Not much of diary, but this has to be said.
If you need more time to think of a valid reason to do something, why are you still trying to do it? Especially after being told that the reason you gave when you tried to do it was not good enough. Shouldn’t you just stop trying if you no longer have a reason to do it?
The Supreme Court last week held that “enforcing the Voting Rights Act” as a rationale for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census was “pretextual.” Some say this means it was a lie. Who knows. But controversy on the question centered around the fact that putting the question on the census would have the effect of suppressing participation and ultimately lead to data that would enhance the ability to suppress voting by certain minority US citizens. This discriminatory reason was rejected by the court and the lower court injunction against including the question on the census was upheld. And a dead man’s notes revealed the probability that the real reason for inclusion was discriminatory, but that’s a whole other story.
After the ruling the Departments of Justice and Commerce seeming to take the SCOTUS seriously by announcing that the census forms would be printed without the census question. Then, out of the blue, the leader of the power hungry deplorables angrily tweeted that this was FAKE NEWS. Urgent court conferences ensued revealing that DOJ lawyers did not have a clue what was going on. Everything is in flux now with the DOJ lawyers saying that the administration will proceed with putting the question on the census as soon as it can come up with an acceptable reason to do so. And Individual 1 hinting that he may have the constitutional power to have the question included under an executive order. NOT.
Here’s the thing. If one does not have a good reason to do something to begin with, why are we letting that person have a do over? Specially when the person has admitted that getting data for redistricting is the main goal for the question.
This is a big deal. Something needs to be done to make this arrogance go away. Any suggestions?
