Actually, Paul, it is in the Constitution. Being "in the Constitution" does not mean that it is actually, verbatim, listed there. The Constitution mostly limits what government can do within a small list of broad categories. Anything outside of those categories is prohibited to government abridgement.

Voting, the right for citizens to vote is assumed by the nature of the form of government instituted. It does not fall into any constitutional category of government power, except to arrange times and places as well as the qualifications of those running for office. But it is assumed, by Amendments, to have powers of regulation in that it is prohibited from certain types of regulation. Thereby assuming that it can regulate voting except in those Amended circumstances.

There is no prohibition in the Constitution against government regulation of the voting process except for the prohibition against doing so by "sex" (19th Amendment), or "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (15th Amendment), or by the age of anyone over 18 (26th Amendment).

If there is no reference to any of those prohibitions, then government is not prohibited from imposing voting rules. Of course, there is that notion that a Judge can "interpret" that a regulation actually denies the vote to any of those categories, even if they are not mentioned in the regulation. But that notion can be extended infinitum to include endless ways that someone could be denied the vote. However, if the regulation applies to all categories of citizens, it would be judicial activism to strike it down on the basis of a judges opinion of what harm the regulation might incur to a particular category. That does occur. But in the strictest sense, such personal interpretation is not constitutional. It is actually destructive of the Constitution in that it introduces precedent for abrogating the Constitution, rewriting it by judicial fiat.

Good point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_...ist_League_USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolu...ist_Party,_USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commun..._(Provisional)

"again discuss how the GOP is constantly trying to impose rules on voting (that aren't in the const.) that harm minorities? "

Yes, let's. Every single time this comes up, some people ask why the requirement of getting id cards, is more burdensome for anyone based on the color of their skin. And every time that question is asked, there is no response. Because unless the fee is higher for blacks, or blacks have to climb stairs to get to the right office while whites can take the elevator, it's not even close to being racist. There may be cultural forces that determine who is more likely to jump through the hoops to get an id, but it has absolutely nothing to do with race.

"trying to provide a floor of help for someone is holding them down"

Incorrect. Everyone agrees that a safety net is a good thing. Democrats want to go further, they want to make huge numbers of blacks permanently dependent on welfare, so they will keep voting for whoever will give them that welfare. Paul, this is no longer abstract theory or speculation...there is empirical, observable evidence to make my case. You can't solve poverty (on a large scale) by giving money to poor people. Because a lack of money isn't the cause of poverty for many, it's the effect. The cause of their poverty, is often poor decision-making, or destructive personal habits, and if there's one thing we know for certain, it is this - you cannot cure that by giving someone $500 a month. We have been trying that for 50 years, and all it does is make things worse. Similarly, you don't help a drug addict by giving him cash.

"you ducked the question by stating it is the same reason the communists supported the Dems"

No, I answered the question spot on, by pointing to the fact that communists support Hilary. Obviously, there is an assumption in this country (incorrect, based on the facts) that the Democrats care about blacks, and that the GOP is racist. Most media outlets re-state this constantly, so no surprise that some thoughtless morons (like those in the KKK) would start to believe it. That doesn't make it true.

The KKK supporting Trump doesn't mean he's more racist, any more than Black Lives Matter's support of Democrats, means that Dems want to murder police officers. You cannot judge a huge political group by the actions of the lunatic fringe of either party. If Trump invites the head of the Klan to the Oval Office 70 times like Obama invited Sharpton, then I will be the first to comment that you are right, that Trump is a white supremacist. He hasn't gone down that road yet. Obama has. BIG difference.

"Obama met with him bc he speaks for a large black pop"

Agreed. But that's BAD for blacks, Paul. Blacks need to learn that he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. By inviting him to the Oval Office every month, it legitimizes the disgusting bile that Sharpton spews. The reason why blacks turn to to Sharpton, is because your party, and the media in their control, tell blacks that Sharpton is right when he blames everything on whitey. That hurts blacks in the long run, it increases the racial divide, but it helps democrats at the voting booth, and that's all they care about.

