Civil Rights Act Archives

Vice President Biden Supports The Voting Act – “We’re Still Fighting”

Vice President Joseph Biden today urged the Supreme Court to uphold a provision of the Voting Rights Act that gives the federal government ongoing oversight of ballot collecting in states with histories of discrimination.

Speaking at annual memorial festivities in Selma, Ala., commemorating the 1965 civil rights marchthere, the vice president told a crowd including some of those original activists, “you know it continues on today.”

“Look folks, here we are, 48 years after what you did, and we’re still fighting,” he said.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 struck down Jim Crow segregation laws and other measures designed to impede or otherwise disenfranchise black voters. It has been renewed four times, most recently in 2006 when it passed Congress near-unanimously.

But last week conservative justices on the Supreme Court indicated they were ready to void a section of the law that requires certain states, mostly in the South, to seek federal approval for any changes to their voting regulations.

“Section Five of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, OK? I even got credit getting [Sen.] Strom Thurmond to vote for its reauthorization in the Senate,” Biden said, referring to the late, formerly segregationist lawmaker. “Strom Thurmond voted for its reauthorization in the Senate, and yet it’s being challenged in the Supreme Court of the United States of America as we stand here today.”

On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern that in its renewal Congress had used an outdated “coverage formula” that singled out certain states unfairly. Justice Antonin Scalia warned of “racial entitlements” that he said would prove “very difficult” to get rid of through democratic processes.

h/t ABC News

Republican Herman Cain Is A Joke

There’s simply no other way to describe the Presidential hopeful.

In a speech given at the Family Leader Presidential Lecture Series in Pella, Iowa, Hermain wowed the conservative audience by complaining about President Obama, and telling the audience that the only bills a Herman Cain president will sign into law, will be three pages or less. The audience loved it.

CAIN: Engage the people. Don’t try to pass a 2,700 page bill — and even they didn’t read it! You and I didn’t have time to read it. We’re too busy trying to live — send our kids to school. That’s why I am only going to allow small bills — three pages. You’ll have time to read that one over the dinner table. What does Herman Cain, President Cain talking about in this particular bill?

ThinkProgress made this observation.

Cain’s pledge received a raucous round of applause from the crowd, who didn’t seem to fully appreciate the implications of such a radical cut-off mark. The vast majority of substantive bills passed by Congress are longer than three pages. Under this bright-line rule, Cain wouldn’t have signed such landmark pieces of legislation as the Civil Rights Act, the Social Security Act, or thePATRIOT Act. In fact, he wouldn’t have even been able to sign the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which ran 114 and 18 pages, respectively.

As president, Cain wouldn’t be able to sign any of the always-lengthy appropriations bills that keep the government running and the military funded. In fact, pretty much the only legislation that could squeak by under Cain’s three-page cut-off would be the simplest bills naming post offices and the like. But perhaps that’s exactly what Cain wants — to completely shutdown government by refusing to take any action that requires a prolonged attention span.