President Obama yesterday stood alone in the cramped Robben Island prison cell in South Africa that once held Nelson Mandela, gazing out at the blue sky through a barred window.
Obama, who says his political career was inspired by Mandela’s nonviolent fight against apartheid, again drew inspiration by touring the penal island with First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Obama had visited before, but it was a new experience for the rest of his family.
“Nelson Mandela showed us that one man’s courage can move the world,” Obama said later in a speech at the University of Cape Town.
“There was something different about bringing my children. Malia’s now 15, Sasha is 12, and seeing them stand within the walls that once surrounded Nelson Mandela,” he said, “I knew this was an experience that they would never forget.”
The tour was led by Ahmed Kathrada, a former inmate and anti-apartheid activist imprisoned with Mandela.
Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years captive in the grim confines of cell 7B, where Obama entered alone and briefly reflected.
Mandela, 94, has been hospitalized in critical condition for three weeks with a lung infection.
Police Search for Gunman Following Deadly Road Rage Shooting
Police were searching today for a gunman following an alleged road rage shooting in Tampa, Fla., that left one man dead.
The victim, whom authorities have identified as 47-year-old Fred William Turner Jr. of Orlando, Fla., was driving on a Florida highway when he called 911 to tell dispatchers he was being followed by a man with a gun after leaving a nearby store, ABC Tampa affiliate WFTS-TV reported.
“We know that at one point in time, this person did pull up beside him and showed him a hand gun,” Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee told “Good Morning America.”
“During the time he was on the call with the Highway Patrol, they actually heard the shooting. There were a series of shots,” he said.
Authorities responded to the scene to find Turner shot and killed in his car on the side of the roadway.
Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen, has come up a novel approach that he thinks will help the growing movement wishing to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which signifies that corporations are “people”, allowing billionaires and corporate panhandlers to seduce politicians with unlimited “contributions”…very un-democratic…without having to disclose to the public any of its political funding activities.
Calling itself “a petition on steroids”, Cohen’s organization, StamStampede.org, operates around the idea that with tens of thousands of Americans legally stamping his messages on the Nation’s currency to #GetMoneyOut of Politics and as more and more stamped money spreads, so will the movement to amend the Constitution.
It’s just crazy enough to work!
“Every dollar you stamp will reach 875 people, if you stamp 5 dollars a day for a year, that’s over a million. Together, we can create a stampede that Congress can’t ignore.” ~StampStampede.org.
As of this posting, 15 states have voted in favor of an amendment specifying that corporations are NOT people. 150 Congressional members are needed to support it.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said Wednesday that the fact that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas voted this week to gut the Voting Rights Act — the 1965 law aimed at protecting disenfranchised voters — ranks him somewhere below the likes of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. surveillance programs to the press.
“Comparing it to Snowden, I’d say the offense is worse,” Johnson told The Huffington Post.
Johnson, who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Snowden was wrong to leak top-secret materials to the media but was also “mistaken” in thinking that NSA’s activities were illegal. By contrast, Thomas, who is black, is “legally aware of the consequences” to the black community of striking down a core piece of the Voting Rights Act, Johnson said, yet he did it anyway.
“He consciously repeats those same steps over and over again to the detriment of the African-American community,” Johnson said of Thomas’ conservative voting record.
Chris Christie is not too happy with the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.
“I don’t think the ruling was appropriate,” said Christie, who is running for reelection in a blue state, one in which Democrats have hailed the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.
“I think it was wrong,” Christie continued, calling it “typical of the problem we see” in New Jersey’s own Supreme Court.
He blasted the U.S. Supremes for substituting “their own judgment for the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. In the Republican Congress in the ‘90s and Bill Clinton. I thought that Justice Kennedy’s opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton.”
“He basically said that the only reason to pass that bill was to demean people. That’s heck of a thing to say about Bill Clinton and about the Republican Congress back in the ‘90s. And it’s just another example of judicial supremacy, rather than having the government run by the people we actually vote for,” said Christie, who recently appeared with Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative conference.
