Tag Archives: Indiana

Holder Ignores Supreme Court Ruling, Steps Up Voter Fraud Efforts

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By  via Western Journalism  March 16, 2012

On Monday, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice barred the proposed Texas voter ID law from taking effect. Writing for the DOJ, Assistant Attorney General Robert Perez claimed that the law requiring all Texas voters to present a state issued photo ID at the polls would “adversely affect Hispanic voters” because they are “more than twice as likely not to have valid photo identification than non-Hispanic registered voters.”

It is hardly surprising that Democrats hold nationwide antipathy for voter ID laws. After all, as it is the left which benefits from criminal misadventure at the polls, anything which tends to interfere with turning the votes of the dead, the illegal, and the non-existent into a Democrat victory must be fought with every resource of the Obama Administration.

The proposed Texas law and a similar South Carolina statute rejected by the DOJ last year were both victims of Eric Holder’s deliberately disingenuous use of the 1973 Voting Rights Act, which requires states or areas with “a history of voting discrimination” to have proposed changes to their voting laws “pre-approved” by the federal government.

The fact is, the Obama Regime used Section 5 of the VRA to mask its real goal of enabling voter fraud by claiming the proposed legislation of both states to be in violation of the Act’s aim of ensuring fair and honest voting standards.

And just as it had in the case of South Carolina, the DOJ barred the revision to the Texas law by completely ignoring a decision of the United States Supreme Court.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled the newly enacted State of Indiana statute requiring all who come to the polls to present a state issued, picture ID as legal and constitutional.

Described as one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation, the Indiana statute had been opposed by a typical assortment of left-wing agencies which claimed its enactment would unfairly burden the usual victim classes of the poor, minorities, the aged and infirm.

Yet in the Court’s 6-3 ruling on the case Crawford v Marion County Election Board, even far left Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that the requirement that voters obtain picture ID did not represent an unfair or undue burden.

Writing a concurring opinion on the Court’s judgment, Antonin Scalia said “the Fourteenth Amendment does not regard neutral laws as invidious, even when their burdens purportedly fall disproportionately on a protected class.”  That is, as the law applies uniformly to all citizens, the fact that it might burden some more than others is not a basis for discarding it.

The Supreme Court clearly ruled that “…without proof of discriminatory intent, a generally applicable law with disparate impact is not unconstitutional.”

Free voter ID’s made available by the state to any American citizen who wishes one does not constitute a basis for a claim of disenfranchisement of Hispanics. But Barack Obama’s Department of Justice did not look to the Court for guidance as it is the “disenfranchisement” of illegals and others who should not be voting that actually BOTHERS Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the Department of Justice in the first place!

From Obamacare to immigration law and voter ID laws, the Obama Regime is interested only in the exercise of power and control over the American public. By enabling millions of illegals to vote for Democrats, the left hopes to secure the legislative and executive authority it needs to turn a Constitutional republic into a Marxist dictatorship. Should Obama and his handlers succeed, voter ID laws would become moot as elections themselves will be a distant memory.

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Supreme Court upholds voter ID law

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From the Associated Press via MSNBC (4/28/08)

English: The United States Supreme Court, the ...

The Supreme Court ruled that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.

It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush. But the voter ID ruling lacked the conservative-liberal split that marked the 2000 case.

The law “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'” Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented, just as they did in 2000.

‘Extremely disappointed’ More than 20 states require some form of identification at the polls. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri’s. Monday’s decision comes a week before Indiana’s presidential primary.

The decision also could spur efforts to pass similar laws in other states.

Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said he hadn’t reviewed the decision, but he was “extremely disappointed” by it. Falk has said voter ID laws inhibit voting, and a person’s right to vote “is the most important right.” The ACLU brought the case on behalf of Indiana voters.

The case concerned a state law, passed in 2005, that was backed by Republicans as a way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed the law as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters — those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.

There is little history in Indiana of either in-person voter fraud — of the sort the law was designed to thwart — or voters being inconvenienced by the law’s requirements. For the overwhelming majority of voters, an Indiana driver license serves as the identification.

Burden ’eminently reasonable’ “We cannot conclude that the statute imposes ‘excessively burdensome requirements’ on any class of voters,” Stevens said.

Stevens’ opinion suggests that the outcome could be different in a state where voters could provide evidence that their rights had been impaired.

But in dissent, Souter said Indiana’s voter ID law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”

Scalia, favoring a broader ruling in defense of voter ID laws, said, “The universally applicable requirements of Indiana’s voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not ‘even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.'”

Stevens said the partisan divide in Indiana, as well as elsewhere, was noteworthy. But he said that preventing fraud and inspiring voter confidence were legitimate goals of the law, regardless of who backed or opposed it.

Indiana provides IDs free of charge to the poor and allows voters who lack photo ID to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.

Stevens said these provisions also help reduce the burden on people who lack driver licenses.

Kasey’s Note:  If the Supreme Court upheld voter ID laws in 2008, I am  amazed that the Justice Department would try to block South Carolina’s Voter ID law.  Shouldn’t they be going after the REAL issues – like Fast and Furious, Black Panther Intimidation, Medicare Fraud, Illegal Immigration, Obama’s eligibility, etc.?!?  I also wonder why more states aren’t requiring voter IDs……maybe to help Obama win?

