The Supreme Court and the Abridgement of Democracy

In a fascinating article "Redefining Iran as the Enemy in Iraq," Ivan Eland says:

At the [[Petraeus] congressional hearings, however, there were signs that the latest botched Iraqi government offensive in Basra...was beginning to flip a few Republicans against the war.

This movement was indicated by some Republicans adopting the Democrats’ argument that Iraqis were failing to do enough to become democratic.

Although it is grossly unfair to invade a country, destroy its social fabric and economy, and then expect people who have had no experience in democracy to quickly become democrats, if it takes those rhetorical gymnastics to justify a more rapid U.S. withdrawal, then I guess it’s an improvement.

after all, in over two-hundred years we haven't become democrats. In fact, in recent years we have been moving further and further away from democracy. If democracy is the constant expansion of the franchise to more and more people, we are going in the opposite direction. Witness Monday's Supreme Court decision on photo IDs for voting access eligibility.

Under Indiana's law, voters must present a government-issued photo ID with an expiration date that has not elapsed. The law does not accept Veterans' IDs, Congressional IDs, student IDs, or work IDs.

Many citizens -- disproportionately low-income, minorities, students and seniors -- do not have the identification required by Indiana's law.

"In the three years since this case was brought, reliable studies have shown that 10-12% of eligible voting-age Americans do not have voter government-issued photo identification, particularly low-income, minority, senior, and student voters. Unfortunately, some will ignore these facts, and seek to use this ruling to manipulate the rules of the game and block these eligible voters from the ballot box," stated Justin Levitt, counsel at the Brennan Center.

So it would seem the right-wing Supreme Court is once again trying to manipulate the democratic process (Remember 2000.) Clearly in the Democratic primary in Indiana who's most likely to be hurt by the deprivation of voting rights to "low income, minority, senior, and student voters" -- Clinton or Obama? It has become more and more obvious that the right-wing nuts would much rather run against Clinton than Obama.

If you doubt this just read super neo-con William Kristol's column ("Hillary Gets no Respect") in today's (Monday) New York Times:

But Hillary may well be the better candidate. After all,

He says,

for all the talk of Obama's extraordinary ability to draw voters to the polls, Clinton has defeated him in the big states....

This totally bogus argument, straight out of the Clinton play book, has been reinforced by the latest Supreme Court interference in the election process.