Divide and conquer. A strategic explanation for the Odd Roberts Court. [View all]

[Warren Stupidity]

The last two days have seen the historic dismantling of the hallmark of the civil rights era, the Voting Rights Act followed the next day the same court by the same margin striking down DOMA. Both decisions affect key Democratic Party constituencies. One stabbed african americans in the back, the other offered an olive branch to gay americans.

My paranoid view of american politics, cultivated since the assassination of JFK in my youth, holds that nothing much happens by accident, that all big events are purposeful, and that the last two days were deliberate policy initiatives from the rightwing majority on the court.

The two decisions were made with the deliberate intention of creating enmity between us.

While we celebrate the demise of DOMA we must not for one second lose sight of the hideous decision yesterday and the almost immediate response in the ALEC-captured state legislatures to pass legislation making it increasingly difficult to vote. We need to stand together, all of us, in opposition, and not allow them to divide us by granting modest reforms, and they are modest, to one group while dismantling key protections, protections that as the assault on voting continues, apply to all of us.