The return of Jim Crow

An important story, must-read story over at Rolling Stone:

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.

This monstrosity is coming to Pennsylvania if we don't stop it.

On a somewhat related matter, I'm just as outraged as a lot of conservatives are that a congressman, Rep. Andre Carter. made recent comments that the Tea Party would like to see blacks "hanging from a tree." That's hateful and over-the-top -- he should apologize. Isn't it bad enough that there's a campaign afoot to undermine people's right to vote? Crazy talk about lynching only undermines the real battles we need to be fighting in 2011.