CIVIIL RIGHTS
Supreme Court Endorses Voter ID
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board that "states may require voters to present photo identification before casting ballots, upholding "an Indiana state law that requires voters to show a current government-sponsored photo ID." The law is generally regarded as the strictest in the nationbecause it "requires a voter to present a photograph as part of an unexpired document issued either by Indiana or the federal government." In most cases, such a requirement "can be satisfied only by a current driver's license or a passport," which critics "say discourages voting among the elderly and the poor." The lead opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, argued that Indiana has a "valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process." However, "the case contained 'no evidence' of the type of voter fraud the law was ostensibly devised to detect and deter." Writing in dissent, Justice David Souter "said that for those on whom the law had an impact, the burden was 'serious' and the state had failed to justify it." Though the ruling leaves "the door open to future lawsuits" that provide more evidence of discouragement and disenfranchisement, critics of voter ID laws worry "that a more likely outcome than successful lawsuits would be the spread of measures that would keep some legitimate would-be voters from the polls." Yesterday's decision "is not the end of the story on voter ID," said Wendy Weiser, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Now it's up to legislators and courts" in the states to decide "if they are going to follow Indiana's lead" or "if they're going to protect the right to vote for all Americans."
SPREADING THROUGH THE STATES: Voting experts believe that "far from settling the debate over voter identification," the court's ruling "is likely to lead to more laws and litigation." "The court's opinion is likely to perform the same function for the photo ID debate as the Pennsylvania primary did for the Democratic presidential nomination -- hardening positions while doing little if anything to illuminate a path to resolving the conflict," says Doug Chapin, director of the Pew Center on the States. Currently, seven states require photo ID to vote, and another 18 mandate non-photo ID. This year alone, at least 10 states have considered photo ID measures, while "lawmakers in at least four states may seek to pass stricter regulations in the next year or so." The court's ruling in the Indiana case reignites debates in states that recently ruled on voter ID laws. The Texas Senate rejected a photo ID requirement in 2007, but now, "the Republican-controlled Legislature will probably be recalled to work on a new ID measure," according to voting experts. The Missouri Supreme Court struck down an ID law in 2006, but now, "Missouri lawmakers, who are in session, are likely to be encouraged in an effort to put the question on the ballot."
A PROBLEM THAT HARDLY EXISTS: In his dissenting opinion, Souter noted that Indiana adopted its excessively restrictive voter ID law "without a shred of evidence that in-person voter impersonation is a problem in the state, much less a crisis." In fact, the evidence cited by Stevens in his lead opinion is so thin that he was forced to go back to the era of Boss Tweed -- 140 years ago -- "to describe the corrosive effects of widespread fraud at polling places." Of the 38 cases of voter fraud the Justice Department prosecuted between 2002 and 2005, 14 were thrown out. In fact, due to a lack of credible studies to back up their allegations of voter fraud, conservatives have been forced to establish a front group led by the general counsel of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign to create such reports. Despite the lack of evidence that voter fraud is a problem, the court's ruling places "virtually all the burden of proof on plaintiffs seeking to argue that laws illegally restrict their voting rights," which experts say "makes it much tougher for voting rights groups to prevail in court."
THE BURDEN OF VOTER ID: While many Americans have a variety of proofs of identity, according to the Transportation Department and Census Bureau, there are as many as 21 million voting-age Americans without driver's licenses. "A 2007 study by political scientists at the University of Washington found that about 13 percent of registered voters in Indiana lacked the required identification." Black and Latino Americans are far less likely than whites to have government-issued IDs. In a detailed study in Milwaukee, fewer than half of African-American and Latino adults had ID. The situation was even worse for young adults ages 18-24, with only 26 percent of African Americans and 34 percent of Latinos possessed a valid license, compared to 71 percent of young white adults. Those less likely to have IDs are not only poor or minority voters, but also the elderly, the blind and other disabled, renters, the homeless, foreign-born citizens, transgendered people, and urban residents.
ECONOMY -- ECONOMIC DOWNTURN LEAVES AMERICANS STRUGGLING FOR HEALTH CARE: A Kaiser Family Foundation/Urban Institute study released yesterday said that "each percentage-point rise in unemployment during the economic downturn would swell the uninsured by 1.1 million, stoking demand for government health coverage just as states face pressure to cut benefits." Last month alone, the economy shed 80,000 jobs, the largest monthly job decline in five years. The Kaiser study says "each rise in unemployment of one percentage point would also add 600,000 children and 400,000 adults to" government health care programs, requiring "an additional $3.4 billion for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, with $1.4 billion of it from the states." A poll released today found that 7 percent of Americans marry in order to obtain health insurance through their spouse, a trend that, though small, emphasizes the seriousness of the problem of access to health insurance. The poll also "found that healthcare costs outranked housing costs, rising food prices and credit card bills as a source of concern."
