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" We will have a longer examination of the various speeches later, but we ought to highlight one particularly appalling idea espoused by the president last night. After going out of his way, both on election night and in his inaugural address, to say that he was going to fix the preposterous ways we run elections in this country, and after bringing poor Desiline Victor and her 102-year old self to Washington to sit in the gallery, the president then proposed...a bipartisan commission. A bipartisan commission is the Washington policy equivalent of a sock drawer. Worse, the Republican co-chairman is Benjamin Ginsberg, who is nothing less than a high-class ratfcker. He was one of the elves who sought to delegitimize Bill Clinton. He was central to the legal shenanigans surrounding the Florida Heist of 2000. He was connected to the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry. And his committment to opposing the modern techniques of voter-suppression -- particularly voter ID laws -- is less than stout. Benjamin Ginsberg, a Washington lawyer who advises the GOP on legal issues, said, &amp;quot;Photo IDs, for better or worse, have become a staple of American life.&amp;quot;  A staple of American life. And that&amp;#039;s the stuff that he&amp;#039;s supposed to be looking at in his new gig. The commission is a bad idea because this isn&amp;#039;t a Washington problem to be solved. This is a problem out in the states and the only real solutions are either to stop electing Republicans who pass these laws, and/or to extend Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to cover the whole country. (He said as the Supreme Court gets ready to decide whether to blow up Section 5 entirely.) I decline to be optimistic. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17475/the-presidents-bad-idea/>