Freedom Line Blog

Okay, it’s time for me to weigh in, now that everybody else has so thoughtfully risen to my challenge to put their predictive skills on the line. I see we run the gamut from total victory against the whole law to a doleful prediction that the mandate will stand.

Well, count me in the mushy middle. After going back and forth and around and around on this subject for months, I just can’t tell where my own analysis — and my own wish for a defeat of ObamaCare — ends and my assessment of each of the justices’ proclivities begins.

But here’s what I have come up with: I think this is going to be one of those horribly fractured decisions where observers have trouble making heads or tails of everything. I think there may even be concurrent pluralities rather than a simple majority on at least a couple of the questions presented to the court. In the end, though, I do — yes, I do — expect the mandate in this particular form, applied in this particular way, to be adjudged at least partially unconstitutional. In other words, the court will leave open the possibility that such a mandate in theory could be within the federal government’s powers, but just not THIS mandate in this form. But I think a majority may not agree on what the remedy for this abuse is, and will come up with some Rube Goldberg way of punting the ultimate decision back to lower courts or to Congress.

Meanwhile, the challenge to the Medicaid provision will fail, 6-3.

If I am right, perhaps we should be thankful for even tiny victories. But I say: “Ugh!”

Congressional staffers are buzzing about a terrifically insightful National Journal piece from a week ago that has still attracted too little mainstream notice, explaining how if any part of ObamaCare is thrown out by the Supreme Court, the budgetary “scoring” problems that would be caused (for the Congressional Budget Office) are so complicated that they could hamstring implementation of what’s left of the law — but also hamstring efforts to fix any holes caused by the law’s unraveling. Basically, CBO could be looking at a law whose budgetary effects are essentially “unestimatable.”

My sources say the administration’s own argument — that if the mandate is struck down, so should the rest of Title 1 of the Affordable Care Act, but none of the rest of it — could effectively put itself (the administration itself) into a box, paint it into a corner, or whatever other cliche you want to use. As Margot Sanger-Katz and Meghan McCarthy of National Journal reported:

Washington’s top health economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, say that position could lead to an even more complex breakdown of the law’s interlocking provisions than just losing the mandate. CBO declined to comment for this story, and the White House also declined to comment on whether it is worried about complications that might result from its position.

But several congressional staffers said that CBO has been asked to score the scenario, and the office demurred, saying it’s too difficult to game out the consequences. According to economists, the scenario is not just complicated, but also potentially expensive—and could lead the estimated $461 billion in insurance tax credits through 2021 to balloon.

This all gets very complicated, and it goes even  beyond what National Journal so well described, but this bears serious watching. Stay tuned. The administration really could be in for “heap big trouble.”

As Troy Senik and I both have expressed strong support for the idea that Arizona’s Jon Kyl should be on Mitt Romney’s short list for vice president, it is worth watching this interview Kyl did on Fox News Channel the other night. The key thing isn’t the particular substance of the discussion, but whether or not Kyl comes across well: Does he communicate his point well, clearly, and understandably? Does he come across as reasonable, competent, knowledgeable, and likeable, all at the same time? The answers to those questions are all “yes.”

There are all sorts of ways a presidential campaign can use a running mate. One of the best is to let the top of the ticket hammer home one strong message, again and again, as the main theme of the campaign, while assigning the VP candidate the role of raising and carrying several secondary issues to continually put the opponent on the defensive and to distract the opposing campaign from its message of the day.

With Arizona being ground zero for the immigration-policy battle, and with Kyl occupying a moderate or middle ground as being critical enough of Obama’s lack of enforcement to satisfy hard-liners but open enough to fair-minded appreciation of some immigrants’ interests that he won’t scare off Hispanic voters, he could well carry the immigration message well as Secondary Issue Number One. As an expert on military and foreign affairs, he could make up for Romney’s lack of experience there and blast the heck out of Obama on those issues, making defense/fo-po Secondary Issue Number Two. With his experience on the Judiciary Committee, he could make judges and Justice Department corruption and politicization (Fast and Furious, Black Panthers, etcetera) Secondary Issue Number Three. Few potential running mates are as well equipped to carry multiple issues against Obama as Kyl is.

