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Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson...made history today with his comments on Justice Clarence Thomas. He’s just lucky he was on Martin Bashir’s show and so no one was watching:

We try to stay out of the muck here on the Spectacle Blog, but it’s Friday, and this one was too outrageous to ignore. MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson made a comment yesterday that should have fueled mass outrage. After Clarence Thomas voted with the majority to strike down the section of the Voting Rights Act requiring certain jurisdictions to receive pre-clearance before making any changes to voting laws, Dyson said of Thomas: “A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”

Every American has the right to make his or her voice heard. Sadly, 50 years after the passage of the nation’s most important voting law, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, millions of Americans continue to be silenced at the voting booth because of a deadly one-two punch to our democracy – attacks on voting rights and an explosion of unlimited political spending in our elections.

President Obama will call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary Thursday, the White House said. Obama will hold a teleconference to commemorate the landmark legislation and call for its renewal, following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that voided one of its central provisions. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who rose to prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights leader, will participate. The event will allow Obama to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans, many of whom argue some provisions of the 1965 law went too far. It will take...

Video at link. Reps John Lewis and Linda Sanchez deserve the littlest fiddle award. House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal. House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor. That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a...

Contrary to the assertions of many, voter fraud is not a myth. It is a stark reality that exists nationwide, from the rural counties of Georgia to the urban centers of New York. The Heritage Foundation has documented nearly 250 cases where nefarious citizens, officials, candidates and campaign operatives conspired to commit vote fraud, compromising the integrity of our elections to achieve their ideological goals. That list is just a tiny sampling of voter fraud, and it keeps growing. In May, the Heritage Foundation highlighted several recent cases. Here are some of the egregious new additions to the voter fraud...

Gee, how time flies when you’re having fun. Election time again! But isn’t it always? You who follow these columns may recall that a couple of weeks ago I fearlessly predicted that Hillary would win the 2016 presidential election. Do I think she is the best qualified candidate? Of course not. But her ace in the hole — voter fraud! Oh, I’m not talking about handing out fruit jars of moonshine, as was the custom here in Tennessee and in my native state of Virginia. The “revenooers” pretty well put them out of business and the hooch runners had to...

Last year, House Democrats saw ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a possible (if ultimately disappointing) ally in the fight to rewrite the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century. On Tuesday, Cantor’s leadership successor, Kevin McCarthy, might have revealed himself as another important potential friend to the effort. The California Republican echoed at a pen-and-pad briefing what fellow GOP lawmakers have said before: Any revision of the landmark 1965 law has to start in the Judiciary Committee — a disappointing answer for advocates who know Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., is disinclined to tackle the matter. But McCarthy later said...

Democrats have rolled out a proposal that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013. The bill, introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would establish a new formula to determine which state and local governments are required to get approval before changing their voting laws. Under the legislation, states that have a "record of racial discrimination" within the past 25 years would need federal approval to change their voting laws, according to a fact sheet from Leahy's office. The proposal would also allow...

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner has introduced legislation which would have the effect of placing all of Virginia’s election laws under Justice Department oversight, and Virginia isn’t the only state that would fall into federal election receivership. Sensenbrenner’s bill, H.R. 885, is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and multiple members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It revives federal control through the Voting Rights Act over every state election law change. In 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County vs. Holder decision struck down this power as an outdated and unconstitutional relic from a half-century ago. Texas would also fall under immediate federal...

The Justice Department on Wednesday sided with challengers of voting laws in Wisconsin and Ohio, saying in court filings that measures in those states unfairly affect minority voters. The department criticized a Wisconsin law that requires voters to present photo identification at the polls and an Ohio law that limits when voters can cast an early ballot. The court papers from the federal government are aimed at persuading judges that the laws, which are being challenged in court, are discriminatory and block access to the ballot box. […] The Justice Department has warned of legal actions against states after the...

WASHINGTON — A key GOP lawmakers said Thursday that he’s in no hurry to restore Justice Department scrutiny to Texas and other states under the Voting Rights Act. A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of that landmark civil rights law — the formula that identified nine states and some smaller jurisdictions with such an egregious history of violating the rights of voters that they would have to get federal permission before moving a polling site, shifting district boundaries or making any other election-related change. “There is a great deal of dispute in many quarters...

The head of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is pushing House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to take up legislation restoring the voting rights protections shot down by the Supreme Court last year. Democratic leaders and others urging consideration of the bipartisan bill to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) have previously focused their pressure campaign on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). But with Boehner showing little interest and Cantor soon to exit leadership after last week's primary loss, CBC Chairwoman Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) switched gears Wednesday and turned the pressure directly on...

Sipping a hot cup of unsweetened green tea at 3am, I felt compelled to revisit Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the internet. These excerpts leaped out at me. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have...

If the state provides free IDs, is there really an “unjustified burden” on poor voters?To better understand the contrast between an activist, liberal judge who refuses to follow the law and a judge who understands that his job is to follow precedent and the Constitution, consider two recent federal cases on voter-ID laws. On Tuesday, federal-district-court judge Lynn Adelman — a Clinton appointee, former Democratic state senator, and former Legal Aid Society lawyer — held that Wisconsin’s voter-ID requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, because it places “an unjustified burden on...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of Georgia seeking to dissolve the city charters of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Milton and Chattahoochee Hills. Further, the lawmakers, joined by civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery, aim to dash any hopes of a Milton County. The lawsuit, filed in a North Georgia U.S. District Court Monday, claims that the state circumvented the normal legislative process and set aside its own criteria when creating the “super-majority white ” cities within Fulton and DeKalb counties. The result, it argues, is to dilute...

Wisconsin Republican seeks to restore racial categories, empower Holder DOJ Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wisc.) told constituents at Wisconsin town halls that voting-rights legislation he is sponsoring does not exclude white voters from the protection of the Voting Rights Act. Sensenbrenner also says he is proud to work with the ACLU and far-left groups to pass the legislation that would resurrect Attorney General Eric Holder’s powers to block state election laws such as voter ID or citizenship verification. In a video from Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, Sensenbrenner also accused Texas and Georgia Republicans of trying to stop minorities from...

The bill also includes a sweetener for Virginians. Under the old provisions shot down by the Supreme Court, the Old Dominion was one of nine states with histories of voter discrimination required to get federal approval before they changed their election procedures. Under the new proposal – which aims to update the formula dictating which states are subject to the extra scrutiny – only four states would be forced to seek such approval. Virginia is not among them. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a long-time voting rights champion and a lead sponsor of the updated protections, noted Thursday that Rep. Spencer...

Only seven months after the Supreme Court shattered the Voting Rights Act, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has come up with a bill that would go a long way toward putting it back together. If they can persuade Republicans in Congress to set aside partisanship and allow it to pass, they would begin to restore justice to a deeply damaged electoral process. It would be an ideal way to observe the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday this week. The bill is far from perfect. In particular, it does not give enough weight to the discriminatory effect of voter ID...

A federal commission rejected three states’ requests to ask voters for proof of citizenship, issuing a complex decision Friday that said it’s up to the national government, not the states, to decide what to include on registration forms. Under the motor-voter law, federal officials distribute voter-registration forms in all of the states. Arizona, Kansas and Georgia all asked that those forms request proof of citizenship, but the federal Election Assistance Commission rejected that in a 46-page ruling. The EAC said states can check driver’s license databases or ask federal immigration authorities for information, but they cannot tell the federal government...