It can't happen here

Good news...from Texas. Voter ID in the Lone Star State has been struck down, for the right reasons:

"The State of Texas enacted a voter ID law that — at least to our knowledge — is the most stringent in the country," the court wrote. "That law will almost certainly have retrogressive effect: it imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty."

It would be great if the same federal courts struck down Pennsylvania's hideous voter ID law. But they can't -- at least not on the same grounds. Texas is one of the Southern states covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act because of its history of racial discrimination. Pennsylvania -- no nirvana on earth by any standards -- did at least have the decency to generally allow blacks to vote prior to 1965.

For that small slice of decency, Pennsylvania's black and Latino voters, among others, are punished today. Talk about a Catch-22. It means that black voters in Texas -- or Mississippi, or Alabama -- are treated more fairly in 2012 than here in the Keystone State, once a critical stop on the Underground Railroad.

Unfortunately, the civil rights issue of our times remains...civil rights.

UPDATED: Unlike Mitt Romney's campaign, I take my fact-checkers seriously.