The forthcoming Meryl Streep movie The Iron Lady about former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was quickly slammed by Thatcherites as a "Granny going mad" flick, but it might cause a backlash against Hollywood leftists. On Wednesday's Washington Journal on C-SPAN, historian Amanda Foreman, author of a recent Newsweek cover story on Thatcher, said Americans might not be comfortable with the film, which might play like a film of Ronald Reagan's descent into Alzheimer's disease.

Near the end of the interview, she admitted the film has "prompted a massive rethink" on the Thatcher legacy, that she wasn't this "out-of-control Sherman tank," but a "great feminist pioneer" and "she ended the Cold War," which Foreman confessed she had forgotten:

PETER SLEN, host: Have you seen the upcoming movie? If so, what are your comments?

AMANDA FOREMAN: Well, I have seen the upcoming movie, and I’ve never seen such an extraordinary performance as Meryl Streep gives of Lady Thatcher. It’s absolutely preternatural how she got her voice and bearing, and it’s great fun to watch because of that. Whether or not people in this country will feel all that comfortable watching the decline of Thatcher – the film does make quite a lot of the,  Thatcher in her current state, suffering from mental decline. And if you want to turn that around and have a film about Reagan shuffling around in his pajamas, looking unshaven in his ranch house, I’m not sure that would go down all that well.

SLEN: What’s the current opinion of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain? What’s the current mood about her?

FOREMAN: The current opinion. Well, I think that the film actually has prompted a massive rethink of Lady Thatcher. That most people, I think, shared my opinion, that it was someone who had been in power 20 years ago that she was a big towering figure, but was like an out-of-control Sherman tank, and was bossy, and loud, and seemed to create more discontent than anything else. And this film has reminded us that she was also a great feminist pioneer who changed the face of the world in terms of what it was possible for women to achieve, and that she ended the Cold War. And those are two things, that I know I somehow managed to forget.

In August, London’s Daily Mail reported on a screening of the forthcoming Meryl Streep film The Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher: “At the end of the film, Lady Thatcher walks around her home in a feverish state, driven mad by nightmares about her record in office.”

“Friends of Margaret Thatcher last night expressed their revulsion,” reported the Mail, saying the film “shows her having nightmares about the miners' strike and the Falklands War, while her late husband Denis appears as a ghost in a pink turban raging at her ‘insufferable’ selfishness.”

After the news portion of a "Warmer Weather Hurting Retail" segment on the impact of the mild winter on retail sales thus far appearing early this morning on CNBC, Joe Kernen and John Harwood got into it over the relevance and influence of so-called "global warming" (I guess Harwood didn't get the memo that it's "climate change" now).

Picking up at the 2:10 mark of the video:

---

Courtney Reagan: Now while the temperatures have begun to drop in many areas of the country, it could be too late for seasonal apparel sales. It's going to be hard to sell gloves in February when we're already past most of winter.

John Harwood: This global warming is a killer.

Courtney Reagan: I knew you were going to say that and I wasn't going to go there!

Joe Kernen: You say that (women panel members, especially Michelle Caruso Cabrera, give it the "oh no, here we go" treatment), but no no no, wait a minute, John. (We have) the same, the same carbon concentration last year as this year. Last year we were just talking about the record frigid temperatures. How do you have the variability from last year and this year based on the same carbon? Why wasn't it warm last year like this year because we had the same carbon concentration?

John Harwood (in a kidding tone): You don't have any empathy for retailers, do you?

(after crosstalk)

Kernen: But the great thing for the climate change people is that they attributed the snow last year also to global warming. So you have a frigid, freezing winter with lots of snow — global warming. You have a warm … (inaudible) … Doesn't that tell you something?

The conversation then went to the continued popularity of Uggs.

In a subsequent segment on the Italian debt situation, a guest humorously referred back to the global warming discussion, saying that "things are going to melt down there a lot sooner than they do everywhere else."

Nice job by Kernen in asking the logical questions which really can't be answered by the warmist crowd.

