Before I get to the main subject, I wanted to call out the biased and silly lead in this article:
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Friday defended the decision to issue terrorism warnings and tighten security in New York and Washington, saying “the threats we’re dealing with are real” even though some of the intelligence on which the government acted was as much as four years old.
Is intelligence like milk? Does it come with an expiration date? Sure, updates are essential, but the terror warning was also based on much more recent information. If you’re looking to establish that someone is a potential threat, or you want to know if someone is plotting a terror attack, you have to look at his actions over a long period of time, right? I’ve noticed that the author, Terence Hunt, likes to insert editorial comments into his copy. I usually expect better out of AP.
Here’s the real subject of my comment, this paragraph near the bottom of the article:
[Bush said] he would consider supporting a constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American the right to vote in federal elections. “I can understand why African Americans in particular are worried about being able to vote since the vote had been denied for so long in the South in particular.” He said Congress had approved $3 billion for states and local governments to make sure the voting process is fair.
This is astonishing. Forty years ago, Congress passed a major civil rights act to guarantee that, among other things, blacks could vote on an equal footing with whites. There are offices and departments honeycombing the Federal bureaucracy, all of them concerned with voting-rights compliance. High-priced lawyers and prosecutors are scanning the land, looking for these rights to be violated. Blacks can now vote without any legal impediments. Yet now we need a constitutional amendment to guarantee these things?
Up until about 10 minutes ago, I didn’t even know this was an issue. I am assuming that the same people, like Senators Feinstein and McCain, who opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment, will rush to oppose this proposal. Why? Because of the reasons they gave for opposing FMA, specifically:
1. Gay marriage is already prohibited at the federal level by the Defense of Marriage Act;
2. The Constitution is a sacred document and we shouldn’t tamper with it for political purposes (what could be more political than proposing an amendment to solve a non-existent problem, the likely result of which would be to stir up racial mistrust and energize black voters?); and
3. It tramples states’ rights, because states are the entities that authorize marriages (just as states are the entities that determine who is and is not an eligible voter.)
Let’s watch the latter-day George Wallaces, the born-again Federalists who opposed the FMA if they are confronted with a voting-rights amendment. I’m betting they won’t sound like Justice Scalia again.
This proposal is so incredibly absurd I don’t know what to say, except to quote the 15th amendment:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
(N.b., that the Voting Rights act is precisely the sort of legislation Section 2 is talking about; it enforced the amendment, which had not been enforced in the south for a long time)
I know. It’s complete nonsense. They should just copy the 15th amendment in its entirety, add a Section 3 which would read “And this time we mean it,” and submit it for ratification.
I was going to say, isn’t there already an amendment that guarantees every American the right to vote? I see that there is, so making another one would be totally absurd. Obviously, the already existing amendment must be enforced, and it has been enforced now for quite some time.
I hope this goes away.
No, the 15th Amendment doesn’t guarantee every American the right to vote. It merely ensures that if the right to vote is denied, it can’t be on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. States are perfectly free, for example, to deny the vote to felons. Or to 17-year olds. (Ever since passge of the 26th Amendment, they can’t deny the vote to 18 year olds on the basis of age.) Just about every other ground for limiting the franchise would probably be invalidated by the courts under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. I’m wondering whether giving felons the vote isn’t exactly what the proponents of this amendment have in mind.