More Ground-Standing In Zimmerman's Future?

"George Zimmerman is in hiding right now and his supporters are saying this is very unfair. They're saying that, despite the verdict of being acquitted, he doesn't think that he can just walk down the street now because there are people who'll look at him and see an obviously guilty man and might try to take matters into their own hands."

Bill Maher.

Racists Spring Into Action After Supreme Court Ruling (With Update)

Republicans engaged in a flurry of Titanic deck chair re-arranging following the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.  Here is one example:

Texas is wasting no time capitalizing on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

Shortly after the high court issued a sweeping 5-4 decision Tuesday striking down a centerpiece of the historic 1965 law, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott vowed to immediately implement a controversial voter ID law in the Lone Star State that was blocked last year by the now-gutted preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Texas Republicans are not alone in their quest to keep minorities from voting. GOP leaders in North Carolina are getting into the act as well:

The GOP chairman of the state Senate rules committee, Sen. Tom Apodaca, said he would move quickly to pass a voter ID law that Republicans say would bolster the integrity of the balloting process. GOP leaders also began engineering an end to the state's early voting, Sunday voting and same-day registration provisions, all popular with black voters. Civil rights groups say the moves are designed to restrict poll access by blacks, who vote reliably Democratic.

Republicans need to start facing facts: the barbarians are at the gate and there isn't a goddam thing they can do about it. These pointless exercises sort of remind me of this scene from the film Downfall.

The part of this I find absolutely hilarious is that all these efforts to keep minorities away from the polls only encourage more minorities to vote.

UPDATE:  Music to my ears (from Steve Benen):

[W]hat's driving [GOP opposition to immigration reform] is the growing sentiment in conservative circles that if the Republican Party can only improve its performance among white people -- getting 70% of the vote instead of 60% -- then its demographic death spiral isn't too big a deal after all. It's a thesis Real Clear Politics' Sean Trende has touted for months, which has grown considerably in recent months as Republican opposition to immigration reform has grown.

OK, I get it. The GOP plan is for Republicans to act out in even more racist ways than they are already doing, thus causing more white people to vote for GOP candidates. Of course, such a tactic will piss off minorities and cause even more of them to vote. So it really does come down to whether Republican voter suppression efforts are going to ultimately succeed.

The hammering you hear in the distance is from the construction of the Grand Old Party's coffin. These assholes would rather die than change.

I can live with that.