The New York Football Giants were never going to go to the Superdome and outscore Drew Brees indoors on astroturf. But they can outscore the 49ers outdoors on grass. As for the Packers, the Giants lost to them 38-35 at home during a time of the season when their defense was confused and playing lots of backups. Last week, the Giants' defense surrendered zero points. If the Giants' offense plays as well as they did in the first meeting with the Packers, the G-Men will win this game today and head to Candlestick Park for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. If the Giants get to the Super Bowl, they're almost certain to face either a rematch with the Ravens or a rematch with the Patriots. Either way, I'll be ecstatic. But it starts with the game today on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. Go Jints!!

I don't really understand the impulse so many people have to defend our Marines for urinating on dead bodies. But I also don't really share the common outrage about desecration of dead bodies. In my book, riddling a live human being with bullets is more profane than urinating on a lifeless body. It's obviously an ugly thing to disrespect the dead, but it just seems to me like a weird fetish to obsess about how a corpse is treated when you didn't give a crap about the living, breathing person.

It's a horrible idea for our troops to desecrate corpses, and a horrible idea to videotape it. But we ought to do whatever we can to get to a situation where our troops are not creating any corpses. I don't believe we need to be making corpses in Afghanistan. I think we need to leave.

We can protect our country against terrorism without occupying Afghanistan. Pissing on corpses isn't making us safer. Creating corpses isn't making us safer.

Two Think Progress headlines that are related: Oops, He Did It Again: Perry Forgets The Three Federal Agencies He Wants To Abolish and BREAKING: Social Conservatives Officially Unite on Rick Santorum as Romney Alternative.

In a blow to Rick Perry's barely detectable pulse, our country's most extreme Protestant wingnuts have decided that he's so stupid that they'd prefer to go all-in with a Catholic most famous for a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter.

Moments ago, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced on a conference call that social conservatives had officially settled on Rick Santorum as their preferred candidate for the Republican nomination. The decision was made today after three rounds of balloting at a meeting of more than 150 social conservative leaders and political activists held over the last two days in Brenham, Texas.

Double 'Oops.'

If an atheist Occupy Wall Street backer were the new Cinderella star of the National Football League, do you think Fox News would be giving us stories about the guy that said, in effect, "Yeah, I can see why people admire him, and everyone on our side who attacks him is probably just guilt-ridden"? So why do so many "liberal media" stories on Tim Tebow include passages like this?

Decent people who are proud of their faith, do good things and succeed in life tend to irritate some of us; they remind us of our private failures, so, naturally, we hope they stumble.

That's from Dan Barry in The New York Times today.

And you know what? It's not true. For one thing, many of us don't feel guilty that we've had premarital sex or use cuss words. Many of us don't feel guilty that we don't glorify God incessantly. (Many of us don't believe in God and are perfectly comfortable about it.)

What tends to irritate us is people who think they're better than we are, and who incessantly remind us that they feel this way. That's what's irritating about Tebow's public displays of (moral) perfection.

I would argue that even Jesus himself would agree that Tebow's showoffy sanctimony is wrong. I know Saturday Night Live has made that point in a sketch, but here's a quote that's actually from the Bible; I've used it many times on this blog in reference to public figures who desperately want you to pay attention to how holy they are, but I can't think of anyone in public life who's deserved it more than Tebow. Tim, here's Luke 18:10-14:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

He's talking to you, Tim.

There's one more passage from the Times story I'd like to point out:

What, exactly, is it about Tim Tebow that so fascinates and provokes us? ...

Part of the answer may lie in the way he seems oblivious to the throaty roars that envelop him on and off the field, as though Tebow is always tebowing, whether kneeling or standing up.

Oblivious? Oblivious? That's ridiculous. I don't even think Tebow would say he's "oblivious." I know enough evangelical boilerplate to say that he'd probably tell you that God wants all believers to proselytize, to proclaim God's word, and, well, God has blessed him with the tremendous opportunity to do so before tens of thousands of people in football stadiums and millions of people on television, so he's just doing what the Lord wants.

Yes, he is -- as ostentatiously and self-aggrandizingly as humanly possible. Which is what pisses so many of us off.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

ABC News reports that Super PACs are spending twice as much money as the candidates in South Carolina:

The super PACs, which are allowed to raise unlimited sums but cannot coordinate with candidates, have spent over $7 million so far in the Palmetto State compared to all of the presidential contenders, who have spent a combined total of $3.2 million. In other words, super PACs have spent $3.8 million more on television ads in the state than the candidates, according to a source tracking media buys in early primary states.

