Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Lawyer/lobbyist Michael Liburdi for the secretive GOP redistricting organization FAIR Trust is also representing the GOP-backed Save Our Vote Committee in a ballot challenge against the Open Elections/Open Government Act initiative. What can I say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Open primary foes file lawsuit to keep measure off Arizona … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio's racial profiling trial will begin as scheduled on Thursday, July 19. Profiling lawsuit against Arpaio set for July 19 | Arizona Capitol Times: The lawsuit alleges that officers based some traffic stops on the race of people in the vehicles and made the stops so they could inquire … Read more
By Michael Bryan
In the flurry of news and opinion gusting out of our computer screens and smart phones, it is easy to become 'news blind' – so focused on the flakes and flurries that we forget where we are headed. We stumble confusedly ahead with no map to our destination. It's easy to get lost in the storm.
I personally read almost every news source in Arizona – and keep up with national reaction to our politics, as well – in bringing to readers of BlogForArizona the Arizona Donkey Feed, which appears on our right-hand sidebar every day (you may also have the Feed emailed to you daily). So I, too, often find myself in that blizzard without a map.
I decided I might like to sit down once a week and take some time to look around, and identify what I think are the most significant landmarks around where we stand now. It might not be a map that will tell us where we are headed, but maybe I can get some idea of where we are. Over time, perhaps it will become a map of sorts.
I would also like to let you all know that Jim Nintzel of Tucson Weekly and AZPM's Roundtable fame will be guest-host at Drinking Liberally in Tucson. Come down to the Shanty of 4th Avenue this Wednesday at 6pm and experience the Nintz first-hand.
So, here are some thoughts on what I think are the most important, or just most interesting, developments in the past week in Arizona's politics.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
On Monday, a panel of federal Judges on the D.C. Circuit Court began trial of the case of the U.S. Department of Justice challenge to the Texas voter photo ID requirement. POLITICO reports Texas voter ID trial opens:
The case, which could make its way to the Supreme Court, is the first major federal court showdown in this election cycle over a series of laws Republican-controlled state legislatures have approved that require voters to show photo identification at the polls.
In March, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division refused to clear the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 14, saying Texas officials had failed to prove that it wouldn’t adversely affect minorities.
As the trial got under way in a packed courtroom, DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall went even further, arguing that the federal government will show racial motivation in Texas’s passage of the law.
“The facts will convincingly demonstrate the discriminatory purpose and effect of Senate Bill 14,” Westfall told the three-judge panel in her brief opening argument in a trial expected to last through Friday.
* * *
The law, signed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in May 2011, requires nearly all voters to show photo ID when voting in person. Most forms of state-issued photo ID, including driver’s licenses and firearms permits, are accepted. However, student IDs from Texas state universities are not.
Last year, South Carolina passed a similar law, which the Justice Department also rejected. South Carolina has also filed suit, but that case has yet to come to trial.
Under federal law, lawsuits seeking so-called “pre-clearance” of changes to voting procedures in all of seven mostly Southern states and parts of nine others, are heard by three-judge panels composed of two district court judges and an appeals court judge. D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel and District Court Judges Rosemary Collyer and Robert Wilkins were selected to hear the Texas voter ID case.
Posted by AzBlieMeanie:
Not the word I would have used; "goofy" implies silly and is benign. Radical, extreme, and dangerous are far more accurate descriptions. Maybe he had the Birthers im mind.
Richard Posner, a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, has long been considering a leading conservative legal thinker and is an icon of the right. Even he has had enough of the modern-day GOP. Richard Posner Drifting To The Left?:
[I]n an interview with NPR yesterday, Richard Posner said:
“There’s been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking. ”I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.”
Although Posner has never been considered a party-line conservative, he was a Reagan nominee considered ideologically solid enough to be a possible Supreme Court candidate in the Bush administration——albeit not enough to actually be nominated. Posner also has a huge amount of influence on American legal thought as one of the most widely cited judges and legal scholars in the country. It’s not that Posner’s comments will sway votes, after all he’s not exactly a celebrity. But the people paying attention to him will shape the direction of the law for decades to come. And if a leading conservative thinker has lost respect for the GOP, that’s worth noticing.
UPDATE: Apparently Judge Posner was more illuminating than this one quote. Crooksandliars.com has the audio file, Reagan-Appointed Judge: Republican 'Lunatics' Made Me Less Conservative: