You have to hand it to the administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett. It essentially has told a U.S. Justice Department that has gone on a fishing expedition to fish or cut bait.
Attorney General Eric Holder's race-baiting Department of Justice has been rattling the chains of the Ghost of Jim Crow Past ever since the Keystone State passed its voter identification measure. The intimation is - and one reinforced with the cudgel of a possible federal civil rights lawsuit held high - that the new law is designed to suppress minority voting.
Last week, Commonwealth Court upheld the new law that requires photo IDs. And last week, too, Corbett administration General Counsel James D. Schultz fired off a letter to Justice telling it in no uncertain terms that its behavior is out of legal bounds if not politically motivated.
Indeed, the Justice Department has misapplied Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and has no authority to demand the extensive voting data it seeks. And indeed, too, Holder's efforts smack of more racial grandstanding, something he's been elevating to an art form by impugning the integrity of long overdue and commonsense efforts to protect the integrity of the franchise.
The AG's words and deeds give every impression that, on behalf of the Obama re-election campaign, he wants to preserve a loosey-goosey system that invites fraud and turns a blind eye to it.
As Mr. Schultz might have preferred to have written: "Bring it on."
- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