MILITARY -- SOLDIER RETURNS TO FORT BRAGG TO FIND LIVING CONDITIONS THAT 'SHOULD BE CONDEMNED': When Sgt. Jeff Frawley of the 82nd Airborne returned to his barracks at Fort Bragg, NC after a 15-month deployment in the mountains of Afghanistan, he encountered living conditions that "should be condemned." His father, Ed Frawly, posted a video on YouTube documenting the "disgusting" conditions: a building "which appears to be falling apart and filled with mold and rust," lead-based paint chipping, ceiling tiles missing, and a broken drain pipe allowing sewer gas into the building. But "[p]hotos from the communal bathroom show some of the most disgusting images. In one, a soldier stands in a sink to avoid what Frawley describes as 3 inches of sewage water that filled the floor when toilets overflowed." "Sewage water backs up into the sinks in the lower floors of these barracks," Frawley said in his narration of the video. Officials at the base have invited the media into the barracks and the Pentagon has said it corrected the problems at Fort Bragg. But as Frawley told ABC News: "When I left a week ago yesterday, they were working on it, but they had a long way to go."
ADMINISTRATION -- WHITE HOUSE INTERFERES WITH EPA'S PROGRAM TO ASSESS TOXIC CHEMICALS: A report to be released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that "non-scientists play an increasing role" in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which contains the agency's "scientific position on the potential human health effects of exposure to more than 540 chemicals." In the last two years, the EPA has completed only four toxic chemical assessments, even though the agency has a set goal to assess 50 per year. The GAO attributes the delays to interference from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has allegedly used inter-agency reviews to delay the assessments of toxic chemicals without making these reviews public. The report recommends that the EPA adopt a timely IRIS assessment program that is transparent and restores credibility to the review process. The OMB responded by saying that it does not make the reviews public because they are covered by the "deliberative process privilege." Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said that the White House's interference is a "scandal of major proportions."
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Yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) threatened to subpoena Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington and former Justice Department officials John Ashcroft and John Yoo, all of whom have refused to testify at a hearing on interrogation policies.
Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan come home to find that the GI Bill is "quite different from the comprehensive benefits that once covered all the costs of an education" after World War II. Veterans' advocates say "[t]he current GI benefit covers just half the national average cost for tuition, room and board” and "falls dramatically short."
Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, took the witness stand for accused terrorist Salim Ahmen Hamdan to "declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working." Davis also said former Guantanamo inmate David Hicks should never have been charged.
While some people marry for love, companionship, or even status, a poll released today finds a new reason: health insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 7 percent of Americans say that "they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse."
"Home foreclosure filings jumped 23 percent in the first quarter...and more than doubled from a year a earlier," according to new RealtyTrac data. "One of every 194 households received a notice of default, auction sale or bank repossession between January and March, for the seventh straight quarter of rising foreclosure activity."
A UNICEF report says the world's poorest children are the most vulnerable to global warming. "The report said climate change could add 40,000-160,000 extra child deaths a year in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through lower economic growth" and that "if temperatures rose by two degrees...up to 200 million people globally would face hunger."
In remarks in Kansas City, Colin Powell said that "the military was being stretched and a lot was being asked of the all-volunteer force at a time when the entire country isn't committed to war," the AP reports. "I think it would be hard to respond to another crisis if it was like these two," Powell said.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said yesterday that the "suspected Syrian reactor bombed by Israel had the capacity to produce enough nuclear material to fuel one to two weapons a year." "The plutonium reactor was within weeks or months of completion when it was destroyed in an air strike last Sept. 6." After one year of operation "it could have produced enough material for at least one weapon."
And finally: Some lawmakers just aren’t up on the latest celebrity gossip. At the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) was shocked at all the screaming fans, thinking they were there to greet politicians. "I thought, 'Wow, those are some serious political junkies,'" she said. She soon realized that the fans were there to greet the Jonas Brothers, not the lawmakers. "I don’t even know who they are," Klobuchar marveled. |
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Judge Robert Russell, "a judge in Buffalo, N.Y., has created a special
court to assist
veterans who wind up in the
criminal justice system."
KENTUCKY:
"Northern Kentucky University will expand employee health-care
benefits, including coverage for domestic partners."
ILLINOIS:
State announces "$3.5 million in private scholarship funds, to be
distributed among three dozen universities throughout the state over
the next seven years."
ENVIRONMENT:
"Environmental and animal rights groups sued the federal government
Monday, seeking to restore endangered species status for gray wolves in
the Northern Rockies."
THINK
PROGRESS: Iraq war architect
Paul Wolfowitz: "The occupation of
Iraq ended in June 2004."
WONK
ROOM:
The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: The Bush doctrine
"doesn't go with international law, practicality, or morals."
WASHINGTON
INDEPENDENT: The State
Department has only two Pashto speakers in
Afghanistan.
"I went out of my way to write a book that I do not believe that anybody who actually bothers to read even just substantial piece of it, would find is a blame-laying and finger-pointing book."
-- Iraq war architect Doug Feith, 4/28/08
VERSUS
"Secretary Powell, I think, would have done the country a much greater service...if he had actually debated [the Iraq war strategy] and put forward an alternative strategy."
-- Feith, 4/12/08
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