Clinton himself has walked away from the signing of DOMA, and in a statement said he was pleased with the court’s ruling.
Christie is polling as a top prospect for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, and a number of evangelical leaders made clear after the SCOTUS ruling that the base of the party will remain opposed to same-sex marriage.
Yet, Christie is running in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and wooing Democrats has been a huge part of a strategy aimed at driving up his margin of victory, should he win over rival Barbara Buono.
I think we were all warned that the final week of the Supreme Court term would turn us all into hypocrites, and it certainly delivered on that promise. The conservatives had to like the Voting Rights Act case decision and liberals had to like DOMA, and both sides had something to like and dislike about the Affirmative Action and the California Proposition 8 results.
In the end, none of these decisions should have been surprising. The liberal era that reached its height in the late 1960s has been declining for years and the court has done its best lately to rein in what the right sees as its excesses, especially when it comes to government power. They’ve also set back abortion rights, the rights of the accused, and have ruled fairly consistently for the rights of religious organizations to participate in the public square. To think that any of these issues is sacrosanct would be foolish, but to also think that the court’s decisions mean an end to liberal programs would likewise be incorrect.
But the conservatives have also done wonders for the gay rights movement. Not only did they finally strike down anti-sodomy laws, but yesterday’s marriage equality ruling is a huge step forward for the recognition that homosexuals must be treated with respect under the law. I know that many African-Americans don’t like the comparison between the Civil Rights Movement and today’s gay issues, but on a human scale they are exactly the same. It’s important that every citizen be welcome and be able to feel relaxed in our society. If you’re straight, the world generally works for you. If you’re gay, some parts of it don’t. Being a member of the majority or the power structure bestows on people a sense that they have control over their destiny. Everyone deserves to feel this way.
I’m looking forward to the day when people are simply married; not same-sex married or married with equality, but just…married. That’s the beauty of the court’s ruling. I also look forward to the day when all people have access to higher education and the vote. We need to work to make these happen, but I have confidence that we will.
At least two fire bombs were thrown at the Fort Worth office of state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) on Tuesday night, according to the Star Telegram.
Davis was not in her office at the time, but some staff members were present. They used a fire extinguisher to put out the small blaze.
No one was injured in the attack, but the lawmaker’s office was damaged by the fire.
“It’s unfortunate when things like this happen in the public arena,” she said. “It reminds us of how important it is for us to remain very civil in our discourse and to work not to foment this kind of anger in our community as we discuss things that are challenges that we all face and care about.”
Anthony Spangler, Davis’ communications director, said he had no idea what motivated the attack.
After hours of vigils and secret family meetings, South Africans awoke to another day of unease Wednesday as ailing anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela remained hospitalized in critical condition.
“Former President Nelson Mandela’s condition remains unchanged in hospital and doctors continue to do their best to ensure his recovery, well-being and comfort,” the government said in a statement late Tuesday night.
As the nation remained on edge, police barricaded the street leading to the hospital’s main entrance.
Well-wishers hung balloons, stuffed animals and messages of support along the wall outside his Pretoria hospital . Crowds hovering nearby sang “where is Mandela” as they matched toward the entrance.
Mandela has been hospitalized since June 8 for a recurring lung infection, and authorities have described his condition as critical in the last few days.
A one man band. He “played his… instrument on the Grand Central subway station, leading to the number 4 and 6 trains. Is it music or a whole lotta noise?
Wearing pink tennis shoes to prepare for nearly 13 consecutive hours of standing, a Democratic Texas state senator on Tuesday began a one-woman filibuster to block a GOP-led effort that would impose stringent new abortion restrictions across the nation’s second-most populous state.
Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth began the filibuster at 11:18 a.m. CDT Tuesday. To derail a vote in the GOP-dominated Senate, she must keep speaking on the bill until midnight — the deadline for the end of the 30-day special session.
