May 5, 2010

Should Felons Be Allowed to Vote?

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Over at The Corner, Roger Clegg writes:

The Supreme Court has asked the Obama administration for its views on whether to grant review in a case that challenges felon disenfranchisement as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It will be interesting to see what the solicitor general does. The Left does not like it when felons are not allowed to vote, but the Justice Department in years past has defended these laws, and a partisan volte-face will, or at least should be, embarrassing.

Help me out here. Why should it be embarrassing for the Obama administration to take a different position than previous administrations? Don’t presidential administrations do that all the time?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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