Voting Rights Act Faces Uphill Fight in Senate After Emotional Approval in

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/07/14/voting-rights-act-faces-uphill-fight-in-senate-after-emotional-approval-in-house/

Legislation & Politics

Jul 14


Voting Rights Act Faces Uphill Fight in Senate After Emotional Approval in House

Even though the House renewed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by an overwhelming margin Thursday, the bill still faces an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) says he wants the committee to consider the bill this week, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has not scheduled floor action.

At the same time, some senators, such as Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), are echoing the issues raised by a gang of extremist southern conservative House members who hijacked the legislation for three weeks. The politicians offered four amendments that would have gutted the critical portions of the law, but all the amendments were defeated easily.

However, unlike in the House, one determined senator can hold the legislation hostage through a filibuster. That’s why the AFL-CIO is asking members to continue to contact their senators and tell them to vote for S. 2703, the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged his colleagues to act quickly to extend the VRA, since published reports say Frist plans to adjourn the Senate on Sept. 27.

…this new adjournment date means the Senate has only eight more weeks in which it will be in session. Eight weeks is 40 business days. Subtract Labor Day, and there are only 39 days. Subtract Mondays and Fridays—which aren’t real work days in this Republican Congress—and there are just 23 legislative days left.

…with only 23 real legislative days remaining and a list of things we need to accomplish that’s a mile long, we need to get to work.

The original timetable for extending the Voting Rights Act was May. But here we are—with only eight weeks remaining—and there is still no specific date set for debate.

[EST]

1. Not all of the amendments would have gutted the VRA.

At least not right away.
A couple of them would have altered the VRA in such a fashion as to guarantee a supreme court challenge which would have forced a decision that the whole act had become unconstitutional: a kind of stalking horse or stealth amendment.

The transparent ethical moron tactics of the fascist republican party are embarrassing in the extreme, even to legal logician neophytes such as I.

Thanks for the link and blurb!