Posted on 02/12/2014 2:15:18 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Justice Department lawyer Bradley Heard was in court today trying to stop Kansas from ensuring that only citizens register to vote. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, relying on a United States Supreme Court opinion of last year, asked the federal Election Assistance Commission to permit him to ensure that only noncitizens were registering to vote.
The Election Assistance Commission said no, so Kris Kobach went to federal court. Enter Eric Holder’s Justice Department, as usual, opposing election integrity measures.
Despite harping about resource concerns (which apparently means that the DOJ can do nothing about corrupted voter rolls), Holder found the time and money to send Bradley Heard to a hearing in Kansas to argue against Kobach’s election integrity measures.
Things didn’t go well for Bradley Heard before Judge Eric Melgren today. The Wichita Eagle:
Judge Eric Melgren repeatedly pressed Department of Justice lawyer Bradley Heard to explain how a Supreme Court decision last year on Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship law allows the federal Election Assistance Commission to reject requests from Arizona and Kansas to add state-law requirements to the instructions for filling out the voting form.
“The single pivotal question in this case is who gets to decide … what’s necessary” to establish citizenship for voting, Melgren said.
Heard said that decision lies with the EAC under the federal National Voter Registration Act, also known as the motor-voter law. He said the law empowers the commission to decide what questions and proofs are necessary to include in the federal registration form.
Take note, Heard argued both that Kobach can’t take steps to prevent foreigners to register to vote, and, that federal government power over state elections is supreme.
So who is Bradley Heard?
Hans von Spakovsky wrote about Heard’s background in the PJ Media Every Single One Series installment on the DOJ Voting Section:
Before joining the Voting Section, Mr. Heard worked for a number of years at the Advancement Project, a radical left-wing voting organization. The Advancement Project has worked closely with the ACLU, NAACP LDF, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and other liberal advocates to oppose voter ID statutes, felon disenfranchisement laws, and citizenship verification regulations, and to take myriad other militant positions on state and federal voting rights laws. Mr. Heard fit right in at the Advancement Project, having previously founded the Georgia Voter Empowerment Project, which describes its mission as increasing the “civic participation levels of progressive-minded Georgians.”
Amusingly, before moving to Washington, Mr. Heard had a nasty breakup with his plaintiff’s civil rights firm in Atlanta. He commenced litigation against his partners, who in turn claimed he was engaging in misconduct. Heard then sought criminal arrest warrants against his former partners, charging that they had engaged in false voter registration and voting by an unqualified elector, both felonies. The court declined to issue the warrants.
When Bradley Heard isn’t suing his law partners or trying to make it easier for non-citizens to register to vote, he runs this “activist” blog called Prince George’s Urbanist. There, Heard rails about various left wing causes like changing the name of the Redskins and urging family unfriendly government mandates on development.
A federal judge had some tough questions for us in this important #NVRA #votingrights case brought by #KS & #AZ. tinyurl.com/l5jqwgl
https://mobile.twitter.com/BradleyHeard
How do we guarantee folks like Bradley Heard don’t show up and push for and get the opposite? nobody has explained to me as of yet how we could have a Con Con and not let the Leftists pack it with there people, or allow a bunch of moderates who will vote for things the liberals want because it makes them feel good?
Thank you. I read those first few lines over and over again, thinking I had turned into a turnip.
Truthfully, could it get much worse than a government who completely ignores the Constitution? The states will decide who is sent and how many before hand. Besides it still takes 3/4 of the states, no matter how many people each state sends, to ratify any amendments.
First, note that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, Clause 2 of Article VI, means that only those federal laws which are reasonably based on the limited powers which the states have expressly delegated to Congress via the Constitution take precedence over state laws.
And with respect to constitutonally delegated power for the feds to regulate voting, the states have granted Congress the specific powers only to protect such privileges on the basis of race, sex, tax status, and age as evidenced by the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments respectively.
Regarding the so-called right for non-citizens to vote, the Supreme Court clarified in Minor v. Happersett that citizenship does not automatically confer the right to vote.
However, the problem with state officials fighting federal power grabs, such as with this voting rights issue, is the following. I'd be willing to bet money, because I'd probably win most of the time, that state officials, including state lawmakers, are low-information citizens who don't know how to argue issues like this voting rights issue.
Finally, remember that the reason that DC policy-makers have been using the Supremacy Clause to successfully usurp state powers is the following imo. Federal bureaucrats have been taking advantage of the fact that multitudes of low-information voters don't understand that the feds don't have the constitutional authority to do most of the things that they are doing these days. This is because generations of parents have not been making sure that their children are being taught the federal government's constitutinally limited powers, particularly the 18 clause of Section 8 of Article I, as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood.