"a compassionate country should have - like food stamps for poor or preschool funding, etc"

Again, you can go too far with the amount of welfare you give someone. At some point, you rob them of their ability to stand on their own two feet. Despite what you clearly believe, liberals don't have a monopoly on compassion. I have posted repeatedly, the study called Who Really Cares, which de-bunks that myth. But Democrats keep saying it, and the media keeps saying it, so people like you start to believe it.

"are no policies that Sharpton wants that gets proposed other than things a compassionate country should have"

You seem to be forgetting that in the past, a handful of innocent people have been murdered at Sharpton rallies, after he hets the crowd good and riled up. Then there's the whole Tawana Brawley thing.

For you to say with a straight face that Sharpton's platform is based on "compassion", is probably the most demonstrably false thing you will ever post.

I suppose it was compassionate when Sharpton referred to New York City as "hymie-town".

You are proving my exact point, Paul...I call out the scumbags on my side, you are bending over backwards to ignore all the damage Sharpton does, and act as if all that matters are the few good things he supports.

Paul, one is judged on the totality of everything they do...not just the good stuff.

Donald Trump gives a ton of money to charity, and he is know to give big money, at the spur of the moment, to people having tough times. His family just recently raised tens of millions of dollars for, I think, St Judes Children's hospital. He is to be commended for that. But that doesn't mean I am wrong when I say that he is an obnoxious, egotistical pig.

So again, how many days do we do this - 1 day, 2, 3 and when will something that angers causes you to start the same type of thread?

Paul, you can post all the articles you want saying that when id laws are put in place, black turnout is reduced more than white turnout.

THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S RACIST.

Way more black children are born into homes without a father, than white babies. Does that mean the institution of fatherhood is racist? No. It means that certain cultural triggers lead to disproportional fatherlessness, and blacks are more likely to embrace those cultural triggers (thanks to liberalism, by the way).

If the process for getting the id is the same for blacks, but blacks choose not to get the id, that's not racism. That's cultural laziness.

Cry all you want. Unless the process is designed to make it more burdensome for blacks to get the id, it ain't racist.

"I guess you thing blacks aren't smart enough to recognize what the Dems are doing"

Not at all. I am saying that blacks are either being specifically targeted by liberals to become welfare dependent on a large scale, or liberals are too stupid to see the clear damage being done by the policies they endorse.

How bad do things have to get in the cities, exactly, before liberals conclude that the policies are not working? And why is it racist for conservatives to claim that people in the cities deserve better, and therefore we need to try something different than what we are currently doing?

"So I'm confused bc isn't that the intent of the thread you started?. "

No. The thread isn't pointing to the "lunatic fringe" of the Democratic party. This is a sitting US Congressman. Have any Democrats suggest said that the painting should be removed, and that the guy who out it up is a jerk for doing so?

Sorry, I thought the title of the thread was difference between the parties.

[QUOTE=PaulS;1115111]Sorry, I thought the title of the thread was difference between the parties.[/QUOTE
The difference between influential leaders of the parties, Paul, not the difference between the lunatic fringe of the two parties. The difference between what the parties actually represent.

Big whoop some judge says it targets blacks. Can you tell me why, specifically, its harder for blacks to get the id? What is it about the process that's any different, for one race versus another? I am all ears
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[QUOTE=Jim in CT;1115114]Day 3 - so maybe we'll go until day 4? And this has been discussed, but I guess we have to discuss it again.

What difference does it make why it is harder? Blacks and Latinos say it is harder. That is not the issue.

I would imagine that a drivers license is the most common form of ID and blacks not having as many driver's licenses has something to do it (my Grand uncle died at 102 and voted every election - didn't drive, once he came here from another country never flew anywhere. So he didn't have a drivers license or a passport. Maybe he had a SS card - I don't know). The poorer folks live in the cities to be near the services there (hospitals, transportation, etc) and have less need for licenses. The older blacks might not have been born in hospitals many years ago so don't have birth certificates. Don't have as much $ as whites on average so they don't fly and don't have passports. I read that about 10% of the American's don't have a valid government ID. In some states you have to travel up to 250 miles to get an ID.

There have been numerous times when a strict ID law gets passed and word leaks out that a Rep. state rep. said something like "this will help keep the Dem. voter turnout down".

But again - that is not the issue.

[QUOTE=PaulS;1115150]"What difference does it make why it is harder? Blacks and Latinos say it is harder. "

Show me a post from a black who says it's harder because they are black, and why.

