Voting Rights Act Extended After Bigoted Debate

Go watch Rep. Maxine Waters speak on behalf of renewing the Voting Rights Act (or read the text version there). She sure packed a wallop in her 2 minutes on the House floor. Then continue on with FireDogLake's description of what's really went down in the U.S. House of Representatives as so-called conservative Southern Republicans tried to water down this historic legislation. Shameful at any time in our history. Almost unthinkable in the early days of the 21st century.

Fortunately the extension of the Act passed yesterday afternoon and all four base-pleasing amendments to gut the bill failed, although it will be useful to see which Repubs voted for them.**

One of the essentially racist amendments that had been proposed by rightwingnuts would have discontinued the practice of providing voter information and ballots in other languages in districts where large numbers of certain ethnicities reside, like Hispanics, Native Americans or Vietnamese. It's sometimes hard for me to believe we are back fighting the fights we thought were resolved in the 50s and 60s. Against the same kinds of thieves, liars and bigots. I guess such battles never do really end. Preserving democracy requires vigilance. The scoundrels are always trying to push things back to a previous time when they felt comfortably insulated from minorities of all sorts.

The really oily thing is that the rightwingos KNEW these foul amendments would never pass. They just wanted to "discuss" them to impress the bigots in their base. They might as well have painted their foreheads with red letters saying "My Appeal Is To Bigots Everywhere." They are that blantant in their baiting. I'll never understand how reasonable people can be Republicans in this era. I guess denial and blinders are powerful things.
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**UPDATE at 2:53 PM: Here are the names of the Reps who voted against extending the Voting Rights Act. All of the them are Republicans: Richard Baker (R-LA), J. Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Joe Barton (R-TX), Jo Bonner (R-AL), Dan Burton (R-IN), John Campbell (R-CA), Mike Conaway (R-TX), Nathan Deal (R-GA), John Doolittle (R-CA), John Duncan (R-TN), Terry Everett (R-AL), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Joel Hefley (R-CO), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Wally Herger (R-CA), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA), John Linder (R-GA), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Gary Miller (R-CA), Charles Norwood (R-GA), Ron Paul (R-TX), Tom Price (R-GA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Thomas Tancredo (R-CO), William Thornberry (R-TX), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)