(Permanent Musical Accompaniment For The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

PHILADELPHIA—What is that strange, mushroom-shaped cloud rising from the far southern horizon? Wait, it's the Fourth Circuit Court of appeals, which on Friday delivered its decision on the challenge to the heinous voter-suppression law passed by the state legislature of the newly insane state of North Carolina. Speaking for the court's majority, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz said...

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Not really. But as close as you could come to it.

"In North Carolina, restriction of voting mechanisms and procedures that most heavily affect African Americans will predictably redound to the benefit of one political party and to the disadvantage of the other. As the evidence in the record makes clear, that is what happened here."

And also…

The General Assembly enacted [these changes] in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent.

"The court," in this case, is one Judge Thomas Schroeder, the federal judge who'd upheld the law, in part by citing Chief Justice John Roberts's declaration of the Day of Jubilee in the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Politely, of course, Judge Motz, who seems to be a very nice lady, called bullshit on both of them. In following Roberts, Motz said, Schroeder, "seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees."

Furthermore…

"Not coincidentally, during this period North Carolina emerged as a swing state in national elections."

And, in conclusion…

"Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist."

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The whole thing is just solid-gold, exquisite appeals court porn. Read the whole thing slowly with a fine whiskey at hand. It is yet another in the current list of court decisions in which the presiding justices have decided that it is insufficient to try and pass off what Blackstone would have called a barrel full of bad-faith bullshit as legal justification for the political ends you're seeking. It's happening with the SLAPP lawsuits aimed at crippling the reproductive rights of women, the ones that were couched in the counterfeit language of public health.

It's also happening with these laws, the stated aims of which are to curb the largely imaginary problems of voter fraud. You can only ask judges to support the free-speech claims of bunco-artist legislators for so long before their higher functions begin to rebel. Smarter folks than I suspect that the law may well be doomed. The Fourth Circuit has become markedly more liberal, so an en banc appeal is likely to be fruitless. And, of course, because of the political genius of Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court is currently skating one player down, and there's no way there are five votes to overturn this decision among the eight remaining justices.

Instead of chortling further, I'll just leave the shebeen's official preacher, the Reverend Doctor William Barber, here to explain the rest of why this is a good day.

The Trump Train seems a bit stalled. If you read The New York Times, it's no wonder. He's thrown so many people under it that the wheels are probably jammed.

Bad reviews? Not his fault. I know.

"I didn't produce our show—I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday."

I know this is too easy, but here's He, Trump before the convention, courtesy of U.S. News.

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"We are totally over-booked. We have great speakers, we have winners, we have people that aren't only political people. We have a lot of people that are just champions and winners."

It's like watching King Lear, if someone cast Benny Hill in the lead.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Frogmore" (Chickasaw Mudd Puppies). Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here are some boxing clowns fighting each other, and I picked it totally by accident, honestly. History is so cool.

Many of our friends in the conservative media are shocked—SHOCKED!—to learn that Ann Coulter is a conscience-less splinter of awfulness. I am less than impressed by the outrage. I've been ashamed of sharing a phylum with this creature since about 1994.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news! Bring it to us, Global News.

One of the largest dinosaur footprints ever discovered has been found in Bolivia, and purely by accident. A Bolivian tour guide came across the metre-wide footprint while touring 64 km outside of the city of Sucre. Paleontologists believe that the footprint belongs to the meat-eating abelisaurus, which roamed the region about 80 million years ago.

"Welcome, everyone. Over here is our gift shop. Down the hall is the exercise room. Over there is the restaurant. And right down there is a footprint the size of a fcking hot tub. That animal is dead and no longer lives around here, honest."

At the moment, He, Trump is holding another rally, this one in Colorado Springs, and he is complaining that Hillary Clinton neglected in her acceptance speech to mention his glorious triumph in the Republican primary process.

"CNN is just a dishonest group of people. Their camera went off. I know the camera men now. I saw the red light go off…Isn't it better when we don't have these teleprompters…I don't like e-mail. You know why? I'm intelligent…Let's not send it over the wires so people can read it…Men and women, sitting in their homes and they're better…General George Patton, rough and tough, he wouldn't be using e-mail when he was getting ready to attack. He'd say, 'I don't like this system at all…"

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Christamighty, somebody get the net.

The Top Commenter Of The Week competition was a tangled mess, what with all the material for Top Commenter snark that was laid out there over the past week. Finally, though the committee settled on Top Commenter Todd Patrick, who noticed that convention attire had become sedate down through the years. If there ever were a week in which a crack about burning pants was going to win, it was this one.

Most convention goers have mercifully stopped dressing up like Uncle Sam's bastard children. You don't see holdouts burning the flag pants they're wearing in protest.

Well played, sir. 66.75 Beckhams to you.

(I should note that I met the legendary TBogg, owner of bassets and one of my personal blogging heroes, at the DNC. Critical mass of snark was very close to being achieved.)

I'll be back on Monday with… oh, wait, we have to go back to Colorado Springs, where the Republican candidate for president has something else he'd like to share with the country he presumes to lead.

"I think I have one of the best temperaments of anyone who ever ran for president because I have a winning temperament."

God save us all.

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