by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyToday --the rights of all people of any color to vote are still under threat by ILK like Mitt Romney who has taken up the GOP 'code word' for BIGOTRY ---VOTER FRAUD. There are very few if ANY instances of voter fraud but the CROOKED EFFORTS of the GOP to keep anyone not of the 'white' race, indeed, anyone not a GOPPER from voting. I call GOP efforts to stop ballot recounts in Florida 'voter fraud'.
I call the disingenusous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, halting the recounts, by the name 'voter fraud'. Though it was phony votes that were the fraud --NOT real voters of any sort or ethnic origin whose votes were targeted by the GOP and the 'high' court. I would not be surprised to learn that the meme 'voter fraud' was cooked up by an Orwellian political consulting firm and its paid 'focus group' who 'tested' it.
Some real history about how it was a Demoratic President who worked to ensure the rights of ALL voters to vote. It was --not surprisingly --a staunch Republican senator from South Carolina, a confirmed segregationist who filibustered and blocked passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 that had been written by then Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson. There were some alterations to the bill. That was to be expected. Nevertheless, the bill passed and would be signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower. It made the history that Mitt Romney hopes to re-write or erase.
The bill established the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Both agencies would ensure that the voting rights and civil rights of African Americans and all Americans wiould be enforced.
Having already made history, in April of 1960, LBJ was 'playing catch up' to an aggressive Kennedy machine. Later, journalist Howard B. Woods, editor of a black newspaper called the St. Louis Argus would recall those times in Passage of Power, a biographical series on the life and times of Johnson:
The Senator, tie-less and in shirtsleeves, was eating cookies and drinking a tall, and stiff, Scotch, but when Woods ask him about the civil rights bill "which seems to please no one," saying, "Senator, the bill, as it was finally passed, was admittedly watered down," Johnson forgot about the cookies and the Scotch, and leaned forward across the table, looking Woods "straight in the eye" in a way the editor found quite memorable. "When we say every man has a right to vote, that is not watered down," Lyndon Johnson said." The important thing in this country is whether or not a man can participate in the management of his government. When this is possible, he can decide that I'm no good." George Reedy slipped into the seat next to Woods, but Johnson didn't need Reedy now. "Civil rights are a matter of human dignity," he said."It's outrageous that all people do not have the dignity to which they are entitled. But we can't legislate human dignity -- we can legislative to give a man a vote and a voice in in his own government. Then with his vote and his voice he is equipped with a very potent weapon to guarantee his own dignity." [Emphasis added.]-Howard B. Woods, Passage of Power