C’mon, my Fellows: Weigh in! Which way will the high court go tomorrow?

The always astute Ed Whelan weighs in here.

Specifically, the fact that Justice Scalia read his dissent from the bench in the Arizona immigration case leads me to believe that the Court will invalidate the individual mandate by a 5-4 vote……

There was a time when Jeffrey Rosen was a thoughtful center-left court analyst, with a constitutional interpretive philosophy clearly to the left of Madisonian/conservative textualists but nonetheless willing to give credit where due to conservative jurists and to recognize their arguments and their consistency even when he disagreed with them. Well, for years it has been clear that those days are long gone, and that Rosen barely maintains the veneer of thoughtful and fair-minded analyst while actually going far down the road that columnist E.J. Dionne long ago traversed, into full-time partisan hackery.

Witness Rosen’s new analysis of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Arizona immigration case. It is couched throughout in terms of “giving credit where due” to conservative justices. But that stance is just a pose. Look more closely, and you’ll see that he gives credit only when the conservatives agree with him. If they agree with him, then they are showing an ability to be “modest and nuanced in tone and substance” while demonstrating a “vision of bipartisan nationalism.” But he warns that if they don’t agree that the ObamaCare individual mandate is perfectly constitutional, then they will suddenly appear “partisan and unrestrained” and will have violated their “previously expressed judicial philosophies.”

In other words: Agree with me, and you are wonderful. Disagree with me, and you have switched in three days from being wonderful to being a vicious, partisan, right-wing hypocrite.

This, and so much else that he writes in this piece, is pure and utter hogwash.

Rosen’s entire frame of reference is skewed, and give absolutely no credit to the actual interpretive philosophies in use on the right. There is no such thing as a “vision of bipartisan nationalism” in conservative jurisprudence. What is at play isn’t a results-oriented “nationalism” — which, of course, contradicts many other instance where Roberts and even Anthony Kennedy have stood firmly for state authority vis-a-vis the national government — but instead an honest attempt to apply the original public meaning of the Constitution’s or legislation’s words to the case before them.

How, pray tell, would it violate Roberts’ “previously expressed judicial philosophy” for him to rule the mandate unconstitutional? After all, it’s not as if Roberts hasn’t recognized limits on Congress’ interstate commerce powers before. Remember when he decided the Commerce Clause powers did not extend to protection of a “hapless toad (that), for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California”? And of course Kennedy has recognized Commerce Clause limits both in U.S. v. Lopez and U.S. v. Morrison. As this new question of a different type of extension of those powers presents an unprecedented question — because the federal power assertion is itself unprecedented — there is no reason at all to believe that it would violate these justices’ philosophies or to show an engagement in partisan shenanigans for Roberts and Kennedy to rule against the mandate. Likewise, although conservatives would be hugely (and rightfully) disappointed and even angry if Roberts and Kennedy go the other way, that doesn’t mean conservatives would be right in suddenly finding Roberts to be a sell-out; it would just mean that he applies the law to these particular facts differently than we do.

But for Rosen, who invents a jurisprudence of “bipartisan nationalism” that is alien in form and substance to everything conservative jurists believe, a judge’s motives or intellectual integrity can be credited or discredited, or both in the same week, completely dependent on whether or not they agree with his conclusions based on a jurisprudential approach that doesn’t even exist.

What a crock.

Okay, to all my fellow…er, my fellow Fellows of CFIF: Last chance to get in your updated predictions on how the Supreme Court will rule on ObamaCare.

I’ll see what you come up with before I reveal my hand (gee, isn’t that clever of me?) — but I WILL offer this outside-the-box scenario as a remote but not entirely-out-of-the-question possibility. To wit:

We could see a typical Kennedy “split the baby” sort of decision: the mandate unconstitutional, on narrow and tentative grounds, with a remand to lower courts to decipher some Delphic question from Kennedy about how best to separate the mandate from the rest of the law.