What this means is that the traditional winnowing of the field is not occurring. Normally, candidates who do poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire run out of money for advertising and drop out. But, so far, only Michele Bachmann has taken that step. On the one hand, this prevents two overwhelmingly white states from determining which two or three candidates the rest of the country is going to get to choose from. That's good, I guess. But, on the other hand, this dramatically reduces the reward candidates get from building a grassroots base of support. If a handful of rich, anonymous, businessmen and women can flood these Super PACs with hundreds of millions of dollars, then candidates can stay in the races as long as they can raise enough money to buy jet fuel and reserve hotel rooms.

The Supreme Court is looking more and more ridiculous every day.

Here's some wisdom from John Paul Stevens' dissent:

If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could “ ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some ( i.e. , humans) over others ( i.e. , nonhumans). Ante , at 33 (quoting Buckley , 424 U. S., at 49). 51 Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech. 52

In short, the Court dramatically overstates its critique of identity-based distinctions, without ever explaining why corporate identity demands the same treatment as individual identity. Only the most wooden approach to the First Amendment could justify the unprecedented line it seeks to draw.

Elena Kagan is doing great, but I still miss Justice Stevens. I miss him so much that I must quote him again:

Business corporations must engage the political process in instrumental terms if they are to maximize shareholder value. The unparalleled resources, professional lobbyists, and single-minded focus they bring to this effort, I believed, make quid pro quo corruption and its appearance inherently more likely when they (or their conduits or trade groups) spend unrestricted sums on elections.

It is with regret rather than satisfaction that I can now say that time has borne out my concerns. The legislative and judicial proceedings relating to BCRA generated a substantial body of evidence suggesting that, as corporations grew more and more adept at crafting “issue ads” to help or harm a particular candidate, these nominally independent expenditures began to corrupt the political process in a very direct sense. The sponsors of these ads were routinely granted special access after the campaign was over; “candidates and officials knew who their friends were,” McConnell , 540 U. S., at 129. Many corporate independent expenditures, it seemed, had become essentially interchangeable with direct contributions in their capacity to generate quid pro quo arrangements. In an age in which money and television ads are the coin of the campaign realm, it is hardly surprising that corporations deployed these ads to curry favor with, and to gain influence over, public officials.

The majority appears to think it decisive that the BCRA record does not contain “direct examples of votes being exchanged for … expenditures.” Ante , at 45 (internal quotation marks omitted). It would have been quite remarkable if Congress had created a record detailing such behavior by its own Members.

Well, duh!

The Republican Establishment isn't quite sure what to do about the popularity of Ron Paul.

"Paul’s kind of like a dangerous animal that needs to be treated with respect,” said a GOP consultant working for one of the 2012 candidates. “People underestimate him at their own peril.”

I'm not sure of the context of that quote, but I don't think the consultant was talking about Ron Paul winning the nomination. Republicans are much more concerned about Ron Paul making an independent run for the presidency. They're also worried about the prospect of Ron Paul commanding enough delegates to warrant a prominent speaking slot at the national convention. These twin considerations create a touchy situation where the Establishment would like to put a dent in Paul's momentum to limit his take of delegates, but they don't want to anger him enough that he either goes after Mitt Romney or splits the party to run on his own.

They keep telling themselves, and us, that Ron Paul won't run as an independent because he's concerned about his son's career in the Senate and as a future presidential candidate. It's beginning to sound like a threat, as if the Establishment is warning Rep. Paul that they'll make his son's life miserable if he hands the election to Obama. If that's the message they're trying to send, I don't think it is going to be very effective.

I don't think either Ron or Rand Paul have much loyalty to the GOP, and I don't think either of them think the Establishment will be any kinder to Rand in the future than they are to Ron now. If Rep. Paul makes an independent bid, his son will presumably endorse him and campaign for him, and that could provide the rationale for stripping Rand of his committee assignments and/or his seniority (although he has so little seniority that it would hardly matter). But Rand Paul probably doesn't care much about his committee assignments and they'd find themselves with one pissed off senator to contend with. We all know how much trouble one angry senator can produce.

