ataxiwardance

think-progress:

Although a majority of the Senate voted to repeal tax breaks for the big five oil companies, the 51-47 vote fell short of the 60 needed.

Hahaha. I love how achieving Cloture (3/5th of the full Senate) is now functionally equivalent with a majority. GO DEMOCRACY.

‎’Gasland’ director Joshua Fox arrested filming House panel

By Neela Banerjee, LA Times

February 1, 2012, 4:37 p.m.

At the behest of the Republican leadership of a House of Representatives subcommittee, Capitol Police arrested Joshua Fox, the maker of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland,” when he tried on Wednesday to film a subcommittee hearing on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method used to tap oil and gas reservoirs. … 

Congressional hearings are open to the public. Anyone with a cellphone camera could record the proceedings, as a video on Huffington Post of Fox’s arrest shows.

House Democrats and civil libertarians lambasted the arrest. “I have served in the House of Representatives since 1992, and I had the privilege of chairing the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. In all that time, I cannot recall a chair of any committee or subcommittee having ever ordered the removal of a person who was filming a committee proceeding and not being disruptive, whether or not that person was accredited,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “The proceedings of the House are open to the public because we are the People’s House.”

manicchill:

Lawyer Defending South Carolina’s Voter ID Law Thinks the Department of Justice is Biased Against White People | TPM Muckraker

South Carolina officials plan to file suit against the federal government because the Justice Department stopped the state from implementing a voter ID law that the state’s own statistics showed would have a disparate impact on non-white voters. Fighting on their behalf will be a former DOJ official who claimed that the Civil Rights Division is opposed to protecting the civil rights of whites and who defended the Bush-era politicalization of the division by Bradley Schlozman as an effort to “diversify.”

South Carolina has hired former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates, who defied DOJ’s instructions and testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Republican-led probe into the infamous New Black Panther Party case, a spokesman for the South Carolina attorney general’s office told The State newspaper.

Former colleagues said that Coates had an ideological conversion after an African-American woman was chosen over him as deputy section chief in July of 2000.

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(image courtesy of Main Justice)

I know this might not get the blood boiling as much as other electoral issues but voter suppression is something that has always driven me insane with rage. Unfortunately, voter suppression is also something with a long and proud history in these United States. It doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere either. Just changing forms. Read this brief overview from the Brennan Center for Justice (like Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr.) on how over five million voters will find exercising their fundamental democratic right either more difficult or impossible in 2012. And yes, to the surprise of no one, these voters will be disproportional minority and impoverished populations.