The ruling against the new Texas voting requirements law by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder comes as no surprise to any who have been following the behavior of the Department of Justice's top official.  A Monday (3/12/2012) report from The Washington Post, "DoJ Bars Texas Voter ID Law," is thoroughly consistent with a similar decree issued by the Department of Justice against a state law in South Carolina.  In both states, their respective legislatures and governors had passed laws which required voters to present a state-recognized picture voter identification card in advance of voting.  The card could be in the form of a state driver's license, a state identification card (as issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles), or a student identification card.  In both cases, A.G. Holder has determined that the requirement of such verification is a violation of civil rights.  The alleged victims of these laws were not individuals, per se, but ethnic or racial groups.

It takes indefatigable persistence to follow the unrelenting number of departures from the protections of equal justice taken by this Department of Justice and the Obama administration in general.  Eric Holder no longer attempts, assuming he ever had before, to disguise the blatant favoritism for Democrat voting blocs in his rulings -- even while he applies selective enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In the instances of Texas and South Carolina, the DoJ has elected to cite Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as grounds for overruling the new state laws.  Under this provision of the Act, the Justice Department or the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia must "preclear" any state laws that may create voting disenfranchisement for groups based upon ethnicity or color.  Holder and his lawyers have seized upon this section to essentially nullify the will of the voters of those states as expressed through their legislative and executive branch representatives.  Relying upon an arguably flawed provision of the Act, Holder places the burden of proof on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose.  Were the burden of proof requirement reversed, and Holder was compelled to prove that voter infringement was intended or a real consequence of the state laws, his action would never have seen the light of day.

I submit that no one can produce a compelling argument that the intention or effect of the Texas and South Carolina voting laws is discriminatory.  On second thought, I can understand where the laws may indeed be discriminatory.  These laws would be efficacious in preventing voter fraud in the subject states.  And herein lies the problem for Holder, Obama, and the Democratic Party at large.  Fred Dardick writing for the Canadian Free Press (7/14/2010) ("Democrat Voter Fraud") explains in substantive detail the organized efforts of leftist groups such as SEIU and ACORN to alter elections, both primary and general, in a fraudulent manner.  Furthermore, through the efforts of conservative talk radio media and FOX News in particular, national attention was given to the intimidating efforts of the New Black Panther Party at a Philadelphia voting precinct in the 2008 presidential election.  Overwhelming evidence of voter intimidation was presented to the DoJ, but Eric Holder dismissed any action on the evidence outright.  In a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing called to look into the matter, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) called Holder on the evidence that his DoJ did nothing to investigate or prosecute those involved in the intimidation.  Holder responded to the committee in part by declaring:

"Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia - which was inappropriate, certainly that...to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black.

"To compare that kind of courage, that kind of action, and to say that the Black Panther incident wrong thought it might be somehow is greater in magnitude or is of greater concern to us, historically, I think just flies in the face of history and the facts.," Holder said with evident exasperation."

In Eric Holder's world, two wrongs do make a right.  Holder clearly states that his "people" are not all Americans deserving of equal protection under law, but only people of color.  That he was "exasperated" by having to answer the impolitic question of New Black Panther thuggery exposes an intellectual conflict between his natural prejudices and what he knows to be the correct pursuit of justice.  Holder's admission and his recalcitrance in seeking indictments on the matter should have been cause for his dismissal as the nation's chief prosecutor.  There are other reasons as well, but they exceed the theme of this narrative.

This buttresses the understanding of why Holder and this administration would seek an overturning of the Texas and South Carolina voting laws.  In their estimation, the burden of producing an adequate form of photographic identification somehow infringes Latino voters in Texas and black voters in South Carolina disproportionately.  This illogical premise reaches absurd proportions when one considers exactly what the "poor" of these groups actually possess.  Robert Rector, in his paper "Understanding Poverty in the United States," thoroughly debunks the myth that the poor, or the racial/ethnic subsets of the poor, are unable to obtain proper state-recognized identification.  For example:

в—Џ Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning.  By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

в—Џ Fully 92 percent of poor households have a microwave; two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.

в—Џ Nearly 75 percent have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.

в—Џ Four out of five poor adults assert that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.

в—Џ Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.

в—Џ Half have a personal computer; one in seven has two or more computers.

в—Џ More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.

в—Џ Just under half -- 43 percent -- have internet access.

в—Џ A third have a widescreen plasma or LCD TV.

в—Џ One in every four has a digital video recorder such as TiVo. 

When we address the presumptions made by Holder and his apologists on the left, the absurdity of his action against the state laws becomes even clearer.  This administration and the Democratic Party have a vested interest in allowing, even encouraging, voter fraud in the coming elections.  They know that multiple individual votes, non-registered voters, and even illegal alien voters are needed to effect victory.  A proper form of photo ID is required of all persons to cash a check, to drive an automobile, to obtain Social Security benefits, to fly on a commercial airplane, and a host of other everyday activities of normal life.  Yet when it comes to what is arguably the most sacred act of deliberation as an American citizen -- the act of voting -- the left sees no problem in not verifying one's identity.

Holder's actions, too, are consistent with the liberal view of the citizenry.  We are not a collection of individuals, with enshrined freedoms and accompanying personal responsibility.  No, we are collections of groups, of which government must protect and afford special privileges for some at the expense of all others.  Once again, the leftists identify themselves as the raw statists they actually are.  Theirs is an unapologetic effort to foment racial division and class warfare toward an ultimate end of the supremacy of the State.  For this, we do not necessarily need their picture IDs.  We know exactly who they are.