Justin's Political Corner

A pair of Democratic congressmen is pushing an amendment that would place an affirmative right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. According to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), who is sponsoring the legislation along with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the amendment would protect voters from what he described as a “systematic” push to “restrict voting access” through voter ID laws, shorter early voting deadlines, and other measures that are being proposed in many states.

“Most people believe that there already is something in the Constitution that gives people the right to vote, but unfortunately … there is no affirmative right to vote in the Constitution. We have a number of amendments that protect against discrimination in voting, but we don’t have an affirmative right,” Pocan told TPM last week. “Especially in an era … you know, in the last decade especially we’ve just seen a number of these measures to restrict access to voting rights in so many states. … There’s just so many of these that are out there, that it shows the real need that we have.”

The brief amendment would stipulate that “every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.” It would also give Congress “the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.”

After investigating the issue, Pocan said he and Ellison decided this type of amendment was the best way to combat measures to restrict voting access.

“Essentially, what it would do is it would put the burden on any of these states that try to make laws that are more restrictive that they would have to prove that they’re not disenfranchising a voter. Rather than, currently, where a voter has to prove they’ve somehow been wronged by a state measure,” said Pocan.

Pocan laid the blame for this push to restrict voting rights on conservatives he described as interested in influencing elections.

“I think there are a number of folks, most likely on the right, who are looking at when we have larger turnout elections, generally, I think they realize that they don’t have much control over the election,” said Pocan. “Trying to control who goes to vote is just another strategy in trying to have an electoral outcome.”

Pocan said he was inspired to investigate this type of legislation after the NAACP’s legal challenge to a photo ID measure supported by Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, succeeded because of a guarantee of the right to vote in the state’s constitution. He linked up with Ellison who had taken over a push to establish an affirmative right to vote on the federal level from former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL).

Ellison and Pocan announced their legislation May 13. Pocan said there’s currently no counterpart in the Senate.

There will be a long, hard road to getting the amendment approved. In the more than two centuries of American government, only 27 amendments to the Constitution have been approved though thousands have been discussed.

If an amendment gets the support of two-thirds of both the House and Senate, it is then sent to the states for ratification. Three-quarters of the state legislatures must approve the amendment for it be ratified. An amendment to the Constitution can also be approved at a Constitutional Convention called by two-thirds of state governments where it must be approved by three quarters of the states. None of the successful amendments were approved through Constitutional Conventions.

Pocan didn’t say whether he believes it will pass in the House of Representatives describing it as “fairly new.”

H/T: TPMDC

Representative Michele Bachmann is using her position on the House Intelligence Committee topromote a conspiracy theory that government officials, including State Department official Huma Abedin, are part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. Bachmann also claimsthat Rep. Keith Ellison is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Bachmann has refused to apologize or back down, even after prominent Republicans like Senator John McCain demanded that she stop.

As Rep. Ellison has noted, he and Abedin are in positions of relative power; even greater than our concern for them should be our concern that the political participation of Muslim-Americans will be chilled by anti-Muslim McCarthyism attacking the role of Muslim-Americans in our country’s political life.

We need the voices of Muslim-Americans to help us reform U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world. If Muslim-American voices are silenced, reforming U.S. policy is going to be much harder. Urge your Representative to help draw a line by speaking out for sanctions on Bachmann, including — as People for the American Way has called for — her removal from the Intelligence Committee, for her attacks on the political participation of Muslim-Americans.

It’s indisputable that many Muslim-Americans have cultural ties to and heightened concern about countries where U.S. foreign policy is especially controversial.

h/t: Robert Naiman at Huffington Post

Muslims in the U.S. and around the world are celebrating the month of Ramadan. It is a time of self-examination.

I am not a Muslim, and I proudly join my Muslim brothers and sisters.

Muslim Americans have increasingly become targets of right-wing hate groups.

I know what it is to be a target of hate. I also know how it feels to practice a religious faith that is not considered to be mainstream.

I respect people of all faiths, and most of all I respect my country for having the freedom to practice or not practice a religion as one of the foundations of our democracy.  

In the spirit of this time of self-examination I call upon my fellow citizens of goodwill to look into your hearts, and try to imagine being in Congressman Keith Ellison’s shoes.  

