Free Republic

Key lawmakers announced a rewrite of the Voting Rights Act on Thursday, creating a test to judge which states are still so discriminatory that they need federal scrutiny of their voting decisions — moving to revive the iconic law just months after the Supreme Court declared part of it unconstitutional. In their June decision, the justices said Congress couldn’t use discrimination from four decades ago to single out states for special federal scrutiny, so the proposal would update the test to look at recent federal court rulings that found a state or municipality violated voting laws. ~snip~ Hans A. von...

Earlier today, J. Christian Adams reported comments made by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) regarding the Voting Rights Act. Sharing the podium with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Sensenbrenner told a Washington audience Monday that he wants to “fix” the part of the law that the Supreme Court recently struck down. Sensenbrenner said he wants to fix the law so that it is immune to court challenges. “The first thing we have to do is take the monkey wrench that the court threw in it, out of the Voting Rights Act, and then use that monkey wrench to be able...

On a July day in 2006, the entire Republican caucus was invited to hear a private debate in a meeting room in the Capitol. Scores of GOP members attended, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert. At issue was whether the federal government should continue to have control over every election-law change in sixteen states, including Texas, California, Florida, and South Carolina. Federal power over the states was set to expire. On one side of the debate was lawyer Mike Carvin, who argued that federal oversight should end. Carvin’s opponent arguing for continued federal power to review election changes like voter ID...

The debt ceiling is the last leverage that Republicans have to prevent out-of-control Federal spending and on various policy issues. Liberals know this: even as Senate Democrats talk of ending the right of Republicans to filibuster, liberals are seeking to defang the Republican House of Representatives as well. They are also now peddling a new theme that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional under Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. Therefore, President Obama may simply ignore the debt ceiling. The looming debt ceiling fight could allow Republicans to soundly defeat Obama's overspending. In the "fiscal cliff" deal, Republicans succeeded by...

Groklaw sends a Dear Darl letter Tells SCO to expect legal action By Egan Orion: Saturday 20 September 2003, 11:33 A GROUP from the open source / free software community has put together a response to SCO CEO Darl McBride's "Open Letter to the Open Source Community". The INQUIRER is glad to print Groklaw's "Dear Darl" letter, along with their research. µ Dear Mr. McBride, Recently you wrote an "open letter to the open source community" published September 9, 2003 by LinuxWorld. This reply is from a group within the open source / free software community. Because you addressed your...

Groklaw's Open Letter to SCO's CEO Darl McBride Saturday, September 20 2003 @ 12:21 PM EDT Dear Mr. McBride, Recently you wrote an "open letter to the open source community" published September 9, 2003 by LinuxWorld. This reply is from a group within the open source/free software community. Because you addressed your letter to our community-at-large, we thought we should answer you ourselves. Our community isn't organized hierarchically like a corporation, so it has no CEO or overall leader in that sense, except that Linus Torvalds leads Linux kernel development and Richard Stallman leads the GNU Project and the Free...