Let me see if I have an accurate grasp of your position here...

Paul: it's harder for blacks to get the id
Jim: how is the process harder for one race than another
Paul: because I say so

Is that about right? That's your argument? Paul, just last night, my 5 year-old told me I was a rotten father because I made him eat his veggies. He said I was a rotten person. Was I being mean? Nope. But he said I was.

Just because someone says something, doesn't make it so. If blacks freely choose not to get the id, that's their choice, it's not something that whitey forced upon them.

How did your grand uncle cash a check?

People in cities may not need drivers licenses. That doesn't mean they don't need a photo id.

Requiring a photo id is viewed by some, as a way of safeguarding the integrity of the process. I don't doubt that d requirements suppress more black votes than white votes. But that doesn't make it racist. It's only racist, if it's harder for blacks to get the id than whites. If the process of getting an id is too cumbersome, we need to address that. But if it's just a matter of people being too lazy to get the id, the fault lies with them, not with the law.

"word leaks out that a Rep. state rep. said something like "this will help keep the Dem. voter turnout down".

Then that person should be hounded from public service.

[QUOTE=Jim in CT;1115156]We haven't even discussed the reason to shorten voting time - Which Rep. found hurts minorites more.

So you have 1 party which gerimands voting districts, does all it can to try to limit what times/when and adds requirements that people have ids -(all that hurt minorities) vs another party that wants to expand voting times/access and you can't see why some people view that as racist.

This weekend, Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) finally admitted what so many have speculated: Voter identification efforts are meant to suppress Democratic votes in this year’s election.
At the Republican State Committee meeting, Turzai took the stage and let slip the truth about why Republicans are so insistent on voter identification efforts — it will win Romney the election, he said:
“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

And from the Judge who wrote the majority opinion.


Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit said effects were not clear in 2007.
But there was Richard A. Posner, one of the most distinguished judges in the land and a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, saying he was mistaken in one of the most contentious issues in American politics and jurisprudence: laws that require people to show identification before they can vote.
Proponents of voter identification laws, who tend to be Republican, say the measures are necessary to prevent fraud at the polls. Opponents, who tend to be Democrats, assert that the amount of fraud at polling places is tiny, and that the burdens of the laws are enough to suppress voting, especially among poor and minority Americans.
One of the landmark cases in which such requirements were affirmed, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, was decided at the Seventh Circuit in an opinion written by Judge Posner in 2007 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2008.
In a new book, “Reflections on Judging,” Judge Posner, a prolific author who also teaches at the University of Chicago Law School, said, “I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion” in the case. He noted that the Indiana law in the Crawford case is “a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”
Judge Posner, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, extended his remarks in a video interview with The Huffington Post on Friday.
Asked whether the court had gotten its ruling wrong, Judge Posner responded: “Yes. Absolutely.” Back in 2007, he said, “there hadn’t been that much activity in the way of voter identification,” and “we weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disenfranchise people entitled to vote.” The member of the three-judge panel who dissented from the majority decision, Terence T. Evans, “was right,” Judge Posner said.
The dissent by Judge Evans, who died in 2011, began, “Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Judge Posner noted that the primary opinion in the 2008 Supreme Court decision upholding the law had been written by Justice John Paul Stevens, “who is, of course, very liberal.” The outcome of the case goes to show, he said, that oftentimes, “judges aren’t given the facts that they need to make a sound decision.”
“We weren’t given the information that would enable that balance to be struck” between preventing fraud and protecting voters’ rights, he added.
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on election law, said an admission of error by a judge is unusual, and “gives to Democrats an ‘I-told-you-so’ ” argument on voter identification issues.
More significant, he said, it reflects what he called a recent shift. Previously, cases were decided largely along party lines, but then “you started seeing both Democratic- and Republican-leaning judges” reining in voter identification requirements.
Judge Posner seemed surprised that his comments had caused a stir, and said much had changed since Crawford. “There’s always been strong competition between the parties, but it hadn’t reached the peak of ferocity that it’s since achieved,” he said in the interview. “One wasn’t alert to this kind of trickery, even though it’s age old in the democratic process.”