Separately in a later interview, Harwood gave away his leftist lean when he took the position that a Mitt Romney win in Iowa's caucuses might turn the Republican race for the presidential nomination into a short-term rout for the former Massachusetts governor, who has been the fave of the establishment press all year. On what planet, John? Not the one which has South Carolina in it.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

With not one Republican primary vote cast yet, we're getting way ahead of ourselves by speculating about whom Mitt Romney might pick as his vice-presidential running mate.  But Willie Geist did invite Politico's Mike Allen to make his "bold predictions" for 2012.  And Allen delivered, prognosticating that Romney would pick Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman as his ticket-mate.

Mark Halperin strongly seconded Allen's assertion.  View the video after the jump.

I'll be back with the transcript, but in the meantime watch Allen make the case that the Romney campaign figures it should carry Florida without Marco Rubio on the ticket, whereas Portman could be more of the key to victory by helping to carry his home state of Ohio.
 

In the ongoing left-wing parade of charges that conservatism equals racism, add Daily Kos blogger Chauncey de Vega, who on Wednesday night hailed a Salon.com article on the avoidance of slavery talk as another opportunity to weave together “the tapestry that is historical memory, the slave-holding South, and contemporary conservatism.”

“Adults who dress up in Colonial era period clothing, believe that the Constitution is divinely inspired, and take the metaphor of ‘a shining city on the hill’ as a get out of jail pass for America's shortcomings both at home and abroad, have little use for such facts," de Vega lectured. “Selection bias, Fox News, and an embrace of a fantastical view of political and social reality, protects the Tea Party GOP faithful from any experience of cognitive dissonance.”

Chauncey hailed Salon writer Larry Birkenhead:

As Birkenhead beautifully details, the rise of the New Right and the Tea Party, the Republican Party's fetish for the Confederacy, its Lost Cause ideology, and embrace of States' Rights and nullification have brought questions of historical memory to the forefront of the public discourse during the 2012 presidential primary season.

Moreover, the literal white washing of the history of a traitorous Confederacy, what was a military state dedicated to racial tyranny, and a willful lie about the benevolence of whiteness, loom large in the Conservative political imagination. Those dreams are amplified and made more imminent when a black man is President of the United States, because for the populist conservative, neo-Confederate crowd, nothing could be more of an abomination.

For Tea Party GOP conservatives, the rhetoric of American Exceptionalism is inexorably tied to a Gone With the Wind, Redemption, race and reunion narrative. This tale has no use for such "inconveniences" as chattel slavery, white supremacy, the genocide of indigenous people, and racial pogroms.

He also dragged out the call for white collective guilt and racial reparations:

Who is this "we" that do not feel the connections to slavery in our bones? Why must United States history, and the idea of shared (and manufactured) community, almost by definition exclude black Americans? I know that I feel slavery in my bones and spirit. Our struggle and triumph in the face of almost unimaginable White barbarism is a legacy to be honored. And when I think of the fact that my grandmother's grandmother was likely born a slave, the connection to "the peculiar institution" is pretty deep in my blood and soul.

In all, America wants to forget on its own terms, because to fully acknowledge the centuries of chattel slavery in this country, and almost a century of Jim and Jane Crow, may actually require an acknowledgement of debts due. As I have long suggested, it is not the financial or monetary compensation for harm done to black Americans both in the past, and to the present by Whites and the Racial State, that is necessarily the deal breaker. No, it is the acknowledgement of wrong doing, and the simple words "I am sorry, we were wrong," that are at the root of why reparations are a non-starter in the United States.

An apology doesn't "cost" a thing, but for Whiteness (and many White people), it seems to be prohibitively expensive.

Because we all know that the sins of the father (or mother) are never passed down to the son or the daughter. Ironically, the privileges of whiteness, materially, economically, psychically, and politically, can be accrued with interest (and with no accountability at all) for centuries without end.

That is one hell of a bargain.

Before he tweeted “Merry Mythmas everybody,” HBO host Bill Maher rubbed Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow’s face in the dirt on Twitter, but somehow Tebow’s the “notorious” one. Maher posted, “Wow, Jesus just [screwed] #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’” But on CBSNews.com, reporter Ken Lombardi described Maher as simply a “comedian," but Tebow as a “notorious evangelical Christian.”

The word “notorious” has synonyms like “infamous,” “shameless,” and “disreputable.” But CBS didn’t care, insisting  “And Maher’s in hot water again for a now-controversial tweet on Christmas Eve referencing famed quarterback and notorious evangelical Christian Tim Tebow.”

