Voting Rights

Nothing about the equation for the GOP presidential nomination changed as a result of the debate Monday night in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Mitt Romney is still the overwhelming favorite--and, if anything, strong debate performances by both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum only increased the chances that the two will fracture the social conservative vote in the state primary, handing victory to Romney later this week. But that doesn't mean Romney had a good night. After a strong start, when the candidate effectively batted away questions about his work for Bain Capital, the private equity and buyout firm his rivals have said destroyed jobs, Romney continually found himself on the defensive and sometimes gave muddled answers.

Reporting from Myrtle Beach, S.C. -- If Mitt Romney is a moderate, he's learned to hide it well, as evidenced in the Republican presidential debate Monday night. While his prime opponents, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, have traveled the state trying to convince GOP primary voters that the former governor from Taxachusetts is a weak-kneed moderate, they have been undercut by Romney's consistent hard right rhetoric. He's got the most aggressive position on illegal immigrants -- "send 'em all back!"

Sparring with rival Mitt Romney on the debate stage Tuesday night, former Sen. Rick Santorum forced Romney into disavowing attack ads run by a "super PAC" supporting his candidacy. The exchange was the first in a series of hard-hitting, sustained attacks on Romney, the front-runner in the race.   "Gov. Romney's super PAC has put an ad out there suggesting that I voted to allow felons to be able to vote from prison," Santorum began. "I would ask Gov. Romney:  Do you believe people who are felons, who've served their time, who've exhausted their parole and probation, should they be given the right to vote?"

In one of the most sustained batterings he has endured in the 2012 presidential primary debates, Mitt Romney was repeatedly put on the defensive over his business and government record and the attack ads by his supporters that are swamping South Carolina's airwaves. The former Massachusetts governor's rivals have been increasingly desperate to derail his front-running candidacy as Romney looks to put a virtual lock on the Republican nomination in Saturday's primary. Rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich both took aim at Romney, landing blows that, despite hitting their mark, may have canceled out either candidate's chances of emerging Monday night as Romney's key challenger.

Next month the Supreme Court will consider a controversy over congressional redistricting in Texas that will highlight the importance of a crucial part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination to "pre-clear" changes in their election practices with the Justice Department or a federal court. In 2009 the court declined to rule on the constitutionality of Section 5, but it could return to the issue. If they are in any doubt about the continued need for it, they should read a recent speech by Atty.

The Obama administration's civil rights office is stepping up its fight with the Southern states over voting rights, announcing it will block a new South Carolina law that would require voters to show a government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot. The Justice Department invoked the Voting Rights Act on Friday and said the new photo-identification rule could deny the right to vote for tens of thousands of blacks and other minorities. "According to the state's statistics, there are 81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack DMV-issued identification," Thomas E. Perez, the chief of the department's civil rights division, said in a letter to South Carolina officials.

On Tuesday, as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors makes a final decision on how to redraw the lines of the five supervisorial districts, it will have the opportunity to make history — or repeat it. If the supervisors honor the Voting Rights Act and redraw boundary lines in a way that avoids diluting the voting strength of Latinos and gives them a meaningful opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, they will be the first board...

I like to walk bridges. I've crossed the obvious: The Brooklyn Bridge, with its panorama of Manhattan, makes your heart soar. And I've strolled the obscure, including the Duke Ellington Bridge over Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek. (In a world that generally names infrastructure after politicians, it's hard not to admire a span honoring a jazz musician.) Each bridge inspires. I'm awed by the engineering and the audacity to tame nature, or at least a tiny sliver of it. And I love the setting, suspended between water and sky. Yet none of this prepared me for the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. It's hardly the prettiest span: a 1940s-era bridge arching over the muddy Alabama River.

Battle lines hardened Tuesday in a raucous political fight over creating a second L.A. County Board of Supervisors district with a majority of potential Latino voters. One of the largest crowds in recent memory - more than 800 people - packed the board's downtown hearing room for a tense five-hour exchange of starkly different visions of how political boundaries should be redrawn in light of the region's steadily increasing Latino population. At stake is a potential landmark shift in membership of the five-person governing board of the nation's most populous county.

Lawmakers in Sacramento have a responsibility to legislate for the public, not for donors or the politically connected; they have a duty to write laws that apply to everyone, and not to allow certain interests to benefit from carve-outs and exemptions. And yet, sometimes the state's broken legislative system forces Californians to choose between that kind of bad lawmaking and worse consequences. Such is the case with SB 292, the bill to expedite judicial review of AEG's proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles in return for AEG's commitment to exceed the state's environmental requirements for the facility.