Fit To Print

Dennis Miller’s Bastard Son

September 21st, 2006

I am a decent man, a humble man. A non-violent man. It takes a lot to anger me. A people must be massacred, a revolution squashed, a puppy raped. Or apparently, Congress must pass a bill. You did NOT just groan right there. Fine, I don’t care. I’m all warmed up and I’m not stopping.

On Wednesday, the House voted 228-196 to require voters to show photo ID at the polling booth when they cast their ballot. This adds an unnecessary challenge to those not well-versed in the redundancy of government beuracracy and is bound to disenfranchise many voters from poor and urban areas. I could go on at length about the 22% of young black males in Wisconsin with no photo ID, or the other stringent requirements of the bill and why they will be hard for many to meet, or why they are unnecessary, but I’m going to trust that you are able to make that leap so I can go on with my rant.

Proposed under the guise of preventing voter fraud and keeping illegal immigrants from participating in elections, this bill was passed strictly along party lines. As there is no companion proposition in the Senate (set to adjourn in October, anyway), many speculate that this is merely a message to the immigrant hating right-wing base, one of those wink and smile type deals. "We still love you, we haven’t forgotten you." Like Trent Lott telling some good ol’ boys what a darn shame it was that we didn’t elect that aww shucks confederate Strom Thurmond president.

I hope this is the case. Because it is despicable, but only despicably symbolic and not devestatingly impactful. However, I have my doubts. A judge in Georgia struck down a similar measure that made it through both bodies of the state’s legislature. Clone bills have recently passed and subsequently been ruled unconstitutional by judges in Missouri, Indiana and Ohio. To me this seems like a large, coordinated attack. A two-pronged plan of getting out the right vote (as with the swath of state marriage amendments helping voter turnout last election cycle) and eventually suppressing the second-class citizen vote with added identification requirements.

History 101, which I’m sure you know: after the Civil War, southern whites systematically denied blacks the right to vote through poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests, and it tooks us 100 years to stop these practices. Some forty years after the 24th Amendment and Voting Rights Act, I certainly shouldn’t have to worry about any more "denying or abridging" and I sure as hell don’t want to see Jim Crow anywhere but in a history book.

If you think I’m being alarmist please say so, this post is already too long or I would supply more information. Whatever qualms I have about left-wing extremists, I’d prooobably let them babysit my kids. But I have serious worries about a party that fires up its faithful with hateful rhetoric and 700 mile walls. Oh yeah, did I mention that? They’re going to spend billions of dollars to wall off a big chunk of Mexico. Tired of the mariachi music, I guess. Oh won’t you be my neighbor?

Entry Filed under: Politics