Eric Bolling of Fox News replied in kind on Twitter: “Bill Maher is disgusting vile trash. I can’t even repeat what he just tweeted about Tebow..on Christmas Eve. #straighttohellBill”

Rick Chandler of NBC Sports blogged that this won’t cause Maher to get cancelled: “Is that likely to happen this time? Maher more likely will get a raise. This whole controversy is manna from heaven for Maher, who has built his HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher, on just such controversies….Maher is likely reveling in the attention, and if anything, the controversy will likely get him more viewers.”
 
The Los Angeles Times noted “the ‘Real Time’ host wasn't just taking on an exceedingly popular quarterback; he was also mocking the best-selling religious author  of 2011. According to Yahoo! Sports, Tebow's 2011 memoir "Through My Eyes" has 475,000 copies in print, with many more expected to be sold after the season.”
 

Wednesday's CBS Evening News featured a report by correspondent Mark Strassmann playing up the reservations that some are having about the new law to strictly enforce immigration laws in Alabama.

After noting that a poll supposedly shows that Latino voters are dissatisfied because the Obama administration has deported record numbers of illegal immigrants, substitute anchor Jeff Glor introduced Strassmann's piece by playing up the "second thoughts" that some supporters of the law are having: "Mark Strassmann went to Alabama, where some are having second thoughts now about a tough new law."

(Video below)

Strassmann began his report by focusing on a construction business owner who supports the new law as he argued that his competitors have not been able to undercut him by hiring illegal immigrants. Strassmann then switched to Mayor Sheldon Day of Thomasville, Alabama, who argued that foreign investors are concerned about the law and are thinking of backing out on deals to bring jobs to the city:

MARK STRASSMANN: But in Thomasville, Alabama, Mayor Sheldon Day worries the state's law has turned off his city's foreign investors.

SHELDON DAY, MAYOR OF THOMASVILLE, ALABAMA: As one of my international visitors said, you know, we feel like Alabama kind of shot itself in the foot when we did this because we didn't think it out. We didn't think it through.

The CBS correspondent continued:

In Thomasville, two foreign companies, one Canadian, one Chinese, have invested $230 million and created almost 800  manufacturing jobs in a city of 5,000 people. Because of the law, the Chinese factory reportedly is reconsidering whether to build a $100 million factory in Thomasville.

After including clips of Republican State House Speaker Mike Hubbard asserting that, while there will likely be modifications to the new law, the law will not be repealed outright, Strassmann concluded by cautioning that the law may hurt the state's economic growth:

Alabama is not backing down, but more investors may be backing out. Mayor Day tells us a steel company planning to invest in Thomasville will hold off until its foreign workers feel more welcome. Mark Strassmann, CBS News, Thomasville, Alabama.

Just over a month ago, on Wednesday, November 23, the CBS Evening News had previously highlighted aspects of the Alabama law even supporters consider to be flaws in a report by correspondent Chip Reid.

Below are video and a complete transcript of Strassmann's report from the Wednesday, December 28, CBS Evening News:

JEFF GLOR: The Obama administration has deported more illegal immigrants than any prior administration, and Latino voters have taken notice. In a Pew survey out today, 59 percent say they disapprove of how the President has handled the deportations. States are also cracking down. Mark Strassmann went to Alabama, where some are having second thoughts now about a tough new law.

MARK STRASSMANN: Construction company owner Tommy Seals supports Alabama's controversial new immigration law. It requires non-citizens to carry documentation and fines employers who hire illegal immigrants.

TOMMY SEALS, CONSTRUCTION COMPANY OWNER: We have people that go out there and hire people at a cut-rate price. I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong for the folks that it harms, yet it happens, and it's been happening quite a bit, at least until this law came into effect.

STRASSMANN: Seals thinks the law has helped his business. He has hired two more people because, he says, competitors can no longer undercut him. But in Thomasville, Alabama, Mayor Sheldon Day worries the state's law has turned off his city's foreign investors.

SHELDON DAY, MAYOR OF THOMASVILLE, ALABAMA: As one of my international visitors said, you know, we feel like Alabama kind of shot itself in the foot when we did this because we didn't think it out. We didn't think it through.