So, the Establishment finds itself in a bit of a quandary. It doesn't want the GOP brand to be associated with Ron Paul's views on Israel or foreign policy in general or the War on Drugs or the surveillance state or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or how fast blacks can run or torture or a variety of other things. They especially don't want him expressing those views in a high visibility slot at the National Convention. But they also don't want him to go after their nominee, or to actually become an independent candidate.

I hope this problem doesn't go away. I hope it gets much, much worse.

What would, in your opinion, be the optimal outcome of the South Carolina primary?

From today's David Brooks column I learned the following:

* Great presidents "tend to be emotionally secure" -- except for, say, Lincoln, who was clinically depressed.

* A great president is likely to have been raised "in an aristocratic family" -- although Brooks-designated greats such as Eisenhower, Lincoln, and Reagan weren't born aristocrats.

* Great presidents tend to have "experienced crushing personal setbacks" -- except for, say, Reagan, whose worst setback was that a character he played in a movie had his legs amputated.

* Great presidents are usually "experienced political insiders" -- except for Ike, who'd never previously held elective office.

* "[G]reat presidents tend to have superb political judgment" -- which is another way of saying that people who are good at being politicians ... are good at being politicians. Thank you, Professor Tautology.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

I can't say with any certainty that the U.S. has had no involvement in or foreknowledge of the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. As I see it, the source of these attacks is probably Israel. It's much less likely to be the U.S. acting alone. And there is a small possibility that these attacks are self-inflicted by the regime to help them maintain the support of the people. Since I can't know for certain who is responsible, it's not easy to condemn anyone specifically. Instead, I have to talk in hypotheticals.

Obviously, if Iran is killing its own scientists and blaming the U.S. and Israel for it, that's just plain evil.

If the U.S. is targeting their scientists then we should expect blowback. If we go kill civilians in their country, who is to stop them from coming here and killing civilians in our country. If we have nothing to do with these attacks, then we ought to have a discussion with the responsible party about how they're putting us in danger.

If the assassinations are Israel acting alone without any assistance from the U.S., they should know that we don't approve. If Israel wants to fight Iran directly instead of going through their proxies, that's their business, but we shouldn't be dragged into it.

I don't think murdering scientists is a reasonable or moral or necessary way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

Do you think the Republican base is put-off by what Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital? Steve M. sure doesn't.

This is one dumb criminal.

A man accused of stealing a police cruiser while handcuffed in northwest Indiana, then using the police radio to ask where to find the car's cigarette lighter, has turned himself in after two days on the run, authorities said early Friday.

William Francis Blankenship, 22, was taken into custody late Thursday night at his family's home in Knox, a small town about 50 miles southeast of Chicago. Indiana State Police said cooperation from his family helped make the peaceful surrender possible.

The cop was too busy searching Mr. Blankenship's car for drugs to notice that he was making off with his cruiser. He, of course, has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

What's Stupid in your area?

I think a lot of the debate about Arthur Brisbane's inquiry is off-point. Brisbane, the "public editor" of the New York Times wants to know if the paper should challenge factually inaccurate information from its sources in the main body of its articles.

...some readers who [are] fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here?

Okay, I admit the questions invite mockery. But here's the problem. Let's say you're Henry Kissinger and a Times reporter calls you up to ask you about the latest brouhaha at the State Department. You give them your interpretation, which involves some self-serving spin. Then, the next day, you pick up the paper and discover that the reporter is calling you a liar. Are you going to be more truthful next time the reporter calls, or you going to tell your secretary not to accept calls from that particular reporter in the future?

Every reporter has to juggle their desire to learn and report the truth and their need to cultivate and maintain sources. If you're running the New York Times, a reporter who can't get powerful people to talk to them isn't worth a bucket of warm spit.

Going back to the Bush administration, if you could cultivate Scooter Libby as a source, you were going to get some good scoops. You could get inside the thinking in the White House that really mattered. The reporters chasing Ari Fleischer weren't going to learn shit.

Yet, Scooter Libby was a paid liar. If you trusted him, you'd certainly wind up misleading the public. If you called his claims "lies," he would no longer talk to you at all. Your editor would be disappointed, and you'd have less of a clue about White House machinations.

Even the greatest reporters can't avoid a tension between truth and access, because it's never one or the other, but degrees of both.

