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Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech in Austin, Texas Tuesday in which he invoked the history of the civil rights movement in targeting state voter identification laws. His approach mirrors that of the NAACP, which considers such laws racist, and echoes Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who recently claimed that Republicans want to “literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”

Holder claimed that the Department of Justice would be “fair” in reviewing such laws, but also quoted a misleading charge made by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who claimed there was a “systematic attempt” to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights. Holder specifically singled out “new photo identification requirements” in Texas and South Carolina, and applauded Maine’s voters for preserving same-day registration.

The fact is that requiring voters to provide photo identification is standard practice in much of the democratic world–even, and especially, in poor countries with a history of struggle against racism and colonialism.

In South Africa, for example, where black people were denied the vote until 1994, the new democratic government requires every registered voter–black or white, rich or poor–to bring official photo ID to the polls.

Indians show photo ID to vote (Photo credit: AP/Biswaranjan Rout)

India’s election commission issues a special photo identification card to voters when they register, which they must present at the polls:

The Election Commission of India has made voter identification mandatory at the time of poll. The electors have to identify themselves with either Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Commission or any other documentary proof as prescribed by the Commission.

In Europe, the official EU Handbook for Election Observation acknowledges that voters are required to show identification in many countries, and suggests that observers verify that all voters are subject to the same ID check (166). Even the Carter Center for Human Rights, which monitors democratic elections all over the world, identifies “a requirement for identification” as a “reasonable limitation” on universal suffrage.

(Update: That’s not to say international practice should govern American practice at the federal, state, or local level, but it certainly undermines the notion that photo identification is somehow motivated by a desire to keep people from exercising their rights. The opposite is true: voter ID laws are intended to protect voters’ rights against fraud and manipulation by those who would subvert their will.)

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President Barack Obama’s call yesterday for “restraint on all sides” as defenseless Coptic Christians were attacked and murdered in Egypt in a government-supported Islamic pogrom was typical of his administration’s response to attacks by states against civilians.

Though he has, in some cases, come around to criticizing and even toppling regimes, Obama’s first instinct is to treat the perpetrators and the victims as equals.

The sole, and repeated, exception is Israel, which the Obama administration criticizes and condemns for legal activities such as construction within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. By contrast, the administration coddles the unrepentant, terror-promoting Palestinian leadership–a fruitless effort, greeted with contempt rather than gratitude.

The same tendency is apparent in Obama’s newly-uncovered attempt to apologize for the atomic blast at Hiroshima, which the Japanese, appropriately, rejected. Obama has had trouble, especially early in his presidency, distinguishing defense from aggression–especially when that defense is on behalf of western democracy.

That is worse than moral equivalence; it is “immoral equivalence,” because it destroys the moral distinction between freedom and tyranny. (more…)

This week, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister, was nominated to head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC). Van Schalkwyk is a former apartheid operative who bartered his way into the black majority government by helping it smear its democratic opposition. He is a statist bureaucrat who is one of the most unpopular political figures in the new South Africa. He is just right for the job.

There is no one better to put in charge of the entire political enterprise of climate change as it is collapsing amidst failed negotiations and accusations of fraud. Van Schalkwyk will be sure to hasten the end. He did the same when he took over the rump of South Africa’s National Party, the party of apartheid, and led it to crushing defeat. He gave up and joined the African National Congress (ANC) government in return for his ministry.

That was bad news for South Africans, as Van Schalkwyk encouraged other politicians to defect from the country’s leading opposition parties to join the corrupt and hegemonic  ANC. (An angry public began referring to those who crossed the floor for political favors as “crosstitutes.”) But it is good news for critics of the UN climate change bureaucracy, who now have a target who personifies everything there is to dislike about the system.

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