Free Republic

The state has officially taken over the Interstate 69 Section 5 project from I-69 Development Partners.The Indiana Finance Authority announced it had reached an agreement with the private developer in June to take over construction, operation and maintenance of the project after several delays in the completion schedule. To officially take control of the project, the Indiana State Budget Committee had to approve the plans. Additionally, all parties had to endorse a settlement agreement and bondholders had to be paid in full.The finance authority announced Monday it had completed the settlement transaction to terminate the contract with I-69 Development Partners...

The state of Indiana wants to take over the Interstate 69 Section 5 project. Three years after hiring a private developer to build the 21-mile stretch of interstate and then maintain it for 35 years after completion, the state issued a statement Monday saying it’s moving forward to assume control of the project. The proposed takeover was announced along with a revised substantial completion date nearly two years after the original. The new date for Section 5 is Aug. 31, 2018, according to the state finance authority. The statement from the Indiana Finance Authority was sent after media outlets, including...

Years ago, the Tokarski family gathered with friends around a kitchen table in an old Indiana farmhouse. They were discussing the looming construction of Interstate 69 and how they could possibly stop it. The group suspected a project of such magnitude, an interstate route stretching across the southern half of Indiana, would cause severe environmental 
damage. “We really had the project almost at a standstill until Mitch Daniels came into office,” said Thomas Tokarski, now the president of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads. “We still have huge amounts of support from the people in Indiana.” Since that farmhouse meeting, Tokarski...

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...

A leading House Republican is calling on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act just a day after the Supreme Court neutered its central provision. Warning that "the threat of discrimination still exists," Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) is urging lawmakers from both parties to cast aside partisanship and restore the law for the sake of protecting voters' rights. "The Voting Rights Act is vital to America’s commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process," Sensenbrenner, the second-ranked Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in a statement. "This is going to take time and will...

The Supreme Court has decided Shelby v. Holder. It is one of the most important decisions in decades. Now, federal preclearance of state election procedures seems to be forever dead and buried. While some Congressional Republicans had vowed to enact new legislation to “fix” any coverage formula deemed unconstitutional, the Court opinion today offers almost no room to do so. They would have to decide what’s more important: the Republican Party, or the Constitution? Section 5 required states to obtain preclearance approval for any change involving elections — any change, even moving a polling place 20 feet. Only 15 states...

PJ Media first reported on the anti-Semite, anti-white bigot Louis Farrakhan ‘s participation in a series of Democrat-sponsored rallies across Alabama in support of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The case of Shelby v. Holder will be decided by the Supreme Court this month and may strike down the requirement that 15 states submit all election-law changes to the federal government for approval. This requirement has been used to block a variety of state laws designed to protect election integrity, including Texas voter ID and Georgia citizenship-verification requirements to vote. In support of this “preclearance” requirement, a group...

Truth and revolution can appear suddenly, and darken the brightest of times. Consider yesterday’s Department of Justice inspector general’s report documenting the rancid racialist attitudes of the Voting Section staff. (See: “ Inspector General Report of Racialist Dysfunction Inside DOJ .”) The Justice Department should hope that Justice Antonin Scalia — or his clerks — don’t catch wind of the IG report before Shelby v. Holder is decided. If he or they do, they will find a particularly interesting discussion regarding what Justice Scalia called “racial entitlements” in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The left has been apoplectic...

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will consider whether laws designed to protect minority voters are unconstitutional. The announcement comes just days after an election that demonstrated the increasing electoral clout of black and Hispanic voters, who helped propel President Obama to a second term. It's against that backdrop that the court will consider rolling back part of the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965, to prevent states from disenfranchising minorities. Specifically, the justices will hear a challenge to the section of the Voting Rights Act that requires certain states with a history of discrimination to get permission...

Last week, a federal district court heard arguments in a case brought by Shelby County, Ala., challenging the constitutionality of significant parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The case may reshape American politics. At issue is the law requiring the attorney general to approve every single change touching on elections in some but not all states. Little-noticed behavior of the Justice Department makes it more likely the U.S. Supreme Court could invalidate the 45-year-old law, assuming the high court is aware of the offending behavior. Section 5 forces nine states and parts of seven others to submit every...

Yet more proof that the DOJ doesn't want whites and Asians, when they are the discriminated-against minority, to be protected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. On July 13, the Department of Justice blew an opportunity to put to rest the issue of whether they are willing to enforce the Voting Rights Act in a race-neutral fashion by objecting to a request by a proven discriminator to further discriminate. I wrote about this pending request at Pajamas Media. At the time I noted: Bottom line, if this Justice Department was truly interested in enforcing the law in a...

WASHINGTON - A school closes that once housed a polling place. For the next election, city officials send voters to a new site across the street. In Boston, no problem. In Atlanta, no problem provided the federal government grants permission. Such has been the law for 40 years under the Voting Rights Act, which sought to end racist poll taxes and literacy tests by putting Southern states - then the worst offenders, without question - on a shorter leash than most other places. Now President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and congressional leaders from both political parties are pushing to...

Supporters of the Voting Rights Act acknowledge they know no member of Congress who wants to scrap it. But with hearings beginning Tuesday, Congress is hardly their biggest concern. The House Judiciary Committee this week holds the first two of what could be more than a dozen congressional hearings into extending key provisions of the 1965 law for another 25 years. While congressional approval may seem inevitable, advocates insist exhaustive hearings are necessary to ensure the extension stands up in court.