Civil & Human Rights

AIRC Update: Petition for Review set for SCOTUS Conference

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gavelOne of the three cases filed by Arizona Tea-Publicans against the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC), Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (Docket No. 13-1314) has been distributed for the conference of U.S. Supreme Court Justices on September 29.

The Court can and should deny the petition for review by the Arizona State Legislature, upholding the District Court for Arizona opinion which was correctly decided under binding court precedents.

The Court could also relist the petition for review at a later date, something which occurs with regularity.

Howard Fischer today in Arizona redistricting fight goes to Supreme Court, suggests the Court could “summarily overturn” the District Court with an order after its conference. Not likely. This typically would involve an order of remand with instructions from the Court to the District Court for further proceedings. There is not going to be a simple order ruling in favor of the Arizona Legislature.

The Court could grant hearing the petition for review, which I would consider a red flag that the conservative activist justices are once again planning to reverse the Court’s long-standing precedents in their continuing assault upon voting rights.

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49th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act

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Forty-nine years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), taking an enormous step toward protecting the right to vote for all Americans. But last year, the “Felonious Five” conservative activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder cut out the heart of the VRA, Section 5, on the specious grounds that discrimination against voters by states no longer occurs in a post-racial America. One has to wonder what freakin’ planet these elitists live on.

Lyndon_Johnson_signing_Civil_Rights_Act,_July_2,_1964

If you want to see the VRA restored and Shelby County overturned, you are going to have to elect a Democratic House and Senate to do it. Your father’s Republican Party which helped to pass the VRA and always supported its re-authorization in years past, has been replaced by a radicalized extremist GOP.

Tea-Publicans have taken the opinion of the “Felonious Five” in Shelby County v. holder as a license to discriminate against “those people,” i.e., voters who tend to vote for Democrats. In fact, the very same day that Shelby County was announced, several former states of the Confederacy covered by Section 5 of the VRA immediately sought to infringe the rights of their citizens to vote.

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Martha McSally is a ‘Deportation Republican’

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I posted last week that The GOP is officially the party of Steve King and of mass deportation. Call them “Deportation Republicans.”

All four of Arizona’s Tea-Publican congressman voted for the two House bills. Arizona’s Senators voted with their GOP colleagues to filibuster the Democratic bill for border emergency funding over a procedural vote. Arizona’s angry old man John McCain had his panties in a bunch over an amendment that he wanted to offer to deport refugee children from Central American faster and with fewer due process protections than they now enjoy under a 2008 law (similar to the bill passed in the House). They are “Deportation Republicans.”

The Arizona Daily Star reported that CD 2 GOP candidate Martha McSally supports Rep. Steve King’s Tea Party non-compromise border bills in the House. She also is a “Deportation Republican.” CD2 Watch: Reactions to $694 million House immigration bill:

McSally-King“Yesterday, Congressman Barber failed Southern Arizonans by voting against a bill to help secure our border and provide badly needed resources to deal with the humanitarian crisis. Either he doesn’t understand how important this issue is or is more concerned with following his party’s wishes,” McSally said.

McSally notes the bill contains funding for additional resources for Customs and Border Patrol operations, funds National Guard troops on the border, increases humanitarian assistance for unaccompanied minors and adds funding for temporary immigration judges.

I guarantee you that Martha McSally, who has never demonstrated to me that she has any intellectual curiosity in learning anything about public policy, had any inkling about what was actually in these bills before this boilerplate statement was prepared for her by her RNCC handlers.

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The GOP War on Voting – dual election systems

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Election rules in the states of Kansas and Arizona are set to disenfranchise thousands of American citizens in coming weeks from casting ballots in state primaries, even though the federal government allows them to vote in congressional races. The Wall Street Journal reports Kansas, Arizona Require Proof of Citizenship for Voting:

NoVoteThe [dual election] system is the result of a growing battle between federal officials and a handful of states over the necessity of verifying that a newly registered voter is a U.S. citizen.

Kansas and Arizona say the federal registration process doesn’t rigorously check citizenship. They have established their own verification systems and are barring people who register using the federal system from voting this month for such offices as governor and local posts.

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Several states are closely watching a pending federal court case that has produced the unusual balloting in Kansas and Arizona. Georgia and Alabama are looking to implement proof-of-citizenship laws that have already passed, while lawmakers in states such as South Carolina and Oklahoma have considered adding such rules.

NOTE: The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on Monday, August 25, after the Kansas primary election, and the day before the Arizona primary election.

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