I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar or anything, but I must say that I’m kind of stunned by yesterday’s evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. Not that they did it – that was to be expected by these five right wing zealots – but the way the ruling was justified.

“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “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.”
[…]
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that Congress remained free to try to impose federal oversight on states where voting rights were at risk, but must do so based on contemporary data.
[…]
Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years. But it relied on data from the 1975 reauthorization to decide which states and localities were covered.

The current coverage system, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.”

Setting aside whether or not you agree that there’s a need for certain states to be kept on a short leash when it comes to fucking with people’s right to vote, isn’t it up to Congress to decide what data to rely on when passing legislation (or whether the “facts” they use in writing a law does or does not bear a “logical relationship to the present day”?

I mean, the Court can now just say, “you blew it when you wrote that law, so we’re tossing it out”? Not because it violates the Constitution, but because we don’t think you were properly informed when you wrote (and overwhelmingly passed) the law? One branch of government now has the power to overrule the other two branches just because – in the opinion of as few as 5 partisan hacks – they don’t think our legislators were properly informed on the issues?

Not that I’m a big fan of Congress and not that I think a bunch of (mostly) old white men who aren’t certain what the difference between a fax and a e-mail are especially qualified to write the laws that govern modern society, but that’s the system we have, and I don’t think a handful of (mostly) old white men on the Supreme Court are any better.

Judicial activism? Hell, this is judicial legislation.

On the bright side, it was nice to see “we the people” rise up and take on the Texas Senate last night (not that I stayed up to watch it). They apparently attempted to fix the results to make it look like the vote was completed before midnight, but got called out on their bullshit (Republicans just don’t seem to understand how things like time stamps work).

My prediction is that they’ll call another special session and they’ll make sure none of those damn obstructionist citizens are there to stand in the way after they find a way to quash the next filibusterer (hey, whattya know? Filibusterer is apparently a real word).

So today we’re expected to see rulings from SCOTUS on gay marriage. I can only imagine what twisted reasoning they’ll use to decide this one.