpful when only half right.
I’ve met Serwer numerous times. He is as big of an asshole in person as he is in print. The kind of guy unable to defend himself if he had to in close quarters, if you get my point.