“Move along. Noth­ing to see here…”

This is how bad it’s got­ten. This is how far Repub­li­cans will go to sup­press the voices of minori­ties in America.

In the dead of night — at 10 pm last Wednes­day — in the mid­dle of a week in which the media was dis­tracted by talk about same-​​sex mar­riage — Paul Broun (R-​​Athens, GA) attempted to neuter a vital part of the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act via an amend­ment that would deny the Jus­tice Depart­ment any fund­ing to review and super­vise election-​​law changes in 16 states with a his­tory of dis­crim­i­na­tory vot­ing laws and vot­ing rights abuses.

Broun wasn’t propos­ing changes to the law, or alter­ations to the rules and reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern vot­ing rights. He sim­ply pro­posed that the Jus­tice Depart­ment be stripped of funds that would allow vio­la­tions of vot­ing rights to be exam­ined and pros­e­cuted. It’s akin to main­tain­ing the ille­gal­ity of mur­der, while elim­i­nat­ing the police depart­ment nec­es­sary to arrest murderers.

That’s how des­per­ate Repub­li­cans are today. (more…)