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By Faddy MacMough
Don’cha Know
A Bona Fide Redneck Column
from the Texas Civil Rights Review

Well, from the left-edge of the world of Reneckedness I have a question. When does a civil right become an uncivil wrong? Maybe the editor will try to change that to incivil wrong … but I did mean uncivil … as in uncivilized.

Some newspaper editors have been suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively reinstated the poll tax that once kept minorities and the poor from voting, and it did so for no justifiable reason. They say that when the high court upheld an Indiana state law that requires a form of government-issued photo identification card for anyone to vote and that has undone our civil rights.

I suppose that those rednecks in Indiana (some call ’em lawmakers) approved the bill on the grounds of fighting voter fraud. What seems passing strange is that in upholding the law, the court said there is no evidence of voter fraud. The court apparently traded away the ability of many poor Americans to vote out of deference to fears that someone might cheat.

Now I admit to bein’ a redneck … but even to me that is a genuine case of fractured logic. Accordin’ to the Supremes, any state is now permitted to deny access to the polls to hundreds of voters – documented cases of such were entered into evidence – to prevent some potential, yet undefined, evil character from sneaking into the booth and voting twice. Well, now doncha know that kicks the concept of voting as the most sacred right in a democracy straight into the hole in the outhouse seat!

This photo-identification ruse is simply voter suppression, enacted by Indiana’s redneck legislature to keep down the vote of minorities and senior citizens. It is those people who will have the most trouble getting state-approved photo-identification cards and who will likely miss the vote.

For the historically challenged, the poll tax long had its supporters in the Old South. It cost only a couple of dollars to vote, its apologists said. That wasn’t much of a sacrifice for the sacred right. The poll tax wasn’t charged to most whites. That’s because people whose ancestors had voted before minorities won the right to vote after the Civil War were grandfathered in.

The whole idea of a poll tax, as with the identification card, is to suppress the vote of the poor. The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned poll taxes in 1964, but six justices effectively reinstated it with this decision.
So, let’s ask a simple question: How difficult can it be for someone to get a photo-identification card? The answer is: A lot harder than you might think.

Testimony before the court centered on the poor who do not own vehicles and who, therefore, do not have driver’s licenses. They can file for other forms of identification, but those cards require personal trips to government offices, which can be expensive, difficult or impossible for the infirm. Many citizens also don’t have access to their birth certificates, a key document needed in getting the proper identification in Indiana.

Just as those southerners who supported the poll tax denied that it was an impediment to voting, those Indianan’s supporting this identification requirement say it is not a big deal. But it is a big deal for the poor, and that’s why the Indiana legislature enacted this law. They know they implemented a new tactic in our nation’s sorry history of denying the vote to our poor and minority populations. And our supremes said they were right to do so, and worse, fer the rest of us … that means our states can do the same damned thing.

And, here you and I sit whining about it. Maybe it is time that this old a-hole got off his butt and helped to start the revolution. Of course, then again, maybe Franz Kafka was right: “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind it only the slime of bureaucracy.”

Fredegar N. MacMough (his friends call him Faddy) is a pseudonym for a redneck living in New Mexico … in one of those down at the heel oil towns where the only hope is in the fall when we put our kids up to distract us from the grinding daily shit of our lives by watching them play football. Where the town spends most of its time either talking about this season or in hibernation waiting for next fall … and some still talk about when they played football. Pity the poor chump who only sires daughters … there is no glory in that.

Is it possible for a constitutional structure of governance, founded in the name of democracy, to willingly discard the principle of a human right to habeas corpus? In a 70-page ruling in the matter of BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH, the US Supreme Court (on Thursday) came within one vote of declaring the US President an absolute sovereign in his relations with citizens of the world.

So it was with special regard that we read the following passage from the concurring opinion written by Justice Souter, and joined by Ginsberg and Breyer. We thank the stars on the flag for these three of nine justices, who declared that it is “a basic fact of Anglo-American constitutional history:

“that the power, first of the Crown and now of the Executive Branch of the United States, is necessarily limited by habeas corpus jurisdiction to enquire into the legality of executive detention.

“And one could explain that in this Court’s exercise of responsibility to preserve habeas corpus something much more significant is involved than pulling and hauling between the judicial and political branches.

