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" (Optional soundtrack to this blog post...)      It was only a matter of time before someone tried it, but now, the state of Texas has amended its response to the Department of Justice&amp;#039;s objection to its voter-ID law to include an assault on the Voting Rights Act itself. The truly nervous-making part of the whole thing is that line at the end of the news story in which we are told that both Chief John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas have &amp;quot;raised concerns&amp;quot; about the pre-clearance provisions &amp;quot;needs.&amp;quot; Which, one supposes, are based on the argument that, because the nation has triumphed over racism and even elected a black guy president, the pre-clearance provisions of the VRA are now obsolete. If the Supreme Court has a couple more justices with these concerns, the whole structure of what was achieved at great cost in the 1960&amp;#039;s could be sticks and splinters in a very short time. The obvious rejoinder to all this is the staggering welter of voter-suppression laws that has erupted in the various states in the aftermath \u2014 and, I would argue, as a result \u2014 of the country&amp;#039;s having elected a black guy as president. They have their roots, of course, in the assorted voter-suppression tactics that came to light conspicuously in 2000 in Florida, but, in writing the spirit of those tactics into law over the last couple of years, Republican officeholders out there in the Laboratories of Democracy have committed themselves to a reestablishment of an element of American apartheid that people bled and died to reverse. If I thought the concept of shame still applied to some of these people, I&amp;#039;d send them all to talk to John Lewis for a few minutes. It&amp;#039;s been a bad couple of weeks for the vote suppressors. In addition to the DOJ&amp;#039;s chucking of the Texas statute, a judge threw out Wisconsin&amp;#039;s voter-ID law. Which is probably part of the reason that Texas decided to shoot the moon here. Sometimes, the most depressing thing about politics is how impermanent the real victories are. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13195/texas-voter-id-challenge-7358705/>