The vile and vicious outpouring of hate and McCarthyism unleashed against Sec. Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin by a right-wing cabal in our Congress spearheaded by Michele Bachmann and joined by Republican Reps. Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland, and crafted out of Frank Gaffney’s paranoid propaganda, was immediately responded to by Congressman Ellison.

He sent this letter to Bachmann.

Ellison, a progressive Democrat, advocate of many causes for justice and equality that benefit us all—not just his constituents—had to stand alone each day in Congress as its only Muslim member. Bad enough he has to fight against the rising tide of racism against African-Americans coming from the Right. He is now no longer “the only” since Rep. André Carson (D-IL) has joined him in the isolation of “otherness”.  

Bachmann, as Hunter reported Friday, has gone even further off the deep end and accused Ellison of Muslim Brotherhood ties.

It was no easy task to be “the first”.  

It is no easy task to bear the pain, and the hate thrown at fellow Muslims and to remain a person with a gentle and loving spirit embracing people of all faiths and colors.

Ellison receives death threats, yet is always available to his constituents and our causes.

H/T: Denise Oliver Velez at Daily Kos

The controversy over Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) Islamophobic witch-hunt was kicked off by a series of letters from her and colleagues demanding that the Inspectors General of four government agencies investigate “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government. But during an interview with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported that two of the agencies have no intention of launching investigations.

That won’t stop nutzo Bachmann from repeating her false allegations.

h/t: Ali Gharib at Think Progress Security

A few weeks back, the sensation-seeking Representative Michele Bachmann did her best imitation of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy. She and four of her Congressional colleagues released letters they had collectively sent to the Inspectors General of the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, and the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence calling on them to investigate whether “influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood” have “had an impact on the federal government’s national security policies.”

Warning of “determined efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood to penetrate and subvert the American government as part of its ‘civilizational jihad’” the representatives wanted the Inspectors General to identify the Muslims who were influencing U.S. policy.

In making these charges, Bachmann and her cohorts were relying on the work of a Washington-based group the Center for Security Policy — a notorious player in the anti-Muslim industry that has been working for several years to smear Muslim American groups. The head of the Center served as one of Bachmann’s advisers during her ill-fated run for the presidency and the only source cited in the Congressional letters was the Center’s “training program,” “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.”

In other instances the evidence reads more like a “six degrees of separation game.” Using this trick, Bachmann and the Center point accusing fingers at some Muslims who serve in the administration. Among those who were singled out by name is Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

In the case of Abedin, the game goes from absurd, to downright bizarre. Her father and mother are Muslim and her father taught at a Muslim university in Saudi Arabia, and so they must be… (fill in the blank). In one article inspired by the Center’s work that appeared in the Washington Times, a right-wing newspaper, questions are asked as to whether Abedin “had been groomed to access movers and shakers to advance the cause of Islam in America.” The article goes on to question whether Abedin’s marriage to a Jewish Member of Congress was but a clever ruse designed to further this “Islamist agenda.” The evidence? Since Abedin is a Muslim why else would her family have approved of her marrying a non-Muslim? And, after all, she works for Clinton and Obama, who share, the article says, the “socialist agenda, which includes domination of the U.S. by a Muslim-ruled world!”

Let’s look first at the five Members of Congress who signed the letters: Representatives Bachmann, Tom Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland all sit on the Select Committee on Intelligence, while Representatives Trent Franks and Louis Gohmert are members of the Judiciary Committee. With the exception of Bachmann, all hold leadership positions, either within their respective committees or in the House Republican caucus.

As an example of the potential this group might have to influence policy, this week the powerful Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Mike Rogers, speaking on a radio program hosted by the head of the Center, called Bachman’s campaign to “root out” Muslims “very important” noting that she is “taking the lead” on this issue.

As was the case during the McCarthy era, “witch-hunts” have victims and not only in jobs lost and careers ruined. Equally troubling is the distress that campaigns of this sort can bring to those not named, but who live in fear that their religion or their ethnicity will be the reason that they will be held in suspicion, denied a position, or held back from advancement. And as I know from bitter personal experience, it can result in entire communities being shunned by officials who fear being attacked for associating with a group that has been smeared as “dangerous.” Because there is a scarcity of courageous leaders in Washington, all too often the “witch hunts” will fester, taking a terrible toll before being challenged and defeated.