So, Brisbane is really asking if we want the New York Times to be the paper without any good sources. Or, perhaps to be a little fairer, he's asking how the hell his paper can call its sources on all their lies. Should we do it in a sidebar? In the main body of the article? Some other way?

I'd suggest one way to straddle this conundrum. Don't quote people who are obviously lying. The punishment for lying on the record should be that the quote doesn't get printed. Obviously, you can't do this with Mitt Romney saying the president is always apologizing for America. He's too high-profile and his comments are too public to be ignored. A comment like that should be dissected to show how little truth it contains. But reporters talking to sources ought to just ignore lies. They should challenge what they're hearing until their source says something honest, and then they should quote them on that.

In the end, the National Security Advisor or the Pentagon's head of Special Operations don't have to talk to reporters. If you're an editor and you've got a reporter who can get them to talk to him, you're not going to go racing out to call those sources bullshit-artists. And it's not clear where the real cost/benefit ratio lies because the public benefits from access to power even when that access comes with a huge heaping pile of bullshit.

When you look back at the careers of great access reporters like Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh, you can see the trade off quite clearly. They've both learned and reported things that we would never have otherwise known. And they've both repeated a hell of a lot of total misinformation.

That's the nature of the business.

On Monday, March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a Joint Session of Congress. It was a mere week after the deadly clashes in Selma, Alabama, where the police had attacked protestors as they assembled for a march to Montgomery to highlight voter rights discrimination. President Johnson had been concerned about racial violence in the South almost from the moment he had been sworn in as president on Air Force One in late November 1963. In early June 1964, as the Civil Rights Act moved toward enactment, LBJ had become so concerned that he asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to "to fill up Mississippi and infiltrate everything he could, that he haul them [the KKK] in by the dozens." (conversation with Associate Counsel to the President, Lee White, June 23rd, 1964). This was during the Freedom Summer, an effort organized by the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC to register as many blacks to vote in Mississippi as possible. When their efforts were met with unrelenting violence, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed in an attempt to have its delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention in lieu of the all-white undemocratically elected delegates of the official Democratic Party of Mississippi. President Johnson had felt compelled to intervene at the convention on the side of the segregationists. Now, in the fresh light of the Selma violence, he was introducing the Voting Rights Act. Johnson was finally taking a stand. He explained why it was necessary to have federal legislation to protect the voting rights of "negroes."

Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to insure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.

Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and, if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name, or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state law.

And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books, and I have helped to put three of them there, can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color.

We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath. Wednesday, I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote.

When Johnson said that "every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny" blacks the vote, he had many concrete examples in mind, which he listed. What he didn't have in mind is what are commonly called "Voter ID laws." These are more properly known as "polling place Photo ID restrictions," because the objection to the laws is not that they require some form of identification. The objection is that the laws require a specific, very narrowly-defined type of state-issued photo ID, which many do not have and thus they become disenfranchised. These polling place Photo ID restriction laws have proliferated like crazy since the 2010 midterm elections. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has many reports on the impact of changes in election law. According to one recent report (pdf), new polling place Photo ID restriction laws will disenfranchise 3.2 million qualified voters. Even more restrictive "proof of citizenship" laws (for which a driver's license is insufficient) will disenfranchise another quarter of a million citizens who can't provide the necessary proof (do you know where your Birth Certificate is?).

For example, survey results show that only 48% of voting-age women with ready access to their U.S. birth certificates have a birth certificate with current legal name – and only 66% of voting-age women with ready access to any proof of citizenship have a document with current legal name.

Other voting restrictions involve eliminating Election Day registration, curtailing or eliminating early voting, and striking felons off the rolls. It should be remembered that these Photo ID laws can be used to prevent you both from registering to vote and from voting at the polls even if you are registered. To get a sense of the power of this movement towards restricting the franchise, consider this. Since 2010:

At least thirty-four states introduced legislation that would require voters to show photo identification in order to vote. Photo ID bills were signed into law in seven states: Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. By contrast, before the 2011 legislative session, only two states had ever imposed strict photo ID requirements. The number of states with laws requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification has quadrupled in 2011. To put this into context, 11 percent of American citizens do not possess a government- issued photo ID; that is over 21 million citizens. On November 8, 2011, Mississippi also passed a constitutional amendment by ballot initiative, requiring government-issued photo ID to vote.