STRASSMANN: In Thomasville, two foreign companies, one Canadian, one Chinese, have invested $230 million and created almost 800  manufacturing jobs in a city of 5,000 people. Because of the law, the Chinese factory reportedly is reconsidering whether to build a $100 million factory in Thomasville.

MIKE HUBBARD, ALABAMA STATE HOUSE SPEAKER: I stand behind the law and what we intended to do.

STRASSMANN: Mike Hubbard is the Speaker of the House in Alabama.

HUBBARD: We're just simply trying to enforce the law because the federal government has done a horrible job of enforcing its own law.

STRASSMANN: Since the law went into effect, a German Mercedes executive, here legally, spent a night in jail after a traffic violation for not having proper identification. So next February, Alabama's lawmakers will consider changes to the law, including one provision making it a crime for immigrants not to carry their citizenship documents. So many people are saying just get rid of this law.

HUBBARD: It's got some parts of it that we need to change to make it work better and to, and to make it more enforceable, and we intend to do that.

STRASSMANN: So for anyone who expects Alabama to back down and just repeal this law outright, you'd say forget it, not going to happen.

HUBBARD: That is not going to happen.

STRASSMANN: Alabama is not backing down, but more investors may be backing out. Mayor Day tells us a steel company planning to invest in Thomasville will hold off until its foreign workers feel more welcome. Mark Strassmann, CBS News, Thomasville, Alabama.
 

New York Times political reporter Ashley Parker made Wednesday’s front page with yet another  “Isn’t Romney stiff?”-themed story, “The Retooled, Loose Romney, Guessing Voters’ Age and Ethnicity,” cowritten with Michael Barbaro.

The Times has put Romney's mannerisms under the microscope on several occasions. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in 2004, was another rich Northern politician with a reputation for woodenness and lack of the common touch, but it certainly wasn’t a dominant theme of Times campaign coverage.

When Mitt Romney introduces himself to voters, he has a peculiar habit of guessing their age or nationality, often incorrectly. (A regular query: “Are you French Canadian?”)

When making small talk with locals, he peppers the conversation with curious details. (“We stayed in the Courtyard hotel last night,” he told a woman at a diner. “It’s a LEED-certified hotel.”)
….

But perhaps the trickiest part of this reinvention is changing who Mr. Romney is when he steps out from behind the lectern and wades into a roomful of voters: a cautious chief executive who is uneasy with off-the-cuff remarks, unnatural at chitchat and spare with his emotions.

At coffee shops and veterans’ halls, on sidewalks and factory tours, the reworked version, it turns out, is not all that different from the original.

A close-up study of Mr. Romney’s casual interactions with voters captures a candidate who can be efficient, funny and self-deprecating, yet often strains to connect in a personal way.

….

Mr. Romney has plenty of moments when he wins positive reactions and some when he seems to make a genuine link, undercutting his caricature as robotic. And he is hardly giving up on mastering the art of the soft sell: he personally insisted on spending more hours talking to voters this election and fewer sequestered in his Boston headquarters. The calculation may prove crucial in a year when a procession of rivals — Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich — has roused the Republican base with colorful personalities and dynamic speaking styles.

Who has been spreading the “caricature” that Romney was robotic? Well, Parker, actually, in the first sentence of her December 12 story: “Mitt Romney — he of the inscrutable, overly polished and occasionally robotic mien — is striving mightily to humanize himself just three weeks before the first round of voting begins.”

In Wednesday's story Parker provided “a guide to Mr. Romney’s habits and quirks on the campaign trail.”
 

For a candidate who is exceedingly risk-averse, Mr. Romney has developed an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’ personal relationships to their ancestral homelands.

“Sisters?” he asked. (Nope, stepmother and stepdaughter.) “Your husband?” he wondered. (No, just a friend from the neighborhood.) “Mother and daughter?” he guessed. (Cousins, actually.)

The results can be awkward. “Daughter?” he asked a woman sitting with a man and two younger girls at the diner in Tilton, N.H., on Friday morning. Her face turned a shade of red. “Wife.”

Oh, Mr. Romney said. “It was a compliment, I guess,” said the woman, Janelle Batchelder, 31. “At the same time, it was possibly an insult.”