It is for this reason that I am so thankful that the wise voters of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District sent Keith Ellison to Congress. He is smart, picking his fights carefully. He is principled and courageous, venturing forth on matters that others tend to shy away from. And his wise counsel and thoughtful approach to issues has earned him the respect of his colleagues.

Ellison demonstrated his leadership this week when he directly challenged the sensation-seeking Islamophobe, Representative Michele Bachmann. In a stern letter to Bachmann and company, Ellison asks that she provide his “office with a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters. If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope you will publicly clear their names.”

h/t: James Zogby at Huffington Post 

Last month, we wrote a post featuring a video clip from a presentation that David Barton delivered just before Memorial Day back in 2007 in which he made the case that God was pro-war and even claimed that the United States was one more bombing run away from winning the war in Vietnam when our troops were withdrawn.

Today, we stumbled upon a similar presentation Barton delivered at Calvary Chapel in California in 2009 on the anniversary of 9/11.  In it, Barton was making his standard claim that War on Terror actually goes back to the 1800s when the US was engaged in conflict with Barbary pirates, whom Barton claims were really “Muslim terrorists.” 

During the presentation, Barton mentioned the election of Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and took issue[PDF] with the claim that Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, claiming that John Randolph of Virginia, who served in Congress from 1799-1834, was really the first Muslim to be elected.  And Barton insisted that though it is worrisome to have a Muslim in Congress when we are engaged in the War on Terror, the solution is simply to convert Ellison to Christianity, just as Randolph was reportedly converted by Francis Scott Key.

h/t: Kyle Mantyla at RWW

Last month, Dorothy Cooper, a 96 year-old African-American woman from Chattanooga, Tennessee, went to the ballot box to vote. Dorothy was born before women had the right to vote and when Jim Crow laws kept most African-Americans disenfranchised. Despite this, Dorothy has not missed a single election since 1960. Like many seniors, Dorothy has a Social Security card, a local photo ID issued by the Chatanooga Police Department—and a voter registration card.

Dorothy also has a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, and birth certificate. But a new Tennessee law requires all voters to have a valid state-issued voter ID in order to vote in the 2012 election. Because Dorothy took her husband’s name at marriage, the state will not accept her birth certificate (or any of her other forms of identification). And because Dorothy doesn’t have her marriage certificate, having been married decades ago, the state of Tennessee prohibits her from obtaining the ID needed to vote.

Dorothy is not alone.  In Indiana, 12 nuns were denied the right to vote in the last presidential election because they didn’t have “updated” identification. The facts that some of them had old passports, they were in their 80s and 90s and didn’t drive—or that they’re nuns—seemed not to be a good basis for affirming their identities.  

These are not isolated incidents. They are part of the largest effort to disenfranchise voters since the Jim Crow era, almost exclusively targeting youth and minority voters.. A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the Republican effort could make it harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.  

This year, thirty-four state legislatures introduced bills requiring photo identification in order to vote. This rash of legislation classifies several previously accepted IDs as unacceptable, and will affect roughly 21 million Americans if they are passed.  For the first time in our nation’s history, we would shrink the voting franchise instead of expanding it.  

These are solutions in search of a problem. Statistics show an infinitesimal number of proven voting fraud cases occurring in the United States. And these few cases have been successfully prosecuted like any other criminal offense.

Groups promoting these laws, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), argue there’s rampant voter fraud.  Oddly enough this “fraud” seems to be occurring only within historically Democratic voting blocs like minorities and students. Yet ALEC and others have no problem squashing these groups’ voting rights—or the rights of elderly voters.  Routinely issued student IDs won’t be accepted in some states—including my home state of Minnesota.  The elderly, non-drivers, and millions of others will have to get identification. This sounds like a simple process, but imagine an 80 year old grandmother who has never driven and uses a wheelchair going through the process of getting non-drivers ID. If her social security card is accepted identification for her benefits,  why isn’t it good enough to identify her for voting?

For these reasons, I am introducing two bills today to curb voter suppression. The Same Day Registration Act would require states to provide for same day voter registration for a federal election. The Voter Access Protection Act would make sure election officials cannot require photo identification in order to cast a vote or register to vote.

H/T: Keith Ellison at Daily Kos