Proof of citizenship laws have been passed in Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee. Nine other states have bills in the hopper.

It should be noted that all these voting restrictions have been enacted in states with Republican legislatures and governors. It shouldn't surprise us, then, that a 2008 study (pdf) by Profs. Matt A. Barreto (University of Washington), Stephen A. Nuńo (Northern Arizona University), and Gabriel R. Sanchez (University of New Mexico), found that Indiana's restrictive voting laws hurt the Democrats and disproportionally impacted blacks. Nor should it surprise us that the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division recently said the same thing about South Carolina's voter restriction law.

In its first decision on the laws, Justice’s Civil Rights Division said South Carolina’s statute is discriminatory because its registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina is one of a number of states that are required to receive federal “pre-clearance” on voting changes to ensure that they don’t hurt minorities’ political power.

“The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a letter to South Carolina officials.

Blacks are the least likely to have a state-issued Photo ID, women are the least likely to have proof of citizenship in their current name, and students are least likely to have an ID with a current address. Many seniors who no longer drive, also lack state-issued Photo ID. All but the latter group consistently show a preference for the Democratic Party. So, is there really any question that these laws have been enacted for a partisan purpose? Attorney General Eric Holder certainly thinks so. In a December 13, 2011 speech at the LBJ Library, he made that clear:

"Only we, the people, can bring about meaningful change. So speak out.   Raise awareness about what’s at stake. Call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, encourage and work with the parties to achieve this success by appealing to more voters.   And urge policymakers at every level to reevaluate our election systems – and to reform them in ways that encourage, not limit, participation."

This was part of a broader point that Holder was making. While he was announcing that the Department of Justice was reviewing new restrictive voting laws, he was also telling us that he can't do everything alone.

…there will always be those who say that easing registration hurdles will only lead to voter fraud.   Let me be clear: voter fraud is not acceptable – and will not be tolerated by this Justice Department.   But as I learned early in my career – as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, where I actually investigated and prosecuted voting-fraud cases – making voter registration easier is simply not likely, by itself, to make our elections more susceptible to fraud.   Indeed, those on all sides of this debate have acknowledged that in-person voting fraud is uncommon.   We must be honest about this.   And we must recognize that our ability to ensure the strength and integrity of our election systems – and to advance the reforms necessary to achieve this – depends on whether the American people are informed, engaged, and willing to demand commonsense solutions that make voting more accessible.

Naturally, the Republicans deny that the purpose of these laws is to confer some electoral advantage on themselves, or to disenfranchise blacks, Latinos, women, students, or the elderly. They claim that the laws are meant to prevent voter fraud. And their messaging is very compelling and effective. If we need a Photo ID to open a bank account or get a mortgage, why shouldn't we need one to vote? It's a persuasive argument in the majority of American communities where we drive to work and do things like open bank accounts and take out mortgages. But, I can tell you from personal experience that there are other communities in this country where very few people have access to cars and they have no money to put into savings accounts or a down payment on a house.

In 2004, I worked for ACORN/Project Vote as the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania coordinator for voter registration and Get Out the Vote efforts. Our main office was located on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. I hired, trained, and deployed young adults, almost all of whom were poor and black, to canvass targeted neighborhoods. Almost none of them had a state-issued Photo ID. Very few of the people we registered to vote had a state-issued Photo ID. They didn't need one. ACORN registered over a million voters that year. Our reward was to become the number one target of Fox News, the Mighty Republican Wurlitzer, and the Bush Justice Department. A couple of years later, ACORN was destroyed by a misinformation campaign led by Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe. If you have looked at today's headlines, you'll see that they are at it again, this time trying to prove how easy it was to commit voter fraud in the New Hampshire primary. They scanned the New Hampshire obituaries during December and then showed up at the polls and attempted to impersonate the deceased. Unsurprisingly, one of them was caught, which is precisely why almost no one tries to vote for the dead. You might be inclined to shrug off such stunts, but these folks are waging a partisan war on our voting rights.

