Consevatives Long For The Good Old Days Of Jim Crow and Poll Taxes

In an audacious affront to the old maxim, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," right wingers are trying to overturn the Voting Rights Act of 1964. Why? Well, apparently because too many African-American citizens are voting and too many African-American candidates (especially the President of the United States) are getting elected. Naturally miffed by the outrageousness of democracy working as it should, conservative interests have brought suit, and the case is being heard by the Supreme Court now. Justice Anton Mussolini...uh, er...Scalia said this: "The Act has engendered a sense of racial entitlement." Entitlement? Did that bloated fascist Scalia actually say that blacks should not be entitled to vote? Where is the outcry against this racist? He should be immediately tarred and feathered and run off the bench. Or, better yet, lynching would be more appropriate, because that's what they did to African Americans who tried to exercise their right to vote before the Voting Rights Act was passed. The usual chorus of right-wing scoundrels are chiming in. George Will wonders if "Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is still constitutional, given the disappearance of the conditions that once made it acceptable." Where has George been for the last five years? Has he not heard the Tea Party's palpably racist utterings against a President of color? Has he not noticed states trying to restrict black voters' access to the polls? Is he ignorant of the GOP's latest gerrymandering of districts to minimize the impact of African-American voters? Will writes, "...defenders of Section 5 merely shrug about the fact that race is no longer a barrier." And why is that, George? Because the Voting Rights Act works. I guess George would like us to stop administering flu shots because we have virtually eradicated the flu. Or maybe we should revert to using the wooden wheel again because rubber tires have just been too effective, and thus have outlived their usefulness. Scalia, the epitome of an activist judge who interprets the consitution according to his own narrow political agenda, may cast the deciding vote (just as he did in 2000 when he stole the election for George Bush). If he does, it means that once again the Judicial branch will have stuck its nose in a place--the free, legitimate, and democratic will of the people--where it does not belong. This is the latest in a series of attempts by the far right to steal elections because it can no longer win them fair and square. Even Congress, which is controlled by right wingers, voted 390-33 seven years ago to extend the Voting Rights Act. If the Supreme Court overturns the Voting Rights Act, Scalia should meet the same fate as his ideological cousin: hanged upside down in the public square, by those whose liberties and lives he tried to destroy.