The good news — and this would be a stunner — is that I think there is a small chance that if Kennedy doesn’t just split the baby, but slices into about four pieces, then Justice Sotomayor might concur in part that “as applied,” the mandate is unconstitutional. If so, that would mean that while the end result could be quite a muddle and the size of the victory (in law, not politics) would be very small, the POLITICAL upshot would be huge in that even a small acknowledgement by an Obama appointee that the mandate went too far would take away some of the ability for Obama to bash the court as a campaign issue.

Granted, most people now think that Roberts, not Kennedy, will write the main decision, based on who has written what other decisions when, during this term. But it would be perfectly feasible for Roberts to write a plurality opinion rather than a majority one, while Kennedy wrote a concurrence with the narrow result of ruling this mandate unconstitutional (and Sotomayor joining in part) — so that the narrow result would have a majority, but the major reasoning would have only a plurality, with Kennedy’s concurrence actually being controlling in terms of what happens next (e.g. some sort of weird remand).

Of course, maybe somebody piped some bath salts into my room and I’m hallucinating. This is all too complicated by half. It’s probably just what happens when I/we have too much time to speculate.

On the other hand, the high court has done weird things like this before. With Kennedy in the mix, anything is possible.

Despite premature rejoicing among immigration restrictionists not once but twice — first after oral argument, where Obama Solicitor General Donald Verrilli seemed to really take it on the chin, and then when the first reports of this morning’s decision were Tweeted out — the reality is that the Obama administration won much more than it lost today in the Supreme Court ruling on the Arizona immigration law. The part that restrictionists were cheering was that which allows police who have arrested somebody for other reasons to also check their citizenship/residency status. That is, of course, the most prominent part of the law; hence the rejoicing on the hard right.

A closer look, however, shows that the provision survived only because A) it applies only with strict limitations on its reach, and B) because state courts have not had a chance to officially construe its meaning. In other words, depending on how state courts interpret the law, even that provision may in the future by thrown out by the Supremes.

Meanwhile, three other important provisions, including one making it unlawful for illegal aliens to take jobs in Arizona, were thrown out. This is a big deal. What the high court — with not only Kennedy but also Chief Justice Roberts joining the liberals — is saying is that federal law should be construed, even without express provision, to pre-empt (or preclude) state law in those same areas. This is a big loss for state’s autonomous powers. To quote from the court’s syllabus (with my emphasis added), “Because Congress has occupied the field, even complementary state regulation is impermissible”. This is, frankly, a shock to me. It means that on any subject even remotely touching on foreign policy on which Congress legislates, the states are not permitted even to pass their own laws in pursuit of the same objectives.

Restrictionists also might gag at this line from the syllabus: “As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in the United States.”

I count myself as a “moderate restrictionist.” On the merits, however, I thought Arizona was entirely right, and the administration entirely wrong. I therefore am not happy with this decision. I think it amounts to a huge infringement upon state policing authority. It certainly supports much of the Obama argument — an argument which, to me and many others, still seems ludicrous.

Oh, well.

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore has an otherwise excellent column in today’s Washington Post about the need to protect religious liberty from the assault represented by the HHS abortifacient mandate. But he makes an important misstatement, a wholly gratuitous one, that MUST be corrected, and will be in a moment.

First, here’s what is good, indeed terrific, about the column: It captures the essence of the state’s intrusion into internal religious affairs. As in:

According to HHS, an entity deserves religious freedom only if it primarily hires and primarily serves its co-religionists. But the state has no competence or authority to define the church and her ministries, let alone to impose on her such a restrictive, inward-looking definition.

This definition is a blow to any religious community, but especially to Catholics, who are called to serve anyone in need. As we often say, we serve people because we are Catholic, not because they are. It is why so many Catholic schools enroll so many non-Catholics; Catholic hospitals don’t ask for baptismal certificates upon admission; and Catholic soup kitchens don’t quiz the hungry on the Catechism.

Do read the whole thing. It’s good.

