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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Titus wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| catman wrote: |
| Angry white men using the courts to "get their country back". |
Angry OLDER white men thank you very much. I'd like to hope us younger white guys are a little less angry and bitter than our older peers. |
Ethnomasochism. |
By not wanting non-whites to be disenfranchised? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:34 am Post subject: |
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| stilicho25 wrote: |
OK, I just looked and have to admit I couldn't make heads or tails of the info, as they seemed to be using different systems that weren't easily reconcilable. Back to Khan academy for me.
http://www.pwcgov.org/government/dept/police/documents/14339.pdf
http://criminalstatistics.org/ky/clay
But anyhoo, say for the sake of argument your are right, and the crime rate is on a different planet. The tenor of your argument seems to be that genetics is the defining reason for that. I think bad government policy, history, and self inflicted cultural reasons are more likely.
So Scandinavians were pretty violent and aggressive at one point. Then Lutheranism seeps in, the culture changes, and you have hugely muscled viking-looking pacifists. I just don't buy the crime = aggressive genetics. Russians are scary when poor and in Brighton beach, and good neighbors when in Manhattan. Now I recognize the Brighton Beach isn't as violent as Alphabet city (although I think that's because they are good at hiding the bodies) but I think my point still stands the culture and circumstances account for 90%* of human behavior.
* my very arbitrary non-scientific no basis in fact estimation which should actually translate to almost all. |
Prince William County is a well-off county in VA that is predominantly white (and on its periphery has its share of rednecks). Prince George's County in Maryland (next to DC) is the richest black-majority county in the country. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 12:50 pm Post subject: |
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| stilicho25 wrote: |
| Fox, I am not saying that genetics play no role, but I think it is a relatively small one. |
Why guess. What does the research into the heritability of aggression say?
Did you know that in all mammals (we're mammals by the way), darker skin pigment is associated with higher aggression? There is a relationship between the regulation of hormones and pigmentation. Then we have the issue of IQ (aggression plus low IQ = Detroit). IQ, aggression, pigmentation are all heritable. Etc etc.
It is worth mentioning that the guy who birthed this cultural-creationism nonsense saw himself as being at war with Western Civilization and the white race. He was an academic fraud. His name was Boas. Oh, he was a Marxist too. And wouldn't you know it, god damn 70 years later, liberal people are still devoted to his ideas.
The culture a group creates will reflect the traits of the group. Culture has some impact on behavior and behavior (ie. genes) has impact on culture.
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| Prince William County is a well-off county in VA that is predominantly white (and on its periphery has its share of rednecks). Prince George's County in Maryland (next to DC) is the richest black-majority county in the country. |
Yes, it was Prince George County I looked at. |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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Supreme Court says Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer relevant
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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states no longer can be judged by voting discrimination that went on decades ago, a decision that argues the country has fundamentally changed since the racially motivated laws of the civil rights era.
In a 5-4 ruling, the justices said the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that mainly Southern states must undergo special scrutiny before changing their voting laws is based on a 40-year-old formula that is no longer relevant to changing racial circumstances.
“Congress — if it is to divide the states — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot rely simply on the past,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, which was comprised of the court’s conservative-leaning justices. |
"It cannot rely simply on the past?" Given the act included a framework through which regions could be released from supervision based on their present conditions, it's hard to see the logic here. Sure, it's past behavior that caused a particular locality to be placed under the scrutiny of this act, but it's present behavior that keeps it there.
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The four liberal-leaning justices dissented, arguing that racial discrimination in voting remains a real threat. The majority didn’t disagree with that, but the core of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion was that discrimination today looks markedly different from what it did decades ago, so the law must be changed to reflect that. The Shelby County v. Holder ruling sparked an immediate debate about the status of race and discrimination in modern America.
“There’s just no question that the court is slowly letting go of this legacy of race in America, and is pushing it aside,” said Ward Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute. “I think the resistance you’re seeing from the NAACP, ACLU and a lot of others to the Shelby case is a recognition that the ship is moving, and it’s moving from where it was with regard to race 50 years ago — it’s moving in the direction of a post-racial era.”
The ruling leaves in place many of the protections of the 1965 law, such as banning literacy tests. It even said Congress can require some states or localities to submit their voting changes for special scrutiny.
But the court’s majority said Congress cannot use the same formula from four decades ago, which judged states based on black voter registration and turnout.
