Minority Rights

The Supreme Court said Friday it will review a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has been the federal government's most forceful tool in protecting minority rights at the polls. The decision ensures that race and civil rights will be the hallmark of the current Supreme Court term. The challenge to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was launched two years ago, and the court added it to its docket just days after an energized minority electorate played a critical role in the reelection of President Obama,...

WILL SENATE Democrats give into temptation and smash the filibuster, after all? The Senate just got through reforming some of its arcane — but intensely disputed — rules that allow a minority to hold up the country's business, and TPM's Brian Beutler reports that already Democrats are thinking of changing them again . But Republicans can easily end talk of further limiting minority rights in the chamber. They just need to start using those rights more responsibly. In January, Senate leaders struck a bipartisan agreement to...

WILL SENATE Democrats give into temptation and smash the filibuster, after all? The Senate just got through reforming some of its arcane — but intensely disputed — rules that allow a minority to hold up the country's business, and TPM's Brian Beutler reports that already Democrats are thinking of changing them again . But Republicans can easily end talk of further limiting minority rights in the chamber. They just need to start using those rights more responsibly. In January, Senate leaders struck a bipartisan agreement to...

SENATE MAJORITY Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) struck a deal Thursday to reform their chamber's rules , to the outrage of those hoping that Mr. Reid would significantly weaken the filibuster. Common Cause called it "capitulation. " Credo labeled it "a compromised bait-and-switch. " President Obama "might as well take a four-year vacation," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — despite the fact that an unreformed Senate has played a crucial role over the past two years in striking bipartisan bargains...

Ideas are not responsible for the people who believe them, but when evaluating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's ideas for making the Senate more like the House of Representatives, consider the source. Reid is just a legislative mechanic trying to make Congress's machinery efficiently responsive to his party's progressivism. And proper progressives think that the Constitution, understood as a charter of limited government, is unconstitutional. They think that the "living" Constitution gives government powers sufficient for whatever its...

Democrats have one overriding objective this Congress: to create jobs and get our economy back on track. But our Republican colleagues are so dead set on preventing Democrats from passing job-creating legislation that they have been willing to abuse the rules of the Senate to grind the chamber to a halt, making it virtually impossible to pass even bills that have broad, bipartisan support. The Senate rule change we made last week has been inaccurately described, including by Marc A. Thiessen on this page , as a resort...

Jack Duckworth's Aug. 18 letter to the editor regarding the health-care debate bemoaned the defiance of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) of the prevailing mood at the town hall meetings he attended. "It used to be that senators and House members represented the will of their constituents, as I believe the Constitution envisioned," Mr. Duckworth wrote. The Constitution envisioned no such thing, especially for senators. One reason senators have a six-year term is to give them political cover when they defy their constituents because...

The July 23 news story " Latin America's democratically elected authoritarians " oversimplified in describing Hugo Chávez and other left-leaning populist leaders in Latin America as "new authoritarians. " That lumps them in with the ruthless dictators, of which the region has seen too many. Mr. Chávez (and others such as Evo Morales in Bolivia) may more usefully be seen as radical, majoritarian democrats who insist that the poor majorities of their countries should prevail against the wealthier minorities.

CANNES Syria's Alawite regime collapses from within and without. High-level defections march in step with rebel gains through the Sunni heartland. The Obama administration's signature regional strategy — described in a Freudian slip by a French career diplomat here as "waiting from behind" — now badly trails events. That would not constitute a disaster for Washington if the fate of Bashar al-Assad's clan-dictated rule was an isolated affair. But there are moments when timing is everything in statecraft.

SENATE MAJORITY Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) struck a deal Thursday to reform their chamber's rules , to the outrage of those hoping that Mr. Reid would significantly weaken the filibuster. Common Cause called it "capitulation. " Credo labeled it "a compromised bait-and-switch. " President Obama "might as well take a four-year vacation," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — despite the fact that an unreformed Senate has played a crucial role over the past two years in striking...

CANNES Syria's Alawite regime collapses from within and without. High-level defections march in step with rebel gains through the Sunni heartland. The Obama administration's signature regional strategy — described in a Freudian slip by a French career diplomat here as "waiting from behind" — now badly trails events. That would not constitute a disaster for Washington if the fate of Bashar al-Assad's clan-dictated rule was an isolated affair. But there are moments when timing is everything in statecraft.

Ideas are not responsible for the people who believe them, but when evaluating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's ideas for making the Senate more like the House of Representatives, consider the source. Reid is just a legislative mechanic trying to make Congress's machinery efficiently responsive to his party's progressivism. And proper progressives think that the Constitution, understood as a charter of limited government, is unconstitutional. They think that the "living" Constitution gives government powers sufficient...

The Supreme Court said Friday it will review a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has been the federal government's most forceful tool in protecting minority rights at the polls. The decision ensures that race and civil rights will be the hallmark of the current Supreme Court term. The challenge to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was launched two years ago, and the court added it to its docket just days after an energized minority electorate played a critical role in the reelection of...

The July 23 news story " Latin America's democratically elected authoritarians " oversimplified in describing Hugo Chávez and other left-leaning populist leaders in Latin America as "new authoritarians. " That lumps them in with the ruthless dictators, of which the region has seen too many. Mr. Chávez (and others such as Evo Morales in Bolivia) may more usefully be seen as radical, majoritarian democrats who insist that the poor majorities of their countries should prevail against the wealthier minorities.

Conservative activists and Republican attorneys general have launched a series of lawsuits meant to challenge the most muscular provision of the Voting Rights Act 0f 1965 before a Supreme Court that has signaled it is suspicious of its constitutionality. Working their way to the high court are lawsuits from Arizona to North Carolina, challenging Section 5 of the historic civil rights act . The provision requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any...

Democrats have one overriding objective this Congress: to create jobs and get our economy back on track. But our Republican colleagues are so dead set on preventing Democrats from passing job-creating legislation that they have been willing to abuse the rules of the Senate to grind the chamber to a halt, making it virtually impossible to pass even bills that have broad, bipartisan support. The Senate rule change we made last week has been inaccurately described, including by Marc A. Thiessen on this page , as a resort...

Conservative activists and Republican attorneys general have launched a series of lawsuits meant to challenge the most muscular provision of the Voting Rights Act 0f 1965 before a Supreme Court that has signaled it is suspicious of its constitutionality. Working their way to the high court are lawsuits from Arizona to North Carolina, challenging Section 5 of the historic civil rights act . The provision requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any...

BEIJING, July 31 -- China on Thursday issued a strong rebuke of President Bush for meeting with five Chinese dissidents in the White House this week, saying he had "rudely interfered" with China's internal affairs and sent a "seriously wrong" message to others who criticize the country. The comments by Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao were unusually pointed. The Chinese have often commended Bush for resisting activists' calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Aug. 8 out of concerns over...

In a racially mixed corner of Shreveport, La., a small group of white voters protested loudly this year that they did not want to be part of a majority black district when the legislature redrew the state's political boundaries. The Republican-led statehouse complied, drawing a line around the community to accommodate them. That line is at the heart of a case before the Justice Department that is seen as a critical test of how the Obama administration will interpret the controversial Voting Rights Act as it...

Jack Duckworth's Aug. 18 letter to the editor regarding the health-care debate bemoaned the defiance of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) of the prevailing mood at the town hall meetings he attended. "It used to be that senators and House members represented the will of their constituents, as I believe the Constitution envisioned," Mr. Duckworth wrote. The Constitution envisioned no such thing, especially for senators. One reason senators have a six-year term is to give them political cover when they defy their constituents...