That said, there is a terrible mistake in the column that appears again and again in the talking points of Catholic clergy across the country. I’ll first quote Lori’s claim, and then show why it is flatly inaccurate. Here’s what he wrote:

And the federal government is not the only problem either. In Alabama and other states anti-immigrant legislation is so draconian as to make it a crime to give basic help–such as food, or a ride to church, or counseling–to an undocumented immigrant. This imperils the good work of pastors who are called to care for all souls, not just those recognized by government.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is an ignorant re-statement of an assertion that was never true in the first place. In a Weekly Standard piece last December, I showed how and why the assertion is false:

Then there is the absurd notion that priests or pastors might be arrested while providing humanitarian assistance under the part of the law that would make it unlawful to “harbor” an illegal alien. For one thing, the anti-harboring provisions match, almost word for word, an extensive anti-harboring section of federal law (8 U.S. Code 1324) that similarly makes it unlawful to “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation”​—​a federal law that never before has been thought to put clergy in the slightest danger. For another thing, the Alabama law contains a host of exceptions for primary and secondary education and for just the sorts of humanitarian actions Obama described​—​among others, any “emergency medical condition,” “emergency disaster relief,” and “soup kitchens, crisis counseling and intervention, and short-term shelter.”

To add to the protections for those in the ministry, Alabama’s constitution contains a “Religious Freedom Amendment” more extensive than the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, namely “to guarantee that the freedom of religion is not burdened by state and local law; and to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious freedom is burdened by government.”

Finally, when Obama was using the Hispanic media to spread alarm, a federal judge had already enjoined the Alabama law’s “harboring” sections on technical grounds, mooting (at least for now) the entire alleged danger.

“I’ve made it clear in every public statement that there is nothing in this law that would prohibit anyone from being a good Samaritan,” said Luther Strange, Alabama’s mild-mannered, moderate-conservative attorney general cast by the New York Times in the role of the viciously segregationist former governor George Wallace, with all of Wallace’s “defiant history of intolerance and minority oppression.” The characterization fits Strange about as well as a tuxedo would fit a porpoise.

There. That just about sums it up: No different from federal law/mutliple specific exemptions/state constitutional protections/federal court enjoinment/state AG assurances.

It’s time the bishops, in the course of their brave and noble opposition to the HHS mandate, stop reaching for an unnecessary and unfair additional point that obviously is intended merely to make their complaint look bipartisan.

Nancy Pelosi today made the risible claim that the contempt citation against Eric Holder is part of an effort at voter suppression. What bunk. But it is true that Holder is heavily involved with the flip side of vote suppression, which is that he is deliberately taking steps that enable vote fraud, via his lawsuits against Texas, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, etcetera, concerning voter ID and cleaning up voter rolls.

Well, here is the little-known background to all this:

It goes back to the Clinton Administration’s very first big battle — which wasn’t about health care, or energy taxes, or spending. The first battle involved the Motor Voter bill, which Democrats in Congress introduced on the very first legislative day in 1993, several weeks before Bill Clinton was inaugurated. Motor Voter was assigned to the House Administration Committee – and Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston, the committee’s ranking Republican, had the job of deciding whether to object. I happened to be Livingston’s press secretary back then…. Livingston didn’t object to registration at drivers’-license bureaus, but he argued that other bill provisions (too numerous to list here) would promote vote fraud. Livingston’s legislative aide Tripp Funderburk had the brilliant idea to say that “Motor Voter” would better be described as “Auto Fraudo.” Using Tripp’s new catch-phrase, I started a media pushback, including a column in the Washington Times and many radio appearances for Livingston.

The pushback failed to kill the bill – but it did succeed in forcing acceptance of some anti-fraud provisions into the bill’s Section 8…. But, as reported by whistleblowers J. Christian Adams and Christopher Coates, DoJ official Julie Fernandes announced in late 2009 that the department would refuse to enforce Section 8’s anti-fraud provisions because “it has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.” Now that Florida is doing its job to enforce it anyway, DoJ is trying to stop the state’s efforts.