So, what can you do about it? Let me relate a little story to you. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia was at Selma that day back in 1965. A police officer fractured his skull. After LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, he invited John Lewis into the Oval Office. Here is what happened, as told by Lewis in his book Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, (p. 361):

Johnson dominated the conversation, his legs propped on a chair, his hands folded back behind his head. We talked for about twenty minutes, and near the end of the meeting the President leaned forward and said, "Now John, you've got to go back and get all those folks registered. You've got to go back and get those guys by the balls. Just like a bull gets on top of a cow. You've got to get 'em by the balls and you've got to squeeze, squeeze 'em till they hurt."

Mind you, LBJ was saying this to Lewis a mere five months (almost to the day) after Lewis had almost been killed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. You and I don't have to do anything nearly as courageous as what John Lewis was asked to do, and did. But we do have a responsibility to honor that legacy and fight back, because, today, we're the ones with our balls in a vice. We are no longer on offense.

The first thing we need to do is have a vehicle to organize around. Rep. Keith Ellison of Minneapolis provided that vehicle in December 2010 when he introduced a bill that would ban a state-issued voter ID requirement in federal elections. Later this month, he is going to reintroduce this bill. In coordination with Democracy for America, Ellison will be hosting a telephone town hall with activists to talk about the details of the bill and what you can do to stop the attack on voting rights. The details of how to sign up for the call will be announced on Martin Luther King Day, January 16th. I will keep you posted. This is an important first step in the campaign to end this trend of disenfranchisement.

Let's remember something else that LBJ said at the Joint Session of Congress on March 15, 1965, eight days after Selma's Bloody Sunday:

"For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crises. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression.

But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

We can't stand by while the latest device of which human ingenuity is capable (the fear of non-existent voter fraud) is used to deny our voting rights. As LBJ said, "There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to insure that right."

I am always leery when religion is inserted into politics, whether we are speaking of JFK and the controversy surrounding his Catholic faith, to Barack Obama and the anchor Rev. Wright conservative commentators hung around his neck, to Sarah Palin;s addition to the McCain ticket for the sole purpose of shoring up the evangelical wing of the Republican party in 2008.

I just don't believe religion should play a role in the most crucial political decisions we make as a nation. Nonetheless, it always has. No avowed atheist or agnostic has ever been nominated as a major party's nominee, nor has any Jew. Now we face the reality of Mitt Romney's Mormon religion being held against him, since he seems to be the most likely GOP candidate to win the nomination of his party.

Frankly I couldn't care less if he's a Mormon or a Wiccan or a Pastafarian. His fitness for the presidency should be based on other qualifications than to which God he claims to pray. However, many Mormons, clearly feel that he stands less of a chance of being elected because of his faith rather than his appetite for vulture capitalism. I can't say I blame them for feeling that way.

One-third of Mormons in the US believe that American voters are not ready to elect Mitt Romney, or any other member of their church, as president.

A survey of adherents to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) released on Thursday found that almost half of Mormons in the US considered themselves more discriminated against than African Americans.

While I don't think Mormons are as discriminated against as African Americans, they do have a point when it comes to how other other fervent Christians, particularly evangelical protestants view them. A lot of the anti-Romney movement in the GOP race has to do with conservative evangelical Christians lack of trust in him based on his religion. I don't think it will ultimately hurt him as much this year as it did in his 2008 campaign, but it is still a factor. Only 31% of self-described evangelicals voted for Romney in New Hampshire, which was an improvement over his showing in 2008, but the overall GOP field is much weaker this year, and there is no true evangelical candidate left in the race. Evangelicals are splitting their votes among a number of candidates including Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. One is a staunch (if extremely compassion deprived) conservative Catholic and the other is a three time divorcee and serial philanderer.

Will Romney's religion be a factor in the general election campaign against Obama? I have to think that yes, it very well may affect voter turnout among some of the more extreme conservative evangelical Christians, though how much of a factor it will prove to be is hard to pinpoint at this time. However, in my opinion his faith or lack thereof should be irrelevant. His record as a Governor of Massachusetts and as a venture capitalist and job destroyer at Bain Capital, and his proposed policies should be much more pertinent to voters. It's unfortunate we have to even discuss his religion, but then again, considering the vicious and often slanderous attacks Republicans made against Democratic candidates based on religion such as Obama being a "secret Muslim," it's hardly surprising to see that Romney's religious background is one reason for the Romney "enthusiasm gap" among the Republican base (at least at the moment). He's not really one of them, and a lot of "them" don't like that fact. How his Mormon faith affects the general election will be interesting to see.