Hastert: Not the Emperor He Thought He Was

We've commented a lot recently about Dennis Hastert's imperialistic attitude, which has (inter alia) had him crossing swords with GWB over the Porter Goss dumping, and delaying the Immigration Reform Act through "hearings."

Now it seems that Mr. Hastert faces another small problem with genuine conservatives and Democratic advocates of good government; the renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

From the Spectator blogsite:

What is at issue NOW, though, is the IMpermanent Section Five of the act, which never was supposed to last beyond about a decade and instead has been in place for some 40 years -- and now is threatened to be renewed for years more. The most important part of Section Five requires that southern states and a few other scattered counties receive "preclearance" from the Justice Department for ANY change in voting procedures, even ones as small as moving a polling location from, say, a high school gymnasium to the same school's cafeteria. The idea is that these southern states are guilty of racist intent until they prove themselves innocent...

...Meanwhile, some provisions in the pending legislation would mandate bilingual ballots in many places. Intelligent people have written volumes about why doing official government business in languages other than English is a big mistake, so I won't belabor the point -- other than to say that those provisions are particularly disturbing, and rightly so,

...Although the Post (predictably) said only that "some Republicans" in several southern states complain about the unfairness of singling out only certain states for the provisions at issue, the fact is that the respected opposition to most of Section Five is bipartisan and biracial. For instance, Thurbert Baker, the black, Democratic Attorney General of Georgia, is on record in court filings as being opposed to much of Section Five

Mr. Hastert, perhaps you need a hearing aid.