Though the Voting Rights Act was overwhelming reauthorized by Congress in 2006, the five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court may gut the law in the name of “states’ rights.” Justice Scalia led the way with provocative, offensive and even weird arguments, notes William Boardman.
Exclusive: In the U.S. system, the “supreme law” of the land is set by the Constitution and the federal government, though states, counties and cities have wide discretion over local matters. But problems arise when right-wingers start espousing the notion of “state sovereignty,” says Robert Parry.
After the Civil War, Reconstruction tried to suppress white racism but was aborted prematurely leading to a near century of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Now, five right-wingers on the U.S. Supreme Court are contemplating a replay by stabbing at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, writes Lawrence Davidson.
Exclusive: The U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wingers are making bizarre arguments for gutting the Voting Rights Act, suggesting their real goal is to allow more suppression of minority voters and thus elect a Republican president who will keep the right-wingers as the Court’s majority, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The Right’s desperation over U.S. demographic changes has spread to the U.S. Supreme Court where its five Republican partisans appear ready to tear up the most important part of the Voting Rights Act and thus clear the way for suppressing the votes of minorities, reports Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The U.S. Constitution has become part of today’s political battlefield, with the Right claiming to be its true defender and the Left questioning why the old parchment should undercut democratic choices in the modern age. But neither side seems very interested in what the document actually did, says Robert Parry.
Exclusive: In rejecting the Commerce Clause as the constitutional foundation for the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices distorted America’s founding narrative, including one made-up view attributed to Alexander Hamilton, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The U.S. Supreme Court went to the brink of striking down a major act of social legislation for the first time since the New Deal before being pulled back by Chief Justice John Roberts. But he still gave right-wingers a consolation prize by enshrining into legal precedent their false founding history, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: George Washington and James Madison, two key Framers of the Constitution, saw nothing wrong with issuing mandates to citizens (to buy muskets for a militia), but today’s Republican majority on the Supreme Court seems set on going rogue and rewriting the founding document to say otherwise, Sam Parry writes.
Exclusive: Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General Charles Fried sees “politics, politics, politics” at play in the apparent move by the Supreme Court’s Republican majority to kill health-care reform, but the Washington Post’s neocon editors say it’s unfair to call any of those five GOP justices a “hack,” reports Robert Parry.
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