Hot Stuff

Not referring to the little devil here, Jesse Curtis is on fire this last week:

• Diversity training

  Anyway, I bring this silly little episode to our attention because it presents a nice little microcosm of how racism functions on the right. It is a bigotry too cowardly to honestly present itself. Beck and O'Reilly are unwilling to say -- or perhaps even to face in their own hearts -- what they believe, namely, that white males should enjoy all sorts of privileges in life that others do not.

• Oral arguments in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court

  But as Justices Kagan and Sotomayor pointed out, the states covered by section 5 do in fact continue to correspond to higher levels of litigation and voting rights discrimination.

• Short post

  By the way, I should have mentioned that Justice Scalia was right about the concept of racial entitlement. He just forgot which race this concept has worked for in the United States.

• Video of John Lewis's reaction
• Justice Scalia exhibits tush

  If Scalia had made that argument no one would have a problem with what he said. Perhaps, for example, 10 districts with 30% minority population would provide better representation than 5 districts with 60%. We should be thinking of ways to make our system more democratic. But Scalia was arguing the opposite point, that despite minorities' under-representation in elective office, we need to get rid of this "racial entitlement." That is every bit as offensive and racist as it would have been if he had argued, as some liberals seem to think he did, that the individual right to vote is a racial entitlement.

(Because the states covered specifically would enact voting restrictions the minute they could. It's not a dead letter yet.)