I have a piece out in the new Weekly Standard about how Alabama failed in its efforts to allow charter schools. My friend RiShawn Biddle just sent me a piece of his own from some time back that I had not seen, that makes some of the same points. Biddle’s piece is a broader overview, and it is excellent.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from my piece:

A powerful union won’t stay down long unless a strong governor, like Jindal, keeps a reformist agenda front and center. Lack of gubernatorial leadership, as in Alabama, can lead to a major fiasco. This is especially true when the union finds unlikely allies to carry its water. Most of the state’s county school superintendents, usually at odds with the union, and most local school boards, sometimes at odds with the AEA, along with the statewide school superintendent, appointed by a non-union-friendly state board, all came out vociferously against charters. ….Finally, Governor Robert Bentley, elected with the indirect help of the AEA (which spent some $3 million attacking his Republican primary opponent), provided only the most tepid of support for charters.

Governors matter. Biddle pushes the same themes, opening thusly:

If you want to understand why gubernatorial leadership matters in overhauling American public education — and why school reformers must mobilize politically in order to gain traction for their efforts — consider the profiles in courage -(or lack thereof) of Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal in advancing their respective school choice and systemic reform plans. 

You really had to be there to see it, but…. PLEASE read this, out today, about last week’s Netroots Nation annual convention. Condoms, recreational sex as political weapon, and more!

Robert VerBruggen at National Review Online today reports that DoJ official Ronald Weich, who authored a false letter regarding the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking schedule, is leaving his job. What needs to be added for the record is that his F&F gaffe (or perhaps a lie) was far from his only screw-up of absurdist proportions.

Weich also was the official who tried to excuse DoJ’s dropping of the voter-intimidation charges against New Black Panther Jerry Jackson by claiming that Jackson was allowed to be at the site because he lived in that building. Oops! The building hosting the polling place was a senior citizen center — and Jackson is anything but a senior citizen, and his actual home address, a number of blocks away, was readily accessible on other documents. To this day there is no good explanation for how Weich managed to screw up so badly as to assert that Jackson lived in that senior center. Indeed, throughout the investigation into the Black Panther matter, Weich’s responses to congressmen were riddled with assertions of dubious merit.

Therefore, the American people should wish Mr. Weich good riddance. He did not serve us well.

Last week Troy had this excellent column on why Jon Kyl would be an excellent choice for Mitt Romney’s running mate. He was right. I’ve been a big Kyl fan for years, and wrote about him just a few weeks ago. Today I go all the way in the direction I was hinting at in that column, namely joining Troy in his suggestion that Kyl would be a great choice for veep. In this case, I make him choice 1b, with Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as 1a. I also linked to Troy’s piece within mine; do read his solid reasoning, please, as well as mine.

Here’s part of my case for Kyl:

Kyl also adds particular heft where Romney has no real record, namely foreign and defense policy. From Kyl’s long service on the Judiciary Committee, he also is well equipped to carry the fight to Obama on the subject of Eric Holder’s corrupt Justice Department, and also to parry attacks on the Supreme Court that Obama is expected to make if the court throws out all or part of Obamacare. With Romney having shown a bit of ineptness in describing legal issues and explaining conservative jurisprudence, Kyl’s abilities here could be tremendously important.

Finally, while few people think Republicans are seriously at risk of losing Arizona, Kyl does perhaps, at the very margins, offer an overlooked geographical advantage. In a very close election, many observers are starting to think the entire outcome could depend on a razor-thin difference, one way or another, not in Ohio but in Iowa. Well, Kyl grew up in Iowa, and his father actually was a U.S. congressman from there.

And here’s part of my case for Jindal:

Some will gripe that Jindal adds no geographical advantage to the ticket — and they are right. But that consideration pales in comparison with what he will add in one particular area. It is almost certain that, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on Obamacare, the question of “what would Republicans do to replace it” will dominate campaign coverage throughout the summer and perhaps all the way until Election Day. Romney himself, as the author of Romneycare and a once-avid advocate of an individual insurance mandate, is poorly equipped to handle this question. No high-ranking elected official in the country, however, can match Jindal for his expert knowledge on health-care policy, nor can anybody else match Jindal’s ability to explain positive, conservative alternatives to the Left’s state-controlled systems. In short, he takes a major Romney weakness and turns it into a strength, on an issue that really could sway the whole election.