In fact, Judge Andrew Napolitano will read Section 8 to you in three minutes.
Judge Napolitano & the Constitution
WHAT ???
Seems pretty obvious that the writer of the posted article meant "citizens" instead of "noncitizens."
BTW, can someone please tell me what the Federal Election Assistance Commission is? Seems that the country needs it like it needs Obamacare; in other words, it's worse than useless, it's a disaster for constitutional government.
Holder's Dept. of (In)Justice is at it again, supporting the electoral fraud and cheating that enables 'Rats to steal elections they would otherwise lose. Unless the GOP learns how to counteract the 'Rats election shenanigans - which may manifest in a variety of different ways - the chances of electing another Republican president are slim and none!
Of course, what else can one expect from an (In)Justice Department that refused to prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation in Philadelphia?
It's already in the law books of every state in the Union, all there in unequivocal language. Problem is that the left seeks to undermine enforcement of such laws by tying the hands of state election officials so that they can't ask for proof of citizenship for new voter registrants.
This federal "Election Assistance Commission" (note the oxymoronic name) seems to be a rather useful device for the left to block state vetting of voter citizenship credentials.
The ultimate goal of this leftist approach is to have as many noncitizens voting at the polls as possible in order to illegally inflate 'Rat vote totals to steal elections!
Please see my post # 26.
D***! They are so determined to destroy the US ASAP. The “man of lawlessness” indeed.
2014 we make him a lame duck. 2016 we take back the country.
“I’d be willing to bet money, because I’d probably win most of the time, that state officials, including state lawmakers, are low-information citizens who don’t know how to argue issues like this voting rights issue.”
I worked in Kansas a few years ago, before Kobach was elected to office, and followed him a bit through radio and papers. He is not a low information citizen/official.
It's a mistake in the posted article. Replace "noncitizens" with citizens and it makes sense.
Thank you for defending Kobach. Let me clarify the context of how I'm using the term "low-information."
I'm using it in the context of conservative Harvard Law School graduates, for example, who have been indoctrinated with the unreasonably broad interpretation of Congress's Commerce Clause powers established by Constitution-ignoring FDR's activist justices, as opposed to how the Founding States had intended for Congress's constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to be understood. And I'd say that includes a whole lot of otherwise very smart people.
Not only politicans, lawyers need “rope” as well, got rope?
Illegals, criminals, rapists - dems want them all to have a vote:
NAACP hosts Eric Holder advocating civil rights restoration for felons. What about guns, Eric?
February 13, 2014
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People hosted Eric Holder in recent days to give a speech on restoring the voting rights of felons once they are released from custody.
We asked recently if the NAACP was becoming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Perps after their chapter in the Northeast U.S. came out supporting Massachusetts State Representative facing expulsion from his elected office. Then-Rep. Carlos Henriquez was convicted of beating his girlfriend for not giving him the sex he wanted. She was a college student who met the good Carlos, son of Obama’s Assistant Secretary of something or another Sandra Henriquez. The overwhelmingly Democrat-majority Massachusetts House expelled Henriquez – with only five voting to retain the scoundrel.
The New England Area Chapter (NEAC) of the NAACP’s President Juan Cofield urged Massachusetts State Representatives to retain Henriquez’s, comparing the beating of a woman who wouldn’t have sex to jaywalking.
So, here’s the NAACP hosting Eric Holder, the paragon of integrity, virtue and color-blindness, now pushing to grant voting rights to felons – well, specifically black felons, as he’s lamenting that more than 20% of blacks in some states can’t vote (for Democrats) because of felony convictions.
Hey Eric, if you want to talk about restoration of civil rights, if we are going to consider offering restoration of voting rights, shouldn’t we also consider restoration of Second Amendment civil rights for reformed felons as well?
Hello?
Hello?
Eric, are you still there?
Is that crickets chirping?
Here’s a clip from the Washington Post.
Reason Why Holder Suddenly Wants Felons To Vote: More Than 20% of Blacks In Swing States Can’t Vote Because They’ve Been Convicted of a Felony…
In Florida, more than one in five black adults can’t vote. Not because they lack citizenship or haven’t registered, but because they have, at some point, been convicted of a felony.
The Sunshine State’s not alone. As in Florida, more than 20 percent of black adults have lost their right to vote in Kentucky and Virginia, too, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for reforms to sentencing policy that reduces racial disparities.
This entry was posted on February 13, 2014 at 8:53 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Leave a Reply
http://www.gunssavelife.com/?p=10955
We are going to have sheer Bedlam..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.