“If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula. It would have been irrational for Congress to distinguish between states in such a fundamental way based on 40-year-old data, when today’s statistics tell an entirely different story,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
He invited Congress to try to rewrite the formula — and President Obama and congressional Democrats said they would try to do just that. But Republicans didn’t signal an eagerness to accept the court’s challenge.
The justices’ decision marks a major break after decades in which the court upheld the Voting Rights Act, which was passed at the height of the civil rights movement and was designed to combat literacy tests, inaccessible polling places and other barriers to voting. |
No relevant text in the Constitution has recently changed; this law is not unconstitutional today for the same reason it wasn't unconstitutional in the past. Judicial review is fine, but this is literally legislation from the bench; the Supreme Court's duties do not include striking down laws which they consider to be "irrational" or " no longer necessary."
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J. Gerald Hebert, a voting rights lawyer, said the ruling marks the first time since the 1880s that the Supreme Court found Congress had overstepped itself under the 15th Amendment, which guarantees that the right to vote cannot be denied because of race, and grants the legislature broad powers to ensure those rights are protected.
“I think today’s decision is an extreme act of judicial activism. Just four years ago, this precise issue was before the court and there were five justices at that time who did not declare the Voting Rights Act or the coverage provisions unconstitutional,” he said. “What has changed in four years?”
Gary May, a history professor at the University of Delaware and author of a new book, “Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy,” said the court’s decision amounted to a step backward at a time when barriers had shifted from literacy tests to more subtle roadblocks such as voter ID laws or eliminating Sunday early voting.
Mr. May said congressional Republicans must decide whether to update the formula or let it die, which would doom much of the Voting Rights Act. He said the court’s decision could spur a renewed civil rights movement. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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SCOTUS strikes down the current Article 5 coverage formula as unconstitutional, invites Congress to draft new Article 5 language.
In the bleating from the Left, you will hear cries that the Voting Rights Act has been neutralized. Not even close. Only Justice Thomas voted to terminate Section 5 of the VRA.
The current preclearance schema is to be wiped away, but Congress may replace it with another. Indeed, Congress has failed to replace the preclearance mechanism since 1965. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
The current preclearance schema is to be wiped away, but Congress may replace it with another. |
Politically impossible, unless Americans elect some sort of California-style liberal ultra-majority. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Judicial review is fine, but this is literally legislation from the bench; the Supreme Court's duties do not include striking down laws which they consider to be "irrational" or " no longer necessary." |
Matt Yglesias showed up on my twitter feed this morning (somebody else retweeted him), and said this:
| Matt Yglesias wrote: |
I’m no lawyer, but there’s not much ambiguity in the text of Amendment 15 Section 2:
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Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation |
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I thought it was, shall I say, appropriate that Yglesias prefaced his comment with the caution that he is no lawyer. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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Ginsburg's dissent suggests that Breyer and the girls didn't seem to think the law in question had suddenly become inappropriate.
I honestly don't see much to defend in five Republican judges pushing, and pushing hard, the "Our country (read: the South) has changed!" narrative. I see absolutely no way in which throwing pre-clearance out, in a time when replacing it with anything will be functionally impossible, improves out country, but I see ways in which it worsens it. In the presence of an absolute Constitutional violation, okay, maybe it would have been unavoidable, but no such absolute violation exists. Partisan judges tossing out a law which has been proven effective over a purely subjective judgment call is not something to be championed, is it? Sure, it's not the end of the Voting Rights Act, but that doesn't make it a good or laudable thing. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| I honestly don't see much to defend in five Republican judges pushing, and pushing hard, the "Our country (read: the South) has changed!" narrative. |
Evidence that the South has changed. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| I honestly don't see much to defend in five Republican judges pushing, and pushing hard, the "Our country (read: the South) has changed!" narrative. |
Evidence that the South has changed. |
Evidence that Civil Rights Legislation has worked and continues to work, which is not the same as genuine cultural change. By contrast, that which I posted upthread --
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| Section 5 also deterred discriminatory voting changes � more than 205 voting changes were withdrawn after the Department of Justice requested more information. Further, voting discrimination was evidenced by the 650 successful lawsuits brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in covered jurisdictions. |
-- is evidence that no, things (wherein those "things" are the hearts and minds of the people and those in power, not the temporal statistics which found themselves upon the very legislation being negated!) haven't changed as much as the narrative-pushers would have us believe. The most you can argue is that, "While things haven't really changed all that much, at least people can still turn to Section 2." For God's sake, Texas took what, two hours after this ruling was issued to announce it was back to work on voter-suppression legislation? They aren't even subtle about it, Kuros.