It’s not just on “Fast and Furious.” Eric Holder and his politicized Justice Department, along with the Obama administration overall, has consistently evaded the law and refused to provide documents on a number of controversial fronts, all while claiming privileges that don’t even exist. Peter Kirsanow details some of the ways in a great NRO post today, here. Please do follow that link; it’s important.

I wrote on the broader topic of Obama stonewalling (at DoJ and elsewhere) at the Washington Times nearly three years ago, here. Others, too, have chimed in on this topic. It all adds up to a pattern of obstruction, prevarication, and lawlessness. That’s why U.S. Sen. John Cornyn today was moved to demand Holder’s resignation.

It is a call that surely will be echoed by others in Congress in days to come.

I have a long blog post at The American Spectator about why conservative are rallying around Obama’s nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a guy named Andrew Hurwitz. This is important. Please read.

Led by: Ari Berman

Panelists: Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Keith Ellison, Keesha Gaskins, Eric Marshall, Heather Smith

Ari Berman (?) of The Nation starts panel by mocking FL Gov. Rick Scott for trying to enforce laws to remove ineligible voters from rolls.

In addition to Sen. Ben Cardin, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (Minnesota) also on panel, along with others whose names I did not get. Sorry.

Berman says 31 states have passed laws to “restrict access to ballots at every stage of the voting process.”

Only 86 convictions of vote fraud from 2002-2007. [QH: I think that number is bogus; I’ll check.]

Thirty seven times more likely to die from lightning than to commit vote fraud.

Litany of oppression continues. Cue violins.

“…. efforts to purge voter rolls….  a very scary effort.”

mantra is to fight “restrictive voting laws.”

Keesha Gaskins: “A perfect storm of events” leading to restrictive laws…. Supreme Court retrenchment on voting rights. … single party control….

Cardin: “we come here and we see the energy and it really does energize us….. This issue should not be a surprise to us. … Democrats truly believe that we are better off with more people participating in the political process.”  …. brags about making it easier for military to vote…  huh?

“These laws are the new Jim Crow laws of our time… a little more subtle today, but they are aimed at restricting the ability to vote of certain voters who are more likely to vote for [liberals].”

“The Koch brothers are financing those operations.

“These are deliberate efforts to affect the outcome of elections rather than the integrity of elections.”

Ellison: “This whole fight can be describe din one word: Power. They want power. …. This has nothing to do with fraud. …. The big issue is about power. … We can disprove their lies…. They are trying to take power away…. If they can shrink the size of the electorate and get people to vote how they want to } in vote…. 78% of Af American men of [certain age] in Milwaukee don’t have ID [according to Brennan Center].

Berman: “This isn’t new.” compares rhetoric of right on voter ID to rhetoric against civil rights in the 1960s (!!!). “Some of what is happening now is not far off from the ugly tactics that happened in the past.” (somehow comparess voter ID to “poll tax.”)

“The lack of proof is stunning [in terms of proof of actual fraud etc.].”

Panelist named Heather Smith: “To keep them [young and minority voters] away from the polls.”

Berman: “The narrative on the right was the ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama.” {REALLY???}

Official schedule online describes panel (called “The War on Voting”) thusly:

In 2011 we witnessed the most significant rollback of voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, with conservative legislators and governors passing laws in more than a dozen states to restrict access to the ballot. These laws included requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, restricting voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, disenfranchising ex-felons and mandating government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot. These tactics harken back to the days when Dixiecrats used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, the new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012, with young, minority, low-income and disabled voters hit the hardest. This panel will look at the voter suppression tactics conservatives are employing and how to fight back to defend democracy.

Keesha: “When we talk about the attempt to retain power in the face of shifting demographics…..”    “We need to get the truth out that there really isn’t voter fraud.”

[check into legislation by Cardin and Ellison]

Cardin: “It’s a question as to whether our elections are as open as they need to be…. It really does call into question what we really believe in…. The impact this has is a stain on our democracy….. This is not entirely new. I go back to the problems we had in the Bush years when we had lax enforcement of the laws. [NOT true, by the way — QH]  …. The net impact is that this will impact the availability of millions of people…. as high as 7 million who will be denied the ability to vote…. This is an intentional effort. It is not that much more subtle than the Jim Crow laws…. This is very serious.”

