Yesterday, Barack Obama pledged to use his power as Chief Executive to lower carbon emissions, given that Congress refuses to act. That’s a pledge Obama made before – and then authorized the most extreme expansion of offshore drilling for oil in generations.
Also yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t need to do much of its work of preventing discrimination against minority groups in state election systems, because Americans have learned to know better than to exploit discriminatory tendencies in the population to manipulate elections. None of the Supreme Court justices have had to wait for hours in line to vote, or tried to file a hanging chad, it seems.
What are your reactions to these two big stories?