Voting Wrongs Act

The Voting Rights Act went before the Supreme Court yesterday, and despite the overwhelming evidence that voting restrictions are popping up everywhere, the conservative majority - whose two Italian-American justices could have inspired a Danny Aiello role in a Spike Lee movie - thought that protecting the right of blacks to vote was, in Antonin Scalia's words, a "racial entitlement." Well, it is, if your racial group's right to vote is in need of protecting!

Anyway, the Supreme Court's conservative justices seem to think that the section of the Voting Rights Act preventing discriminatory practices by requiring the federal government to sign off on voting law changes on the state and local levels - including most of the Southern states - isn't needed anymore. After all, we have a black President -so what if removing voter protection safeguards for blacks would prevent a second one? - and, hey, there's no evidence of discrimination in Shelby County, Alabama, from where the suit originated, or anywhere else in the South. That's because the section of the Voting Rights Act being scrutinized is designed to stop discrimination before it starts.

The conservative wing of the court couldn't find one reason to uphold that provision yesterday, so it's as good as dead, I'm afraid. Voting rights activists can protest outside the Supreme Court building all they want, but that's not going to change the minds that need to be changed inside the building. It's just the right's latest effort to create a society to which many people of different races, creeds and colors belong but in which only a small, mostly white group of men run everything.

Kind of like the Catholic Church.