Eric Marshall: Even Wisconsin law allowing same-day registration isn’t fair because it requires too much proof of residence. (!!!!!)

Heather Smith:Left keeps winning in court, but “What we’ve lost is the incredible amount of time, energy and resources fighting these laws.” “It has shifted our focus, our time and our energy.”

65% of 18 and 19 year-olds in the country do not have drivers’ licenses. (?!?!?!?!?) “They are taking public transit, they are walking, they don’t have the money to drive cars.”

“This is just another example of how this system doesn’t work for us…. It just got more confusing and more hard.”

Berman: Question for all: What can be done?

Keesha Gaskins: “Litigation.” (but we have “an exponentially heavier lift” to register people when these laws are here) Legislation. Educate voters.

Sen. Cardin: “What we need to do first is support the Department of Justice in their enforcement…. pass  Democracy Restoration Act (for ex-felons to vote) (ex-felons “generally less sympathetic to Republicans”…..

Rep. Ellison pushed “same-day registration act” to FORCE states to have same-day registration. … “Overturn Citizens United.”

The 1866 hour vote hot line?

I’m here in Providence, Rhode Island, for a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the Franklin Center, and Breitbart, and we’re just minutes away from the Net Roots Nation convention, so John Fund and I and others came on over to hear the other side. John and I just gave a panel presentation this morning at the Heritage event on combating vote fraud; now, here with the Net Roots, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md), among others, is about to give a presentation on the horrid danger that voter-ID laws pose for democracy — or something like that. Gonna be fun. I’ll try not to interrupt with questions, but instead will try to be on my best behavior. Stay tuned.

The old saying goes that “close” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Well, last night’s Wisconsin recall election must have been a really explosive hand grenade, according to the Washington Post. Drudge has been making fun of the Post for sub-heading its story on Gov. Scott Walker’s victory a “close vote.” Well, I went the extra mile and compared this “close” election to the Post’s handling of another one with very similar results.

In reporting on Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, the text of the Post story called it a “Democratic rout.” And what was Obama’s margin over John McCain? It was 7.2 percent. What was Walker’s margin over Tom Barrett last night? A nearly identical 6.8 percent. Yet the first was a “rout,” while the second was a “close vote.”

Hmmmm….. maybe what the Post meant was that last night was “close to being a rout.”

From the Wall Street Journal today:

Mr. Holder’s racial incitement strategy. If Mr. Obama is going to win those swing states again, he needs another burst of minority turnout. If hope won’t get them to vote for Mr. Obama again, then how about fear?…. The courts will eventually expose much of this as meritless, but it’s a shame the media won’t call Mr. Holder on this strategy before the election. Imagine the uproar if a Republican AG pursued a similar strategy. It’s worse than a shame that America’s first black Attorney General is using his considerable power to inflame racial antagonism.

On a subject near and dear to my heart, protecting the country from massive vote fraud of the sort actively encouraged by the Obamites in and out of government, columnist Thomas Sowell lays it on the line:

When a white man with no identification can go to a voting site, impersonate a black man who lives in that district, and get his ballot offered to him, then it is far too easy to commit voter fraud.

Does not Attorney General Eric Holder understand that? Of course he understands it! The man is not stupid, despite his other failings.

Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the “threat” of denying minorities “access” to the voting booth, are completely consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection and salvation.

It is a political protection racket, with payoffs in votes.

Sowell also promotes the single most important book released in the past year:

The book is titled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.” It names names, dates and places around the country where the Department of Justice stopped its own attorneys from pursuing cases of voter fraud and intimidation, when it was blacks who were accused of these crimes.

If Mr. Adams is lying, he has taken a huge risk in citing individuals by name and quoting them directly. Yet, despite the fact that most of those he accuses are lawyers, apparently no one has sued him. Moreover, Adams has also testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, on the racial double standard at the Department of Justice, when it comes to voting rights.

Not a single word of Adams’ book has come close to having been refuted. Everybody should read it. It will make you fear for our republic — unless we stop the deliberate lawlessness of Eric Holder’s [In]Justice Department.