Last night, Stephen Colbert led off with a very simple argument exposing the sheer intellectual and moral bankruptcy of John Roberts' rationale behind gutting Section 4 (and thereby Section 5) of the Voting Rights Act.
If you watch this show, you know I believe in America's judicial system. Whenever anybody asks, I say our courts are the best. Unless they're asking me to serve jury duty, in which case I say Hitler had some good ideas. That usually gets me sent home macht schnell.
So I've been paying pretty close attention to the Supreme Court, which just today overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required the Jim Crow states to get federal permission before changing any of their voting laws. Well thankfully, Chief Justice John Roberts — old blue eyes — knows that the South doesn't need to be babysat anymore, saying:
JOHN ROBERTS (6/25/2013): Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.
Yes! For some reason, since the Voting Rights Act was passed, things have changed dramatically. Therefore, we can get rid of it now! It's just like those outdated labor laws that prohibit children from threading bobbins in a loom.
A kid hasn't been sucked into one of those machines in years! Let's stop playing nanny here.
Such a simple yet brilliant argument. A few years ago, Stephen also compared it to people building dams to stop flooding. Hey, there's been no flooding here for years, so let's just tear down the dams. What could go wrong?
Video below the fold.
Stephen then turned to the
protests in Brazil, talking with former Brazil bureau chief for the
New York Times,
Larry Rohter.
Meanwhile, John Oliver also looked at what the
Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act, and noted how Congress could fix it... if the GOP-controlled House could actually
do anything worth shit.
Both
Stephen and
John had segments about George Zimmerman's lawyer using that Knock Knock joke to open the trial.
Stephen interviewed Tufts professor
Peniel Joseph about the Supreme Court decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, and John talked with The Roots'
Questlove.