“Instead, though, it is enough to repeat that some of these petitioners have spent six years behind bars. After six years of sustained executive detentions in Guantanamo, subject to habeas jurisdiction but without any actual habeas scrutiny, today’s decision is no judicial victory, but an act of perseverance in trying to make habeas review, and the obligation of the courts to provide it, mean something of value both to prisoners and to the Nation.”

For what it’s worth, Justices Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer, we’d like to say that, as we prepare to reflect upon the meaning of “flag day,” the Nation stands ready to persevere with you.

We stand with you in this matter partly because we think that Edmund Burke long ago made a good point when he argued that the history of Anglo-American Constitutional Law is founded upon a contract to which all subject peoples are rightful parties.

As Burke would put it, locking people up without them having a right to seek judicial review — this is no “mere mischief” — it is the kind of action that breaks the contract between the government and the people. That famous statesman who drew a line between good and bad causes for revolution would say that wherever the essential principles of the contract had been broken, the executive would have in fact “abdicated” his Presidency, and the office would be “thereby vacant.”

Come to think of it — a curious irony indeed — it would eventually take a Justice (Souter) appointed by Daddy Bush to support an opinion on habeas corpus that would protect the Office of the President from being vacated on account of the tyrannical whims of George, Jr.

Finally, on this strictly nonpartisan basis, we could say that John McCain’s anti-habeas reflex, exampled in his intemperate denunciation of the Court ruling (although he said he had not had time to read it yet), says at least 51 percent of what we shall need to know come November.–gm

Flag Day P.S.: The White House is reportedly seeking ways to limit the scope of the Court’s habeas ruling. Does the White House not notice that its antagonism to habeas corpus is sufficient evidence that its whole global agenda of aggression cannot be viewed as an intention to promote greater democracy?

I was arrested unexpected like. I was sitting in a folding chair outside the Reception Room of the General Consulate of India. I had brought the folding chair from the house I was staying in and I had my poster with Day 15 of a hunger strike posted and leaning against the wall. An armful of flyiers was in my lap and I had already passed out about forty. Very interesting reception that I was getting. Almost every Indian I talked with acted totally surprised that the situation in Bhopal still existed. Yes, it does, I said. 30 Bhopalis are dying a month from that release in l984. Over 25,000 dealths. Over 8 times the amount of Americans that were killed during 9-11. And the USA invaded two countries over that one!

That’s Diane Wilson blogging there. She wrote two blog posts about her civil mischief up at the Indian Consulate offices in Houston, and then they had her arrested. Now she’s back from the seventh circle of hell and blogging about that, too. Once again, the moral leader of the Laguna Madre (and co-mother of CODEPINK) is peeking into the dark spaces of jailhouse rot. Grrrl don’t miss a moment!

Unarrested Woman

NOTE: We posted a comment to Diane’s blog about how the report from the Harris County Jail was like Beatrice grabbing Dante by the ankle and taking him straight down to seventh hell (from the lofty consulate, no less).

Diane replied: “yep, it was indeed hell. Ive been in a few Jails but Harris County has its own peticular brutality. Not just the conditions of the jails, but the damaging way they treat prisoners — many many who have not seen a court or a lawyer yet. not charged with a crime. There’s an investigation going on but i wonder if they will be steadfast enough to see through the jail’s attempt at coverup.”

The death toll at the Harris County Jail, and the death toll from Dow / Carbide poison at Bhopal — global miseries linked across the bridge of Diane Wilson’s back. Who will be steadfast enough to lift us from these miseries? — gm

Keywords: Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terrors Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror . . .

I almost wrote something about sexists often having good intentions, but no. There is really no excuse for wondering whether Hillary Clinton lives in a sexist world. This is especially true in a Google world where all you have to do is search under “hillary sexism.” Melissa McEwan is righteous insightful. Back in February she already had logged 62 examples on her Hillary Sexism Watch. The New York Times this week qualified for example 107. And as McEwan says, this is just a sampling.

There is much more to say about the typical evasion strategies of the “oh-no-it-can’t-be-sexism” crowd. And some of them, being anti-racist, should have known better how to keep their concepts in focus.

If we all share a sexist world, what kind of armor do you think Clinton wears that would be able to shield her from the pervasive effects of patriarchy?

In these matters (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, etc.) the course of wisdom runs in the direction of self-reflection not self-deflection. We all of us have more to learn about how to get over these things together. And more of us should have taken the opportunity of the Clinton candidacy to educate ourselves about how sexism keeps working.–gm