I Read The Papers So You Don't Have To

Because doing so will give you heartburn.

1) The House passed a bill yesterday that would require voters to present an ID before they can cast a ballot. Now this might sound reasonable on the surface of it, until you ask yourself who does and doesn't have an ID. People who have cars have driver's license ID's. So anyone too poor to afford a car isn't going to have one. And the elderly frequently don't have them. These just happen to be constituencies that tend to be more Democratic. Many people vote on election day on a kind of "spur of the moment," so it's very possiblet that they'll show up to the polling place without an ID and will be disenfranchised.

More seriously, having an ID costs money. Which is why I think this provision is unconstitutional - there's an amendment against any Poll Tax, and the ID requirement, because there is a charge involved, falls under that prohibition. The bill in question would provide federal funds to states to ease the issuance of ID's, but frankly I'm not convinced that states will really make ID's free and easily available, because a) it would take work, which they're allergic to, and b) the Republicans have no incentive to do so, since it would just help Democrats.

2) Bush and the Congress are moving in the direction of eliminating Habeus Corpus rights. Now who cares about boring Latin phrases? You should. The writ of Habeus Corpus requires judicial review of criminal cases. In other words, people can't be thrown in jail without a trial. The writ means that higher courts can make sure lower courts aren't abusing people's rights. Habeus Corpus is one of the essential protections against the development of an authoritarian government. Anyone who moves to eliminate it should be run out of town with torches & pitchforks.

The argument for eliminating Habeus Corpus is that it's inconvenient. Yeah, civil liberties and democracy are pretty messy, aren't they? Why care about imprisoning the innocent? It's such a hassle demonstrating guilt, y'know.

This issue is what reveals the so-called "rebels" in the Republican party for the fakers they are. If they were really interested in defending the Constitution and civil liberties, they would oppose any such provision. The fact that they aren't suggests that all McCain, Warner, and Graham are doing is putting some symbolic distance between themselves and Bush - for narrowly political reasons.

3) David Broder, the dean of the Washington press corps, the pundit read by other pundits, has devolved into a partisan shill. He characterizes any Democrat opposing Bush policies as a wild-eyed radical, while hailing Republicans who dissent as independent-minded heroes - even though the latter are only interested in watering down Bush's policies, not fighting them. He also does a quick smear of Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and reveals that he personally didn't like Gore or Kerry because they were "know-it-alls." He also makes the factual error of stating that Bush defeated Gore in the 2000 election, when everybody who knows anything knows that Gore won the national popular vote, and that more people voting in Florida wanted Gore rather than Bush. When I was young and naive, I really admired Broder. I don't know whether he's gotten senile & corrupted or I've just grown up, but I am through with that man.

Oh, you want some good news? The Republican party's polling absolutely terribly right now - just 6 weeks from election day.