Voting Rights

New York City Loves Voting So Much It Might Let Foreigners Do It

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God, I love living in New York. Other cities think they’re “diverse.” Other cities think they have “racial tolerance.” Other cities don’t have diddle squat on NYC. I once saw a Puerto Rican call a ginger a “dumb sounding mic” and a black woman fired back with, “Why don’t you shut up before we all start thinking of names for you!” (Note: that woman was a little crazy; she left the subway banging some dude with her purse because he “bumped” her.) I once saw a meek-looking woman in a skirt suit ask a guy to blow his cigar smoke somewhere else, and the smoker said, “F*** you,” and the woman wheeled around, motioned to her crotch, and said, “Oh, better men have tried,” in an accent that suddenly sounded like she just rolled off a dock in Brooklyn.

In New York City, the majority race is “New Yorkers.” Sure, black New Yorkers have a harder time getting a cab, white New Yorkers have a harder time going to the movies without audience participation, but in so many ways the experience of living in NYC defines us more than our races, colors, and creeds.

So, it makes perfect sense to me there is a move to allow New York City residents to vote together, regardless of what country they come from or whether they are U.S. citizens. We don’t care about U.S. citizenship, we care about New York citizenship. To quote The Paper (the most underrated movie of my lifetime: “I don’t f***ing live in the f***ing world! I live in f***ing New York City! So go f**k yourself!”

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Morning Docket: 03.13.13

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* Hey, they actually found one instance of voter fraud. By a nun. I can’t wait for the GOP to try to construct an entire argument for restrictions on voter access based on this case. [Talking Points Memo]

* Defense attorneys can go to jail for lying? In Detroit? Mind: blown. [Washington Post]

* The Senate grills would-be SEC chairman Mary Jo White. The hypocrisy of a bunch of Senators in the pocket of Wall Street asking about White’s potential conflict of interest would be stunning if this wasn’t the U.S. Senate. [National Law Journal]

* Former prosecutor and former FBI agent join forces to start a… private equity litigation finance group. I guess their years of investigation showed them where the money is. [Reuters]

* A law professor blames “no child left behind” for the poor quality of students these days. Yes, but what do we blame for the quality of law professors? [Chronicle of Higher Education]

* We’re going to have to do something about these sinkholes. [Daily Mail]

After the jump, a propaganda video purportedly made by North Korea “seems to mistake TTT grads for regular Americans,” according to a tipster….

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You DARE Enter Nate Silver’s Domain, SCOTUS?

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Nate Silver

As much as it pleases me to see statistical data introduced in the Supreme Court, the act of citing statistical factoids is not the same thing as drawing sound inferences from them.

– Nate Silver, statistician extraordinaire, rebuking Chief Justice John Roberts’s use of statistics during oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, and noting that the voting ratios cited weren’t “meaningful in either a statistical or a practical sense.”

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.27.13

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* I mean, if you can’t trust a sorcerer, who can you trust? [Factual Facts]

* Not enough Elie Mystal in your life? Catch him talking about the Voting Rights Act on HuffPo Live. [HuffPo Live]

* Manhattan lawyer Joseph Rosenzweig has been suspended for six months because he was married to two women at once. That was big of him. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]

* A Detroit judge routinely skips out on work. Honestly, if I lived someplace like Detroit, I’d never be able to sit in an office all day. [Legal Juice]

* Are we actually dignifying the “maybe the 3/5ths compromise was a good idea” debate? Because, you know, you don’t have to. [Room for Debate / New York Times]

* Rick Pildes writes a guest post at the Election Law Blog asking if Congress abdicated its responsibility when it failed to update the Voting Rights Act. That’s crazy talk. When does Congress abdicate its responsibility? [Election Law Blog]

* We say goodbye to Inside the Law School Scam. [Inside the Law School Scam]

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With All Deliberate Speed, Mississippi Officially Ratifies The Thirteenth Amendment

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Maybe people in Mississippi should watch this to figure out why the Voting Rights Act is still important.

My mother was born in 1950 in Mississippi. I’ve been to Mississippi. There are still brothers trying to escape to freedom from Mississippi.

Today the big story (at least in liberal circles) is that Mississippi finally officially ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, after two Ole Miss employees saw the movie Lincoln and decided to look into why their state hadn’t officially ratified the amendment. You can’t make that up: Mississippi needed a Spielberg movie to remind them to ratify the amendment banning slavery. I can’t wait till Mississippi sends an expedition to Isla Nublar to check into this whole “dinosaur situation” “Jesus Horse situation.”

You can see why liberals love this story. It’s the perfect deep south story: a tradition of holding people in bondage, slow response times, and incompetence.

And I’d leave it at that.

Except that as the Supreme Court gears up to eviscerate the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act, it’s important to remember that not all states are created equal….

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