Schoolhouse doors, and now voting booths

Florida Gov. Rick Scott's grandstanding defiance of a Department of Justice demand that he end his voter purge recalls another dark moment in  the nation's history.  It happened on June 11, 1963. when another southern governor, George Wallace, chose to "stand his ground' at the door of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium to block two black students from entering to enroll. (History has recorded it as the notorious "stand in the schoolhouse door") This, after all,  was the guy who had promised  at his inauguration "segregation now, segregation  tomorrow, segregation forever."

Inasmuch as Wallace figured that he had the majority of voters on his side, it didn't take as much courage as, say, that of the man who stood in the path of tanks in Tianamen Square to block their passage to an uprising. (He was pulled away from probable death by onlookers.)

In Wallace's case, he finally stepped aside so that the students could enter after he was confronted by federal marshals.  But he managed to create his self-absorbed moment of his choosing.  He even ran for president four times.

Today, Wallace isn't around to look at the faces of the University of Alabama's basketball coach and players.  They would have been barred  before the Feds moved  in a half-century ago.    

Like Wallace, Rick' Scott's 15 minutes of defiance will eventually be exhausted for all but the historians. His elections supervisors in all 67 counties have now  pulled out of the game.  Just one more example of how Tea Party Republicans are creating havoc wherever they go.  For Scott, it all depends on how he wants to be remembered when his politician days are behind him.  

Florida: Where a decorated vet is told he can't vote

DO YOU KNOW  the fellow in the picture?

No? If not, you have a lot of company .  The election officials in Florida don't know him either.  That explains why, at the urging of the state's kookish Republican governor,  they have included Bill Internicola in the massive purge of people who want to vote this year in the never-ending GOP quest to smash fraud wherever it exists - or doesn't exist.

Let me tell you about  this designated victim of Gov. Rick Scott's hit list.  He's 91, a decorated WWII veteran (Bronze Star for bravery in the Battle of the Bulge) and  for the past 14 years has voted in Florida.

Not good enough for the state's flawed election bureaucracy - the same one that wiped a lot of voters in the 2000 presidential election  in which George Bush defeated Al Gore in the state by 537 votes  with help from the U.S.Supreme Court.

So here we go again.  While GOP officials scoff at references to their efforts as "voter cleansing", there is no reason to believe them for the Republican-led assaults on voter lists across the country that largely deny blacks and Latinos a visit to the voter booth. There was a time when the party prayed for bad weather  to keep certain voters from the polls;  that, plus poll taxes down south.

Internicola is the second case in this messy plot to reach the Net , largely exposed by ThinkProgress. By the way, it also noted that in the first five months of 2012,  three major newspapers - the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today - failed to mention a word about the scandalous behavior  in the  Sunshine State.  See how easy it is for me to be cynical.

 We mentioned in an earlier blog Maureen Russo, who has yet to be reinstated to the eligibility list  despite her valid profile.  So if your local Republican officials  tell you that there is no plot to deny selected voters their rights with the shopworn guise of good government,  let them scoff and sputter.  But don't believe them.  They are lying - which is one of the few things that they do well.