Scalia, who is widely acclaimed by the mainstream media as a great legal intellect, apparently has little knowledge of the Fifteenth Amendment, which states: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
That would seem to make clear that Congress has the authority to exercise its judgment in protecting the rights of blacks and other minorities to vote, which Congress did in passing the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and overwhelmingly reauthorizing it as recently as 2006.
But now the right-wing clique running the U.S. Supreme Court seems ready to ignore the wording of the U.S. Constitution, to rely on some dubious data, to utter some inflammatory words, and to apply language from the inoperative Articles of Confederation to gut the Voting Rights Act and permit the restoration of Jim Crow laws.
Based on this anything-goes interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, these right-wing justices are now expected to at least strike down Section Five, thus clearing the way for Republican-controlled states to enact new ways to devalue the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and urban white youth who embrace the nation's multiculturalism.
One almost expected these right-wing justices to resurrect the "Three-Fifths of a Person" clause, which was repealed by the post-Civil War amendments ending slavery and asserting equal protection under the law. Why not? If they're reaching back to the state "sovereignty" and "independence" in the Articles of Confederation, which was repealed by the Constitution, why not embrace the concept that whites are more of a person than non-whites?
The Court's right-wing majority seems determined to do whatever it can to get another Republican president into the White House as soon as possible so their majority will be sustained, much as five Republican partisans installed George W. Bush after Election 2000, although he lost the popular vote and would have lost Florida if the Court had allowed all legally cast ballots to be counted.
However, as Bush's fate and the Court's Republican majority hung in the balance, five GOP partisans -- including current Justices Scalia, Kennedy and Clarence Thomas -- suddenly fell in love with the post-Civil War's Fourteenth Amendment and its "equal-protection-under-the-law" principle. With Kennedy writing the majority opinion, they somehow twisted it into an excuse for not counting the votes of blacks and poor people.
That way a Republican was put into the White House and could fill Court vacancies, which Bush did in selecting John Roberts and Samuel Alito to replace William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Now, by overturning much if not all of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court's Republican majority could clear the way for more suppression of non-white votes and thus increase the chances that a Republican president will be in place to ensure that the right-wing majority doesn't slide into the minority.
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