The Arizona Republic isn't too pleased about the Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's draconian proof-of-citizenship law:
Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement was an unnecessary political gambit that suppressed the vote.
But the court did not strike down Arizona’s law. The ruling applies only to federal forms and elections. The state can continue to impose the proof-of-citizenship rule for state registrations.
What’s more, Scalia outlined how Arizona could seek federal approval to apply the proof-of-citizenship requirement to federal registration forms, as well.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said he intends to follow Scalia’s guidelines.
Let’s be clear: The integrity of elections is of paramount importance. But there was little evidence of voter fraud before Prop. 200. It was part of a backlash against illegal immigration that tapped into raw emotion without stopping to engage analytical thought processes.
Undocumented immigrants were not hijacking elections. They were busing tables.
So, let’s be even more clear: Participation in elections is also of paramount importance, and Prop. 200 hurt that.
The Supreme Court would have done the state a favor by sweeping away the law.
More analysis from
The New York Times:
The Supreme Court, in a 7-to-2 ruling on Monday, strongly affirmed the power of Congress to regulate Congressional elections. The court held that Arizona cannot impose a requirement on voters to prove their citizenship when the federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, does not require any such thing. [...]
While the decision was emphatic about federal authority over the manner of elections, the Scalia opinion also said that states have power to set the qualifications of voters, like residency requirements, and to enforce them. Justice Scalia wrote that Arizona could still ask the federal agency responsible for administering this federal law to permit the state to require proof of citizenship. And he said that if the agency did not grant the request, the state could ask a federal court to decide that signing the federal form is not enough to ensure that a would-be voter is actually a citizen.
In leaving open an avenue for an Arizona challenge, the court also made it clear that ensuring voting rights to every eligible American requires continued vigilance.
The Washington Post:
If Arizona doesn’t like how the feds are applying that clause, the state can take them to court. Arizona, however, has not pressed its case through the channels available to accommodate its interests in regulating voter qualifications.
And Arizona shouldn’t. The prospect of voter fraud should not be dismissed, but there is no evidence that it poses a practical problem. There is a far greater danger in limiting access to the ballot box, a sacrosanct right in America. Neither the states nor the federal government should be imposing new restrictions on the franchise. They should instead enact universal voter registration laws and other reforms to expand access to the vote.
For more on the day's top stories, head below the fold.
George Skelton at The Los Angeles Times argues that we need to regulate bullet purchases in addition to gun purchases:
From what I've been reading, the Santa Monica killer was packing an illegal assault rifle and 40 high-capacity ammunition magazines. He sprayed 100 bullets and had access to 1,300. And, oh yes, he was a mental case. The guy's exact background and how he obtained his war-ready arsenal weren't clear as of this writing. [...]
Guns don't kill people. Bullets do.
We regulate firearms," says Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program. "Firearms are nothing more than bullet delivery devices. If we're going to regulate the delivery device, we should regulate the bullet that the device delivers." Such a bill recently passed the state Senate and is pending in the Assembly. [...]
On the debate about Edward Snowden,
David Firestone at
The New York Times examines Snowden's latest leaks and argues that they've taken a "questionable turn":
Mr. Snowden’s actions, though illegal, exposed programs that many people, including lawmakers of both parties, believed had gone too far. The leaks showed how the intelligence community had used the cover of secrecy to expand and abuse its domestic surveillance powers, surprising even people who had written the post-9/11 laws on which these powers were supposed to be based. They have spurred a useful and important debate on whether those laws should be changed.
In the last few days, however, Mr. Snowden’s leaks have taken a questionable turn. He told the South China Morning Post that the United States had hacked into many Chinese computer systems, including those at universities and businesses. And yesterday he showed documents to the Guardian revealing that the N.S.A. and its British counterpart had spied on politicians from around the world who attended the 2009 G-20 summit in London.
These documents are of a different and more dubious order than the first ones. Like all leaks, their benefits have to be weighed against their potential harm, and in this case, it’s difficult to see what the benefits are.
Meanwhile,
The Denver Post's
Alicia Caldwell pens a piece on overreach in the aftermath of 9/11 and a new bill aimed to improve the situation:
History may be a harsh judge of the way this country has compromised civil liberties and expanded executive power in the fearful days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
At least I hope it will.
Because if it doesn't, we will have accepted a new normal in which it's all right for the government to routinely get secret orders in a non-adversarial court to vacuum up vast stores of information about our lives. [...]
This weekend, Colorado's Sen. Mark Udall appeared on "Meet The Press" and made an important point when he said: "It doesn't have to be all or nothing."
He's right. It's time to push back on some of the powers ceded to the executive branch in the Patriot Act and its subsequent revisions. Udall is not talking about gutting the Patriot Act or anything even close, and neither am I.
A bill that Udall is proposing with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden would beef up a generic relevancy test the court has established for government acquisition of "business records." Those business records include phone call metadata — that's a highly revealing compilation of times, places and participants in phone calls, but not the content of the call.
[UPDATE]: Our very own
Greg Dworkin has a must-read piece on the six-month anniversary of the tragedy in Newtown:
The Institute of Medicine estimates that there were 105,000 gun related injuries or deaths in 2010, with deaths estimated at a third of that total. With children, there are twice as many homicides as suicides; that's reversed for adults.
Gun deaths, whether accidental or intentional in children, are a leading cause of death. In theory, these are preventable deaths.
Since the Newtown tragedy, federal attempts to pass background failed their first attempt in the Senate, but by all accounts will be back for another vote. In any case, that's not the only endeavor underway.