Uppity Wisconsin

Republicans and their legal allies are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end forcing "states and localities with a history of discrimination to submit changes in their voting process and procedures to Department of Justice or a federal D.C. district court for approval (preclearance)" in Northwest Austin (Texas) Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, a potentially landmark case specifically challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its 2006 congressional reauthorization signed into law by president Bush.

 

Lauren Hermele has a photo essay on 1960s civil rights veterans in Salon. Great stuff.




Today's Republican Party, like Wisconsin attorney general J.B. Van Hollen, and know-nothing GOP bloggers still don't get why so many were incensed by last year's voter suppression efforts. It's likely that they never will.

Update: MAL's crazy, young nieces are great sports as the hours-long, snaking lines funnel towards the capitol. And a thank you to Rep. Tom Petri's office (R-Fond du Lac) whom my sister reports as the most gracious, welcoming presence that she has encountered during this truly beautiful experience.

Today is a victory for the terrorists. Wait a minute, that's the GOP's SOP McCarthyite lies.

Today, Americans are reinvested with hope that our government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Liberty, privacy, the Bill of Rights: we now have a president who actually believes in these demands and rights of the people.

How strongly Obama acts, and how intently he repudiates through action the ideology of America's worst presidency is the measure of our success for the next four years.

And speaking of demands for liberty, I read that our Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen opposes the proposed police roadblocks that are all the rage: Good for you Van Hollen, don't let the liberty-hating, don't-go-anywhere-without-the-cops-checking-on-you liberals prevent a stand for privacy and freedom that ought to exist when one walks, drives, works or stays home and reads a book.

Political writers who in February ridiculed the notion that Obama, flush with a 17-point primary victory here, could in November win substantial blocks of voters among the 'white working class' (WWC), appeal to white voters in Republican strongholds such as Waukesha County, and who crowed that their reading of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) federal election law was spot-on correct, are in a word: Wrong.

Typical among today's brand of Republican commentators, such admissions have not been forthcoming.
 
White Working Class

What happened to all the voter fraud nonsense from which our intrepid Attorney General was going to protect us?

With the great number of people casting votes that saw Wisconsin at number two in voter turnout in the nation, the GAB reports that the elections were "virtually problem-free."

Now, another rightwinger, Wigderson from Waukesha, plays the fool on the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's (GAB) maintenance of its statewide registered voter list (SVRS) and the Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board case meant to stop the spectre of voting fraud.

The GAB, as it said it would, will ask for checks of SVRS against other existing databases, and it is now doing so, per its authority and responsibility and discretion.

The rightwing was right all along, say the know nothings. 

Is this ignorance deliberate? It must be, no one can be that dumb.

Those wishing that the 2008 election will result in commentary from the rightwing that is not quite so uninformed and dull will be disappointed.

Seeing the reaction to the news that the GAB is considering a timetable of its maintenance of its statewide registered voter list (SVRS), one is left with the impression that desire for rightwingers to read before commenting constitutes a lost hope. Hyperbole? I wish.

Regarding the Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board case, one would believe that those rightwing writers dissing the decision would read the briefs, relevant sections of the HAVA statute and the text of Judge Sumi's decision to dismiss. Sumi’s decision is 22 pages-long and is a quick read.

But rightwingers, like Dad29, show a stubborn resistance to facts. Hey, they were right all along, Dad29 would have you believe.

A valuable bequest from the Clinton administration is the revealing to a wide political audience of the American rightwing as hateful whack jobs.

Decent, hard-working people no doubt, but whack jobs nonetheless who pursued the Clintons relentlessly and shamelessly, casting every aspersion imaginable upon a cautious administration.

As a result of the Clintons' devastating rebuttal of the rightwing attacks [at the height of the impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval numbers rose to 69 percent], George W. Bush was forced to run as an anti-rightwing, centrist Republican, proclaiming non-divisive moderation in the 2000 election.

Progressive groups like Move On flowered as the attacks on Clinton became utterly untenable and the American people soured on the politics of the right.

Working at Fire Station #2, 5415 King James Way (Fitchburg, WI), the words of a black man in his 20s this morning stand out as poll workers worked with his voting identity and residence.

"I will be voting today," he said calmly but with determination.

Black folks who were newly registering at the polls had a determined look in their eyes; I mean it. And there was a steady stream of black families coming from the newly-registered room.

I lived in the ward for some eight years and I know the high and low-turnout areas. Many voting today were from low turn-out areas.

Inspiring. These are just the people that J.B. Van Hollen and the Republicans want to disenfranchise. And they would not be stopped today.

- via mal contends

Update: Gov Doyle, GOP DA criticize Van Hollen plan for agents at polling places

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCocco, a Democrat, called Van Hollen's plan to use state agents and lawyers to monitor polls Tuesday a dog and pony’ show. DeCocco said his search of state law ‘did not locate any mandates of providing prosecutor coverage at polling sites, or any authority to do so.’ ‘The attorney general has no authority in this state to supervise elections,’ Doyle told reporters. He again said the move by Van Hollen is part of a national effort by Republican Party leaders to ‘try and raise questions’ about the voting process - questions that they hope keep some voters from casting ballots.

Update: Video link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxPDZN1dd8

More evidence that Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is a liar, and corrupt partisan.

From the Wisconsin Democratic Party:

Van Hollen says GOP 'may have asked lawyers in my office to file the lawsuit.'

In a recent interview with CNN, Attorney General JB Van Hollen finally admitted to what we’ve known all along, that his hyper-partisan lawsuit against the GAB was brought in collusion with his Republican Party bosses.

Van Hollen doesn’t have a very good poker face. Watch his eyes wandering nervously when the reporter presses him on whether or not the GOP personally asked him to file the lawsuit. Maybe he’s nervous because he lost his lawsuit and now his web of cover-ups and deceit at the DOJ is finally unraveling.

Remember, this is the same guy who made the following statements to reporters last month:

- see also the Washington Independent's new piece, "A Myth of Voter Fraud"
The victory over the GOP and the Wisconsin attorney general's attempt to suppress blacks and other Democratically-leaning voters for electoral purposes reveals other groups and dedicated legal staffs busily at work, literally saving our democracy from the corrupt and anti-democratic forces that reign in today's GOP.

We have come a long way from the 1960s and Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler and 1,000s of civil rights workers in Alabama and Mississippi who were threatened with their lives (many were murdered), and jail as the white power structure and the internal states' security apparatus were used in every despicable way imaginable by Senator James Eastland, the Klan and assorted racists against the nigger-loving Jews as they were known back then.

Sure, in Wisconsin today the racism and anti-Semitism are absent, the violence and physical intimidation are gone, but remaining in Van Hollen and the Wisconsin Republican Party is the contempt for the voters who insist on casting their votes and making their voices heard in our democracy.