Before Davis began speaking, her chair was removed. CBSDFW.com reports that Davis must speak continuously — and stay on topic — the entire time. She is not allowed to lean against something for support. And she will not be able to stop or take a break, not even for meals or the restroom, during the entire 13-hour ordeal.
Davis offered some insight to her plans Monday night on Twitter.
Remember when conservatives across the nation accused liberal justices of being activists? Of making law without interpreting it? Of imposing their political ideology on court cases instead of taking a uniquely 18th century view of the constitution? Good times, no?
Welcome to the conservative majority.
Today’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case shows that the right can be just as activist, just as ideological and just as dismissive of the democratic process as they accused the left of being. It was evident during arguments in March, and the decision was not far off from what many feared would happen.
Justice Thomas called for striking down Section 5 immediately, saying the majority opinion had provided the reasons and merely left “the inevitable conclusion unstated.”
The most disturbing part of the decision came from Justice Roberts, who claims to care about originalism and reliance on the past, except in cases where he doesn’t. Thus,
The current coverage scheme, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no relationship to the present day.”
“Congress — if it is to divide the states — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions,” he wrote. “It cannot simply rely on the past.”
What makes sense in light of current conditions is a product of the past. That’s the bedrock assumption of every history class I’ve ever taken and one that serious historians wouldsurely agree. It’s like saying that Paula Deen said what she said only in light of what’s happening in the country in 2013 and forgetting that she is a product of a specific time, place, history and upbringing.
As usual, it took a liberal justice to remind the court why the Voting Rights Act had been passed in the first place and why we still need it today: History. From Justice Ginsburg:
“The great man who led the march from Selma to Montgomery and there called for the passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress, even in Alabama,” she said. “’The arc of the moral universe is long,’ he said, but ‘it bends toward justice,’ if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”
“That commitment,” she said, “has been disserved by today’s decision.”
Ginsburg also laid out a chilling future based on today’s decision.
She said the focus of the Voting Rights Act had properly changed from “first-generation barriers to ballot access” to “second-generation barriers” like racial gerrymandering and laws requiring at-large voting in places with a sizable black minority. She said Section 5 had been effective in thwarting such efforts.
As if on cue, and wasting no time in trying to disenfranchise the next generation,
“With today’s decision,” said Greg Abbott, Texas’ attorney general, “the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”
Finally, you know that things are seriously awry when a liberal has to remind the conservatives of the bedrock of right wing originalist dogma:
In any event, she said, Congress, which reauthorized the law by a large majority in the House and unanimously in the Senate, was the right body to decide whether the law was needed and where.
Exactly.
Yes, we have an African-American president and we had more African-American participation in the 2012 election, and we have many more African-Americans in local and state offices.But we still have mischief and we still have false cries of voter fraud from the right. What will happen now because of this decision is that those laws will take affect and aggrieved parties will need to react to them after the fact. You were denied your vote? Oh well. Better luck next time.
If Harry Reid is our only hope, we probably have no more hope left. Remember, Harry Reid was the same guy who promised to do something about the Republican abused Filibuster, just to sit on his hands when the time came for him to act.
Now, after the Supreme Court voted down Section 5 of the Voting Act, Harry Reid is once again promising to act.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday that the “Senate will act” to address the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
First, Reid said he will task Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to hold “wide-ranging hearings” on the subject beginning next month after Senate Democrats huddled on the issue during their lunch caucuses on Tuesday.
“There’s general displeasure — and that’s an understatement — in my caucus about what the Supreme Court did. Especially in light of what happened this last election cycle, with Republicans doing everything they could to suppress voting,” Reid told reporters after the lunches. “This is a dark day for the Supreme Court. But it’s been pretty cloudy over there for some time now.
Some Democrats added that the threat posed to minority voting rights — especially through hotly-contested voter ID laws — was just as present as it was when the VRA went into effect. But Republicans argue that the voting situation is much improved since the the act first passed.
“It’s an important bill that passed back in the ’60s at a time when we had a very different America than we have today,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky, who declined to elaborate beyond that statement: “At this point I think I’m just going to have to read it first.”
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