Pete's BLOG-Day 26,403. I don't trust 'em.

Today is Sunday, March 3, 2012. No stats today - my day off. My weight was 163.6 pounds.

QUOTE from Jim Doyne: "To err is human: but to really louse it up takes a computer."

My THOUGHTS  today. Leonard Pitts Jr is one of my favorite op-ed writers. This morning he wrote an opinion piece entitled Voting Rights lAW (of 1965): Now it's
racial entitlement? He was reacting to a statement made by Justice Anthony Scalia last week.
The statement was that Scalia had branded the voting rights law a "racial entitlement." Pitts said "a chill crawled down my spine." Pitts said: "That landmark 1965 legislation
gave the ballot to black voters who had previously been denied it by discriminatory laws, economic threats, violence and registrars in court houses who challenged them
with nonsense questions like. 'How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?'"
Shelby County, Alabama, is appealing the part of the law that makes 9 southern states get federal approval before changing their voting procedures.  Officials in Alabama say
they are cured of the attitudes that made that provision necessary (for those 9 states). The Alabama Attorney General said, "The children of today's Alabama are not racist and neither is their government."

 A LAW PROTECTING THE VOTING  RIGHTS OF A HISTORICALLY DISENFRANCHISED MINORITY IS A "RACIAL ENTITLEMENT?"

Pitts went on to say, Lord, have mercy.  In the 1870s, the South convinced the federal
government it could behave itself without oversight. The result: "nearly a century of
Jim Crow laws. Now here comes Shelby County, saying in effect: We've changed. Trust
us. Yes, the South has changed - thanks to the Voting Rights Law of 1965. Now they
want to gut that law. After  seeing the GOP shenanigans in the 2012 campaign to try
and suppress the vote, do you think we can trust conservative Republicans to
not continue to suppress the black and Hispanic vote? It would be a lot easier with the
Voting Rights Law gutted, wouldn't it? The GOP is at the point where it will do
anything to win back the presidency and the Congress - including gerrymandering, shortening early voting (hours and days), voter ID laws and tougher voter registration
rules.

I'm hoping and praying this conservative Supreme Court doesn't screw up the Voting Rights Law like they did with their Citizens United decision to allow unlimited
corporate money to try and influence our elections. Do you understand why I'm no
lover of the present-day Republican Party?