And does any other candidate, or other news subject, get his or her laughter spelled out? Parker and Barbaro did it twice, as in this paragraph:

Sometimes Mr. Romney will engage in a back-and-forth with tough questioners; in Concord, N.H., a woman told him that she favored socialized medicine. “I’ve got someone for you,” Mr. Romney said. “His name is Barack Obama. He agrees with you. Ha-ha.”

Taking a tip from Mitt Romney mocking Newt Gingrich, CNN's Hala Gorani asked panel members on Wednesday what sitcom would best describe the Republican presidential race. Gorani's question was "If you could compare the Republican race as a whole with a sitcom, what would it be?" [Video below the break.]

It was her spin on Mitt Romney mocking Newt Gingrich's failure to make the Virginia primary ballot. Romney had compared that mishap to a comic failure from an old episode of "I Love Lucy" – "Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory," as Romney put it.

Earlier, Gorani had also quoted the Boston Herald's dismissal of the GOP field as a "clown car field." She asked the panel which candidate would be the next to drop out of the race.

A transcript of the segment, which aired on December 28 at 10:32 a.m. EST, is as follows:

HALA GORANI: Mitt Romney picks up an endorsement from the Boston Herald, everyone. The paper says he's the standout in a Republican clown car field. Six days to Iowa. Make your best bet who is the next candidate to drop out of this crowded race?

CHRIS METZLER, professor, Georgetown University: First of all, I think it's interesting that Romney gets an endorsement from Boston, from the Boston Herald, when he's running in Iowa. Very interesting.

(…)

GORANI: Mitt Romney cracks a joke at Gingrich's expense. Here he is talking about Newt's failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot.

(Video Clip)

MITT ROMNEY, Republican presidential candidate: I think he compared that to – what was it, to Pearl Harbor? I mean it's more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory.

(Laughter)

ROMNEY: So I mean, you've got to get it organized.

(End Video Clip)

GORANI: If you could compare the Republican race as a whole with a sitcom, what would it be?

At the end of the 11 am hour on Wednesday, MSNBC fill-in anchor Milissa Rehberger interviewed Newsweek/Daily Beast contributor Melissa Lafsky Wall to discuss Newsweek's list of political "rising stars." The funniest pick was one-percent-in-the-polls GOP candidate Jon Huntsman, who Wall said "seems patient… seems willing to build gradually and bring his name to a national level." Many viewers probably heard echoes of Dana Carvey's President Bush saying Dan Quayle is "still gaining acceptance."

In noting New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Wall couldn't avoid slamming other female conservative GOP stars: "The era of the Palins and Bachmanns needs to come to an end." Is that Republican opinion, or Newsweek's? Guess. [Video below the break.]

Rehberger asked Wall how Huntsman be a "rising star" when he's already apparently risen? Wall replied with a really unconvincing thesis on how he's never really risen, but might eventually:

He's always been a little bit of the dark horse….He's never emerged as a mainstream sort of GOP candidate along the lines of a Newt Gingrich or a Mitt Romney. That being said, he is someone that both liberals and conservatives respect and seem to like, and he seems patient. He seems willing to build gradually and bring his name to a national level. So I think he is a rising star in the sense that he does not necessarily seem to demand the same level of attention as a Romney, but he very well could.

The magazine's slideshow also has a laughable summary about you shouldn't let Huntsman's bad polling tell you he isn't a dynamic rising star:

Don't be fooled by his low poll numbers in the 2012 GOP race. The former Utah governor and ambassador to China might be losing the short game, but Huntsman is playing the long game. He'll come out of the race with much higher name recognition, right-wingers are coming around to his conservative bona fides, and liberals see in him a man they may disagree with but whom they can respect.

Wall called Susana Martinez "a real force on the political spectrum," whatever that means, before slamming Palin and Bachmann:

She is a member of the GOP. The GOP is really looking for a powerful female leader to emerge. The era of the Palins and Bachmanns needs to come to an end. So looking down the line, she could be a very attractive candidate in 2016, and there’s even talk of putting her on the short list of running mates for 2012.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was also on Newsweek's list, but did not come up on MSNBC.

Rehberger really showed why she's merely a holiday-week fill-in by noting that Newsweek also found four rising stars in the halls of Congress, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Tim Scott, and Jim Jordan. She then asked bizarrely, "We've heard a lot about Paul Ryan, but who else on the list is, do you think, going to make it to Capitol Hill at some point?"