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Worker’s Libertarian Front

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By Tim Nerenz

AFL–CIO

We should change the name of National Right To Work Committee to the Worker’s Liberation Front. Maybe then we could get some sympathetic press coverage for the real civil rights issue in the employment realm – and no, I am no talking about collective bargaining privileges for public sector employees.

Indiana is about to become the 23rd state to pass Right To Work legislation, liberating its working citizens from compulsory unionization and adding workplace freedom to the state’s already favorable business climate. Union leaders have expressed their obligatory condemnation of freedom; they will be joined by liberals, Democrats, media, and timid Republicans for whom liberty is a statue and a bell, not a lifestyle.

Up North we called it a woofing contest – you know, when the first dog starts barking, which gets the next going and the next, and pretty soon the whole neighborhood is yapping and howling without any idea why; even the first one forgot if it was a squirrel or the postman that got it all agitated. Mention the word “union” and all the mutts go off – as if the past 100 years hadn’t happened and children were still working in textile mills. Check that, as if there were still textile mills to work in.

That’s where the WLF comes in – the media lapdogs wouldn’t know what do with us. We could wear berets and army jackets and wrap-around shades and cross our arms over our chests while scowling. I’ve been watching that move for 45 years now; one little guy talks smack into a microphone while some big guys stand behind him and nod on cue – kind of like a stationary Little Anthony and the Imperials with a bad attitude and no talent.

Nobody on the left ever questions an organization with “front” or “liberation” or “worker” in its name. They reflexively fawn over berets and army jackets – maybe it is a thing for uniforms, I don’t know. I read somewhere recently that women like brooding guys, and maybe it’s that sulking pout that does the trick. Guys are easier to figure – we pretend to like whatever our girlfriends are into until football comes on or they marry us, whichever comes first. C’mon, get over yourself, it was just a joke…

But rights are no joking matter. The debate over Right To Work in Indiana will be once again be argued on a false premise, namely that compulsory unionism, imposed by government force, is the default setting from which the departure to workplace freedom needs to be justified. Wrong. Freedom is the default setting in the land of the free; it is union extortion that needs to be justified. Good luck with that.

Your individual right to work trumps any collective privilege that allows me plus 50% of our co-workers to deny you that right unless you pay a third party tribute to the organization of my choosing. When the mob extracts protection money from a business, it busts windows and knees to enforce compliance; when a union does it, the state does its dirty work at taxpayer expense. The tax-paying employer gets beat with his own belt and the workers ultimately bear the welts.

Compulsory union membership as a condition of employment is extortion, and no number of gooey solidarity songs or Sally Field movies can make it anything different. Forcing an employer to be an accomplice, through mandatory dues withholding, is conspiracy to commit. If it were any other organization holding the employer and employee hostage – the mob, KKK, Catholic Church, NRA – prosecutors would be drafting RICO charges. If it were Al Qaeda instead of AFL-CIO, we would be sending drone aircraft to take out Richard Trumka.

Is Al-Qaeda a bit over-the-top? Perhaps – but it was Trumka’s unionists, not the Taliban, that literally did take hostages recently at the illegal strikes in our West Coast ports. That’s what they think of the working man (and woman) over at Team Extortion. That’s who is doing the war-mongering against the middle class. Read down the list of Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans – none of them have ever taken hostages.

Those union knuckle-draggers will excuse their criminal behavior (what criminal doesn’t?) and say that the labor movement has to crack some heads to get justice, that we have a tradition of violence in this country’s labor history. That is an asinine argument; we also have a tradition of beating gays, killing prostitutes, spiking Haloween candy, abusing Congressional interns, and driving drunk – that doesn’t make any of those things right.

Invest in Indiana. Surrounded by fiscal insanity (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio) they will take one more step out ahead of the pack when they pass Right To Work. The people of Indiana are going be very happy they did this; good jobs at good wages beats no jobs at unaffordable wages. The honchos at the UAW don’t care how many autoworkers they put out of work – they get their new Cadillac every year regardless.

The Midwest’s best and brightest will flock to Indiana when they pass Right To Work, and a rush of new capital will be there to meet them. The best managers and designers want to work where their ideas can be implemented willingly; it is not just the blue collar workforce that will be upgraded. They will innovate; they will grow; they will thrive and prosper together. And the unions will either add value or die – and I’m not taking “add value”, even with points.

The bottom line the unionists don’t want you to know is that states with Right To Work laws have seen their median incomes rise at twice the rate of states without Right To Work protections. Wisconsin could have been the first Midwest magnet for investment and job growth that Indiana will now become; we missed our chance to be first in line for the updraft.

But it’s ok to be the second, and it’s not like Governor Walker has to worry that the unions might get mad about it and do something rash, like try to recall him or something. At this point, it would not matter if he joined the Teamsters and discovered Jimmy Hoffa’s body at the Koch brothers’ HQ, so he might as well give himself and the rest of us a shot at those 250,000 new jobs he promised and pass RTW right now.

Act 10 gave Wisconsin public employees the right to join a union or work union free; now private sector employees should have the same right. Wisconsin should join Indiana in guaranteeing workplace freedom for all of its citizens, and let Illinois keep their unions, tax hikes, corruption, the Obamas, and the Bears.

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