History Lesson

NPR’s Tavis Smiley was on with Peter Jennings this morning and suggested that with a Bush election, Republicans would hold up renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color, only extends to 2007. Just so we're clear, from Wikipedia.com:

The VRA was enacted in 1965 because of the practices of the Democratic Party in the southern states. Although the right to vote is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, the Democratic Party argued that Primary elections were an internal party affair, and that the party was a "private club", so that the government had no authority over its criteria for membership and other factors relevant to participating in primary elections.

Next week we will learn which party Abraham Lincoln belonged to.