You seem to be implicitly supporting the majority decision here, so I'm curious about what you feel the deficiencies are in the Ginsberg's dissent. From your perspective as a student of the law, why do you think she and the minority are wrong? I won't even be a dick about it, I really want to hear your analysis. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2013 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| I honestly don't see much to defend in five Republican judges pushing, and pushing hard, the "Our country (read: the South) has changed!" narrative. |
Evidence that the South has changed. |
Evidence that Civil Rights Legislation has worked and continues to work, which is not the same as genuine cultural change. |
Given the role of Federalism in our system, and the traditional sovereignty of the states in formulating their own election laws (a principle the Bush v. Gore majority conveniently left aside), and the explicit limiting language in Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, the burden was on the Federal government to justify the preclearance provisions.
I think Ginsburg is just wrong. She has to show the umbrella is still necessary, not state that simply because the South is not wet, that it must require protection from the rain. She evaded the central question: is it raining?
Opinion
| Chief Justice Roberts wrote: |
There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act.
. . .
Yet the Act has not eased the restrictions in § 5 or narrowed the scope of the coverage formula in § 4(b) along the way. Those extraordinary and unprecedented features were reauthorized — as if nothing had changed. In fact, the Act's unusual remedies have grown even stronger. When Congress reauthorized the Act in 2006, it did so for another 25 years on top of the previous 40 — a far cry from the initial five-year period. Congress also expanded the prohibitions in § 5.
. . .
Respondents do not deny that there have been improvements on the ground, but argue that much of this can be attributed to the deterrent effect of § 5, which dissuades covered jurisdictions from engaging in discrimination that they would resume should § 5 be struck down. Under this theory, however, § 5 would be effectively immune from scrutiny; no matter how "clean" the record of covered jurisdictions, the argument could always be made that it was deterrence that accounted for the good behavior. (internal citations omitted) |
Ginsburg's contention appears unfalsifiable. We don't know if its raining, because the VRA hasn't gone outside since 1965.
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The Government falls back to the argument that because the formula was relevant in 1965, its continued use is permissible so long as any discrimination remains in the States Congress identified back then — regardless of how that discrimination compares to discrimination in States unburdened by coverage. This argument does not look to "current political conditions," (citation omitted), but instead relies on a comparison between the States in 1965.
. . .
Congress did not use the record it compiled to shape a coverage formula grounded in current conditions. It instead reenacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day. |
Congress has had its five years and then two, given that the current Sec. 4 preclearance parameters were approved in 2006. There are indications that it will be able to go back and set more modern, more applicable, more current parameters.
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| Sensenbrenner[R-Wis] is not alone. Two other Midwestern Republicans, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin and Steve Chabot of Ohio, also have expressed support for passing a fix to the legislation in response to the Court, according to The Hill. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, meanwhile, said he hoped his colleagues would "put politics aside ... and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected." |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:40 am Post subject: |
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The Federal Appellate Court System has gone beyond just resetting the pre-clearance boundaries of the Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
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The [Texas Voter ID] law was challenged again [after the Shelby County v. Holder decision] by the Justice Department and civil rights groups. After a lengthy trial, it was struck down, again, on October 9, in a searing opinion by Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who called the law “an unconstitutional poll tax.”
Ramos found that 600,000 registered voters in Texas — 4.5 percent of the electorate — lacked a government-issued ID, but the state had issued only 279 new voter IDs by the start of the trial. African-Americans were three times as likely as whites to not have a voter ID and Hispanics twice as likely. The law was passed by the Texas legislature, “because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law’s detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate,” Ramos wrote.
But five days later, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — one of the most conservative courts in the country — overruled Ramos, arguing that striking the voter ID law “substantially disturbs the election process of the State of Texas just nine days before early voting begins.” The appeals court curiously believed that blocking the voter ID before the election would do more harm to voters than preserving a law that could disenfranchise 600,000 voters in the state. |
Now, given my earlier position on this issue (under my prior nome de ecran, Kuros), you might find it surprising that I object to the Fifth Circuit's decision. But the Fifth Circuit Court essentially set aside the facts found by the trial court on the grounds that it was too close to the election to enjoin the effect of the Voter ID law. One should instead argue that a Voter ID law which targets the right to vote for Hispanics and African-Americans substantially disturbs the election process and should be enjoined.
Apparently, only three members of the Supreme Court agreed to hear the emergency petition, which is one member short of the grant of certiori. So, the Voter ID law in Texas, which Texas passed because of its detrimental effects on African-Americans and Hispanics, will go forward this November. Incredible. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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