I’m resigned to the mainstream media promoting crazy fringe libertarians and refusing to call them out on their craziness, but this Washington Post article on Rand Paul’s trip to Ferguson, Missouri, to cash in on the situation by appearing to “reach out” to the black community, is our facepalm of the day: Rand Paul Is in Ferguson. Here’s Why.

The first absurdly understated point:

And for a guy who in his first campaign struggled with questions about the Civil Rights Act, the discovery does coincide with his increasing national political ambitions.

Well, that’s one way to put it; he “struggled with questions.” Another way to put it is that he stated outright on more than one occasion that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act, then tried to claim he never said that. In common parlance this is known as “lying.”

But the line that truly made me apply palm to face:

He is becoming the closest thing the Republicans have to an Al Sharpton or a Jesse Jackson…

This is me, gobsmacked.

Rand Paul, who opposes the Civil Rights Act and defended a white supremacist staffer who wrote an article titled “John Wilkes Booth Was Right,” is reaching out to the African American community again by stating, “I Don’t Think There Is Any Particular Evidence” of Black Voters Being Prevented From Voting.

Rand Paul knows very well that this isn’t true, of course; he’s seen lots of evidence from the inside. He’s part of the effort to prevent black voters from voting, and one of the ways they advance this goal is to lie about it.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a tea party senator with a long history of opposition to civil rights laws, told an audience in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday that there is no evidence of black voters being excluded from the franchise. According to local NPR host Phillip Bailey, Paul said that he does not believe “there is any particular evidence of polls barring African Americans from voting,” during a speech to the non-partisan Louisville Forum.

If Paul is not aware of the evidence indicating widespread efforts to prevent African Americans from voting, then he must not be looking very hard. During the 2012 election, black and Hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to cast a ballot as white voters. In Florida, lines of up to six hours led an estimated 201,000 people to become frustrated and leave the polls. These lines existed largely because of a voter suppression bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) which reduced early voting hours in the state. After the election, top Republicans admitted that the purpose of cutting early voting was to reduce Democratic turnout. One Republican operative conceded that early voting was cut on the Sunday proceeding Election Day because “that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves.”

Meanwhile, voter ID laws are rampant in states led by conservatives, despite the fact that these laws cannot be justified by any legitimate purpose. Although their proponents routinely claim that an ID requirement is necessary to prevent voter fraud at the polls, such fraud barely exists. According to one study, just 0.0023 percent of votes are the product of in person voter fraud. Meanwhile, even conservative estimates suggest that 2 to 3 percent of legitimate voters will turn turned away by a voter ID law — and these voters are disproportionately African American.

The Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, the provision of the landmark civil rights law that designates which parts of the country must have changes to their voting laws cleared by the federal government or in federal court.

The 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, found that “things have changed dramatically” in the South nearly 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed.

The court’s opinion said it did not strike down the act of Congress “lightly,” and said it “took care to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act” in a separate case back in 2009. “Congress could have updated the coverage formula at that time, but did not do so. Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice but to declare [Section 4] unconstitutional. The formula in that section can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance.”

Congress, the court ruled, “may draft another formula based on current conditions.”

“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” the majority said.

“There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act. The Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process,” Roberts wrote.

That’s why we’re gutting it, Roberts didn’t add.

More: Voting Rights Act Section 4 Struck Down by Supreme Court

YouTube

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Section 4 of the landmark Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional and that Congress was tasked to come up with a new way of determining which states and localities require federal monitoring of elections.

Here goes the Republican Party’s latest serious attempt to get rid of that troublesome Voting Rights Act that they’ve hated with a special vitriol ever since it was enacted: Voting Rights Act Takes a Beating in the Supreme Court.

The right wing justices are sounding a lot like right wing bloggers.

A question posed by Chief Justice John Roberts to the Obama administration’s lawyer defending the Voting Rights Act captured the tenor of the proceedings.

“Is it the government’s submission that citizens in the South are more racist than citizens not in the South?” Roberts asked.

Is he kidding?

I’ve spent a lot of time in the South, and while there are plenty of great non-racist people living there, to say that the South has no special problems with racism is absolutely beyond ludicrous.

This is what happens when conservatives get a chance to stack the Supreme Court with right wingers.

Antonin Scalia also got into the fray, sounding like a Free Republic commenter:

Justice Antonin Scalia attributed the continued congressional reauthorization to the “perpetuation of racial entitlement” and suggested that it will be renewed endlessly because members of Congress would never let it lapse for fear for political repercussions.

“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act,” Scalia said. “They are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act. Even the name of it is wonderful — the Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?”

Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, currently running for the US Senate, says it’s time to take a “second look” at the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Yes, this is how crazy the Republican Party has gotten.

Republican Congressman Todd Akin said Friday afternoon he thinks it’s time for a second look at federal “civil rights and voting rights” laws.

The republican U.S. senate candidate told FOX 2’s Charles Jaco states not the federal government should set voter rules.

Congressman Akin of course is trying to unseat democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. And Akin has always said the federal government’s role should be much smaller than it is.

But Akin says that federal voting rights laws may need to be looked at, changed or overturned is something new. Those laws were passed in 1964, 1965 and 1968. The voting rights act of 1965 prevented mostly southern states from using things like literacy tests to keep African-Americans from voting. The civil rights act of 1964 outlawed similar voting restrictions.

Next target on the Republican Party’s hit list: the Voting Rights Act that guarantees minorities access to the ballot box.

In a political system where even the most trivial issues trigger partisan rancor, the Voting Rights Act has stood for several decades as a rare point of bipartisan consensus.

Until now.

An intensifying conservative legal assault on the Voting Rights Act could precipitate what many civil rights advocates regard as the nuclear option: a court ruling striking down one of the core elements of the landmark 1965 law guaranteeing African Americans and other minorities access to the ballot box.

At the same time, the view that states should have free rein to change their election laws even in places with a history of Jim Crow seems to be gaining traction within the Republican Party.

“There certainly has been a major change,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California at Irvine. “Now, you have a whole bunch of credible mainstream state attorneys general and governors taking this view. … That would have been unheard of even five years ago. You would have been accused of being a racist.”

Exactly.