And My Beef Goes On...

by Cate Cavanagh

...let me count the ways!
Firstly, the Gop would love to eliminate early voter registration and Souls To The Polls in every state. Now Florida is making voteliar registration virtually impossible for organizations such as The League of Women Voters to register people by making it mandatory that filings be done within 48 hours of application! How can anyone keep up with that. In addition, there are scary clauses in the application forms implying hefty fines and imprisonment if something is written incorrectly! Both volunteers and registrants are afraid of this clause. The GOP would happily see this be in all states as well. Of course in Texas photo ID accepted in the past is not acceptable BUT if you have a gun permit that is just fine. I happen to support the Second Amendment albeit not as rabidly as some but this is just plain absurd!
As if disenfranchising the elderly, poor and minority voters wasn't enough. Newt now says he believes "activist" judges should be arrested and hauled away. In essence he wants to totally strip the power away from the judiciary Branch of our government. I find this appalling but consider this: what is activist judge? Sotomeir? Scalia? I want to know can we haul off off Scalia for handing over the Presidency to Bush? Hmmm. How about all those justices that decided corporations are people too?
This is an interesting philosophy which will simply not hold water because your right winger will not want democrats to be able to remove THEIR appointees. There is a reason, like it or not, that Supreme Court appointments are “lifelong”. It presumes (which in recent years especially with Republican appointees) that lifelong appointments will be a detriment to partiality. (Yeah, right!)
However, this IS CLEAR in the constitution that seem invalid at the whim of Republican extremists.

Cate Cavanagh has been a career family advocate and service coordinator for developmentally and physical disabled children and adults. She is a published syndicated columnist and author.

CATE CAVANAGH Author, HER GODMOTHER
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR, CHICKEN SOUP   FOR THE SOUL