[QUOTE=PaulS;1115150]When President Lyndon Johnson said that passing the Civil Rights Act would keep the N-words voting for the Dems for 200 years, that did not make the Act unconstitutional. It was unconstitutional for other reasons (but that apparently was not an issue) but not because of what he said.

Again, these sorts of made up arguments that go outside of actual constitutional limitations in order to reach decisions which seem socially just to a particular judge replace and rewrite the Constitution. Judges are not supposed to do that. It is up to the people through their Congress (who wrote it in the first place) to amend the Constitution. Judicial activism should be opposed by both sides of the aisle since it can cut both ways, left or right.

"And from the Judge who wrote the majority opinion."

and if I quote the judge who wrote the majority opinion in the Dredd Scott Case, does that mean you support slavery? Judges make huge mistakes, ask Sonia Sotomayor who has been overturned a jillion times.

Paul, if the law is implemented for the specific purpose of suppressing Democrat turnout, that's despicable. If the law is implemented to prevent voter fraud (which of course it does) and some people choose not to get the id, I have no issue with that. Zip.

I started this post to point out the differences between the parties. Another common theme of the left, is to label everything which they do not like, as racist.

I showed you how some people can view the laws restricting voting as racist.

"That makes zero sense"

You attempted to prove that id's are racist, by quoting the judge that wrote the opinion. In other words, according to you, if the judge says it's racist, that means you think it's racist. Well, I can find a judge's opinion that upholds slavery. My point is that just because a judge says something, that doesn't make it so.

"yet the voter fraud is minute"

You are probably correct. But we can reduce it a lot further by requiring proof of identity. Amazing to me that liberals go berserk at the notion that if someone shows up to vote, we might require that they prove their identity. Again, it shows the differences between the two parties. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for some proof of identity in order to vote. If I got to the poll and was told that someone already voted who said they were me, I would be none too happy. Amazing to me that liberals find that controversial.

"I responded to you to show you both parties have kooks and do things neither of us may agree with"

I never claimed that the lunatic fringe of the democratic party, speaks for all democrats. Is Obama the lunatic fringe? Is the DNC the lunatic fringe? Is the Congressional Black Caucus the lunatic fringe?

Paul, I voted for Trump. I don't feel responsible for the way he talks about women. But you can feel free to claim that I support the vast majority of his policy decisions. Using that logic, if Obama kisses up to Al Sharpton, I feel it's valid to say that Democrats are comfortable cozying up to racist hatemongers who don't pay their taxes.

"you continue to label a whole party with something 1 person or a minority of people in that party do "

That's not how I see it. I feel you continue to deny that liberals believe in the core beliefs of liberalism - abortion, open borders, large federal government, high taxes and spending. I would never claim that one obscure lunatic speaks for all democrats. But you seem intent to deny that there are any common themes that apply, in general, to democrats.

I agree that those broadly in general are things the liberals believe it. I have never denied that.

"So many, many thousands don't get to vote so we can reduce the 31 cases of voter fraud to zero?"

If the process to get an id is reasonable, then anyone who doesn't get to vote, is a result of a free choice they made not to get an id.

He found 31, huh? If someone pretended to be someone else who didn't show up to vote, and then got away with it, how would this DOJ official have known about that?

Paul, I will never say that voter fraud (pretending to be someone else) is rampant. I am saying that it happens, and I don't see that requiring an id (which reduces that crime) is all that oppressive. We all have to jump through hoops, occasionally, to function in this society we have.

You have never held me accountable for Trump's policies, not once. I am saying, you can. If Trump votes to repel Obamacare, you can say "those jerks in the GOP repealed Oamacare", and I cannot refute that.

Again, I don't know that you have ever conceded that there are some general policy beliefs that it's fair to assign to the Democratic party. No two people are identical, but it's not unfair for me to say that Dems support abortion, nor I sit unfair for me to say that Dems are attacking police officers. Maybe not all Dems do it, but very very few speak out against it.

I agree that the Dems in general support abortion and as I stated in my prior post there are other things that generally Dems support. certainly not all Dems. Just as not all who vote Rep. are against abortion or support other things on the Rep. platform.

I think it is reprehensable to attack PO. Certainly there are "bad" PO just as there are bad people in every profession. The vast majority do a great job.