Doing the people's business
The anti-flag desecration amendment falls one vote short of the 2/3 majority of Senators required to send it to the states.
Whoever shall curb that infamous rash of recent flag-burning incidents now?
There are so many problems with this amendment I don't know where to start. There's the fact that burning is the approved way to dispose of an old American flag. There's the fact that most American-flag-burning happens overseas in countries that, so far, don't actually have to follow American laws. There's the question of what would happen to the first guy who gets diarrhea whilst wearing his flag boxers, if indeed the boxers are legal. Or whether cutting up a cake with a flag on it is desecration, not to mention the eating and eventual digestion and excretion of said cake. This is an irrelevant amendment, brought up again now to (again) pander and posture in an election year.
But most outrageous is the fact that they can find the time to vote on this, but not the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Greg Palast, an American journalist too industrious and forthright to be employed by an American paper, thinks he knows why:
In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.
So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law. ...
The Republicans target black folk not because they don't like the colour of their skin; they don't like the colour of their vote: Democrat. ...
Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the voting rights law, it has found a way to keep using its expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.
Before the 2000 presidential ballot, then Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crime of most people on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.
If this pisses you off too, go sign People for the American Way's petition to Save The Voting Rights Act.
Whoever shall curb that infamous rash of recent flag-burning incidents now?
There are so many problems with this amendment I don't know where to start. There's the fact that burning is the approved way to dispose of an old American flag. There's the fact that most American-flag-burning happens overseas in countries that, so far, don't actually have to follow American laws. There's the question of what would happen to the first guy who gets diarrhea whilst wearing his flag boxers, if indeed the boxers are legal. Or whether cutting up a cake with a flag on it is desecration, not to mention the eating and eventual digestion and excretion of said cake. This is an irrelevant amendment, brought up again now to (again) pander and posture in an election year.
But most outrageous is the fact that they can find the time to vote on this, but not the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Greg Palast, an American journalist too industrious and forthright to be employed by an American paper, thinks he knows why:
In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.
So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law. ...
The Republicans target black folk not because they don't like the colour of their skin; they don't like the colour of their vote: Democrat. ...
Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the voting rights law, it has found a way to keep using its expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.
Before the 2000 presidential ballot, then Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crime of most people on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.
If this pisses you off too, go sign People for the American Way's petition to Save The Voting Rights Act.