Um, they've all made it to Capitol Hill.

The Newsweek reporter failed to correct this whopper, babbling "Jim Jordan could be a very interesting candidate. Um, he has had a lot of, he's joined the debate much more in the past year or two. Um, again, a lot will depend on how things play out in the 2012 election, and who really emerges as a leader in the debates. So I think a lot will come forth in the next few months."

Could she be any vaguer? A skeptic watching MSNBC might think that neither of these women know a cotton-picking thing about these Republican congressmen. Wall didn't seem to even read the little captions Newsweek wrote to explain who Jim Jordan is — the head of the stalwart conservative House Republican Study Committee.

For fervent MRC followers, the name Melissa Lafsky might ring a bell. She won our "Quote of the Year" in 2009 for bizarrely wondering on The Huffington Post if Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne would have felt her death was "worth it" to become a "catalyst" for Ted Kennedy's glorious Senate career:

“Mary Jo wasn’t a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan….We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history….[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”

[Hat tip: Dan Isett]

Is there, or should there ever be, a point when a state is no longer penalized for its discriminatory past?

Not according to the Department of Justice, which last Friday rejected a South Carolina law that would have required voters show a valid photo ID before casting their ballots.

Justice says the law discriminates against minorities. The Obama administration said, "South Carolina's law didn't meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting." Why South Carolina? Because, the Justice Department contends, it's tasked with approving voting changes in states that have failed in the past to protect the rights of blacks.

Are they serious?

There are two African Americans representing South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives, One is Tim Scott, a freshman Republican. The other is 10-term Rep. James Clyburn, the current assistant Democratic leader. There are numerous minority members of the S.C. state legislature and Governor Nikki Haley who is Indian-American.

This is not your grandfather's South Carolina. This is not the South Carolina of the then-segregationist and Dixiecrat presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. Yesterday's South Carolina had segregated schools, lunch counters, restrooms and buses and a dominant Democratic Party. Today's South Carolina is a modern, integrated, forward-looking, dual-party state.

If Justice thinks proving who one is by showing valid photo ID discriminates against minorities, how does it explain the election of so many minority legislators? Are only whites voting for them?

Democrats, especially, should be sensitive to states and people who have demonstrated that they have changed. It was the Democratic Party of the late 19th century that resisted integration throughout the South, passing Jim Crow laws that frustrated blacks who wanted to vote. Those were Southern Democrats who stood in schoolhouse doors, barring blacks from entering. Today, many members of that same party refuse to allow poor minority students to leave failing government schools as part of the school voucher system because they, apparently, value political contributions from teachers unions more than they value educational achievement.

The South Carolina law that offends the Justice Department anticipated objections that some poor minorities might not have driver's licenses (and certainly not a passport) because they might not own cars. So the state will provide free voter ID cards with a picture of the voter on it. All someone has to do is prove who they claim to be. A birth certificate will do nicely. A utility bill can be used to prove residency.

Not requiring a voter to prove his or her citizenship and residence is a recipe for voter fraud. Democrats like to accuse Republicans of trying to keep minorities from voting because they know most will vote for Democrats. Even if that were true (and it's debatable) the reverse is probably truer. Some Democrats have allegedly encouraged people to vote who were not eligible, some more than once. Without a valid ID, how can we stop this?

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has compiled a list of new voter identification laws passed this year. In addition to the one in South Carolina, all require some form of photo identification. Will Justice go after all of them, as well?

According to the Brennan Center, a new law in Kansas, effective Jan. 1, 2012, requires a photo ID, with certain exceptions such as a physical disability that makes it impossible for the person to travel to a government office to acquire one, though they must have "qualified for permanent advance voting status…"

A new Texas law, which took effect on September 1, requires a photo ID in order to vote, or another form of personal ID card issued by the Department of Public Safety.

Even historically liberal Wisconsin passed a new law this year requiring voters to prove who they are, in most cases with a photo ID.

Governor Haley and South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson vow to fight the Justice Department ruling. They should. Photo IDs are required when flying on commercial aircraft or cashing a check. That discriminates against no one. Neither does requiring people to prove who they are before voting, unless, of course, there's another agenda, like "stuffing" the ballot box.