Thoughts on the Voting Rights Act Case
One of the Supreme Court's most anticipated decisions this term is likely to deal with the constitutionality of part of one of the landmark laws of the 20th century, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this may be the most important of a series of cases the court will tackle this term considering civil rights. In this post, I'm ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 19, 2009 22:53
Alabama’s Constitution: A Result of Vote Fraud?
[caption id="attachment_31685" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Constitution of the State of Alabama, 1901"][/caption] A group of voters in Alabama is suing to strike down Alabama's 1901 constitution based on their claim that it was ratified fraudulently: The voters this month sued several state officials in Jefferson County Circuit Court's Bessemer division, claiming they violated voter rights by failing to ensure that Alabama's 108-year-old ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 17, 2009 16:43
Auto Subsidy Hypocrisy?
Are Southern senators arguing against a federal bailout of Detroit on free market grounds hypocrites? Mike Lillis thinks so: Yet this argument — that the government has no business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 16, 2008 16:19
Chambliss Wins Runoff, Denies Democrats 60 Seats
Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss easily won his runoff against Democrat Jim Martin, 57.4 to 42.6 according to the current uncertified totals. NYT notes, [caption id="attachment_28185" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Senator Saxby Chambliss and his wife, Julianne, celebrating his victory on Tuesday in Atlanta. (Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times)"][/caption] The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 3, 2008 07:25
Obama, the South, and the Black Vote
Thomas Schaller, the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, argues that the notion that Barack Obama has a good chance of winning Southern states because he'll energize black turnout is based on fallacious reasoning. The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 1, 2008 13:37
Jim Webb: Confederate Sympathizer?
Senator Jim Webb, touted by many as a vice presidential candidate who would help shore up Barack Obama with Southerners and those uncomfortable with his lack of national security experience, has an "affinity" for the Confederacy, Politico's David Mark reports breathlessly. He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 11, 2008 07:15
Deep South Blues for the GOP
The Democrats have picked up their second Deep South congressional seat in as many weeks, with Travis Childers defeating Republican candidate Greg Davis by a substantial margin in the special election contest to replace Roger Wicker, now serving as the interim junior senator from Mississippi, in the House of Representatives: The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 14, 2008 02:15
A GOP ‘Bigot Eruption’?
U.S. Representative Geoff Davis has started a huge blogospheric outcry for allegedly using a racial slur directed at Barack Obama. Oliver Willis, among others, has described this as a "bigot eruption". Here's the offending remark:Congressman Geoff Davis, took the criticisms of Mr. Obama a few steps further, likening the change slogan to the pitch of a “snake oil ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 15, 2008 00:51
Obama, McCain Prevail in Mississippi
To the surprise of virtually no one, Barack Obama has won the Mississippi Democratic primary, the last contest before Pennsylvania's primaries in late April. To even less surprise, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain also prevailed in his party's contest. Perhaps more interesting than the primary victory are the exit poll numbers, which may suggest some serious problems for the Democrats ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 11, 2008 21:10
Flat Tax? No, Fat Ban
Radley Balko finds lard of a different nature than pork spending on the menu of the Mississippi legislature: a state legislative bill sponsored by two Republicans and one Democrat that would effectively ban all restaurants in the state from serving the "obese." Lest you think the sponsors are kidding, blogger Sandy Szwarc contacted the main sponsor of the bill ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 1, 2008 14:07
Confederate Flag Flies in South Carolina Primary
The Civil War might have ended 143 years ago but the Confederate battle flag refuses to die as a political issue. The Republican presidential candidates on Thursday moved to appeal to different types of conservative voters before the South Carolina primary, with Mike Huckabee using colorful language to declare the Confederate flag a states’ rights issue and Senator John McCain ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 18, 2008 11:34
Boy Howdy
Jeffro2pt0 of the Weblog Tools Collection blog reports that some significant number of WordPress developers are irritated by the software's practice of greeting users of its interface with a "Howdy" in the upper right hand corner. It seems as though the word Howdy, is not liked by many people in many places. I’ve been monitoring an ongoing discussion taking place ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 30, 2007 09:51
Virginia Continues Blue Trend
Virginia has long been considered a Republican hotbed -- the last Democrat to win the state's Electoral College vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 -- it has now elected two Democratic governors in a row, has a Democratic Senator and may be about to have two. Last night, Democrats gained four seats to take control of the Virginia Senate. Democrats ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 7, 2007 13:13
What is it with South Carolina?
Kevin Drum, citing reports that the "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" story has gotten some (very minor) legs is South Carolina and reminding readers that there were some rather ugly smears against John McCain there in 2000, asks, "What is it about South Carolina, anyway?" This, perhaps predictably, brings forth some spewing of venom and counter-venom among commenters about ignorant ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 15, 2007 16:28
Conservative Democrats Decry Mississippi Closed Primary Ruling
The federal district court for the Northern District of Mississippi last month ruled in favor of state Democratic Party officials who wanted to close their primaries to non-Democratic voters, much to the irritation of many of the party's own officeholders who are warning of a return to racial bloc voting in the state: Republican-leaning voters in Mississippi have long been able ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 19, 2007 11:48
