Tom Sullivan's blog

Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, appeared Saturday on "Up with Chris Hayes" to talk about efforts to defeat Amendment One and the next phase of the We Do campaign. Video here.

Speaking of tight, follow Vote FOR Marriage NC's tightly reasoned pitch in favor of Amendment One:

To recap:

• God defined marriage.
• Only voters can define marriage.
• Nobody should define marriage.
• Thirty states have defined marriage.

Now, after some Dramamine, two Advil and a shot of Old Bushmills, you are ready to define marriage.

Meanwhile, Public Policy Polling suggests the May 8 Amendment One vote could be a toss-up:

Just up on dKos this a.m.:

Monday, a North Carolina philanthropist announced his support for No On Amendment One by pledging to match donations dollar for dollar up to $100,000. Todd Stiefel is the founder of The Free Thought Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit private foundation that provides financial support and volunteer strategy consulting. Todd describes himself as "a secular humanist, an atheist and full-time freethought activist." He is also a cum laude graduate of Duke University.

This radio interview with North Carolina state Rep. Rick Glazier last week has stayed with me. Glazier and state Rep. Ray Rapp were reacting to the Republican handling of education after gaining control of the North Carolina legislature in January 2011. Glazier explained it with this story:

Sort of mind-boggling. Maybe an opening script at the beginning of this session was a precursor to what happened.

There was a Republican legislator who has been there several terms … she had a question early on, because Representative Rapp and I did chair for four years that appropriations committee, and she said, “How much do we spend on financial aid for needs-based kids going to college in North Carolina?”

I think my answer at the time we were looking at it was somewhere around $175-$200 million dollars was need-based. And she said, “Well, I don’t understand why we spend any.”

And I stopped for a minute, and I said, “What do you mean?”

During the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race, the Democratic National Committee and the New Jersey Democratic State Committee filed suit against the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee for alleged intimidation of minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The RNC allegedly created voter caging lists in minority precincts and, allegedly, hired off-duty law enforcement officers to stand outside minority precincts wearing “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands, some bearing firearms. The settlement the RNC signed with the DNC -- applicable nationwide -- limited the RNC, its agents' and employees' ability to engage in voter fraud prevention efforts without prior court approval. There were successful enforcement actions against the RNC in 1987 in Louisiana and in 1990 in North Carolina. Wikipedia has a list of references to alleged RNC voter suppression actions that never made it to court.

In 2008, the RNC sued to have the 1982 Consent Decree voided, only to lose in New Jersey district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Of course, Hans Von Spakovsky was on their legal team. Gotta say, I never expected a court opinion to be this humorous.

Once more to court, once more to lose; Election Law Blog:

...recently the RNC argued that the [1982] consent decree should be modified or dissolved. The district court agreed to put an 8 year time limit on the rest of the decree (subject to the DNC arguing for additional extensions after 2017), but otherwise kept the key provisions in place. In today’s decision, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit unanimously affirmed the District Court’s decision not to weaken or dissolve the decree. The only point upon which the appellate court seemed to disagree with the district court was over whether it was appropriate to dissolve this in 8 years–the appellate court suggested that it might be improper to do so, because the mere passage of time is not enough to prove the decree should be dissolved.

What do former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and North Carolina state Rep. Tim Moffitt have in common? They both take a rather dim view of public education.

A Buncombe County Republican and a member of the state's House Select Committee on Early Childhood Education Improvement, Moffitt received a flood of election-year criticism for recent comments about public education. Moffitt is one of over three dozen North Carolina politicians affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded organization that promoting its ghost-written model legislation in states across the country and whose goals in education are, according to critics, "ideological — creating a system where schools do not provide for everyone — and profit-driven." The Charlotte Observer quoted Moffitt saying in the education committee on which he sits, "I am very suspect of early childhood education. I am very suspect of education in general."

Maybe we need more women AGs.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a waiter. For seven years. Before PCs. Back in the age of LPs and carbon paper. I remember one customer who, after he'd signed his credit card receipt and I handed him his copy, asked me to give him the carbons (back then we used carbon paper).

I must have had a puzzled look on my face because he asked if I knew why he wanted them. I didn't. He explained that it was because criminals sometimes go dumpster diving for carbons to steal credit card numbers. Huh? It would never have occurred to me, I said. That's because you don't have a criminal mind, he replied. Maybe for the first time it dawned on me that it takes a certain bent of mind to turn one's creativity to criminal mischief.

All that is preface to Ari Berman's new Nation  essay, "How the GOP Is Resegregating the South." In their vanity, some liberals like to think of themselves as more intelligent and creative than their conservative counterparts, but Berman shows just how creatively Republicans of a certain bent have twisted the Voting Rights Act to renovate their Southern Strategy and dilute minority influence -- by packing as many minority voters into as few congressional districts as possible.

In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats.