I would imagine that women outraged by Rush Limbaugh’s comments denigrating the Georgetown student might now see why HispanicLatinos rejoiced yesterday when the Department of Justice ruled against the state of Texas’ voter identification laws targeting minority voters.  Limbaugh’s people and the Republican majority of the Texas Legislature that enacted the punitive laws requiring photo identification are one and the same.  In fact, they are one and the same throughout the country, including states like Wisconsin, whose law was also struck down this week.

These are the same GOP legislative majorities that are requiring sonograms and that have embarked on a jihad against contraceptive tools using President Obama’s health care as their stalking horse.  As in other states, women who are under attack deserve and require defense.  So it is with HispanicLatinos and other minorities whom Republicans would want to take back to the dark ages.

When women hear HispanicLatinos appeal to their fellow Americans to protect the Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that requires states with histories of discrimination to prove that their electoral practices do not hamstring minority voters, they need not look further than the events of the past two months that began with the attacks of the Catholic bishops – the bishops, mind you, not Catholics per se – on President Obama.

For as long right-wing fanatics and the Catholic Church – hiding behind the separation between church and states when it is convenient – continue their war on women, they must be checked.  Likewise for HispanicLatinos.  As long as Republican-controlled legislatures hold power, they must be monitored and they must be met with a greater force.  A judicial bench this week in Wisconsin also temporarily voided that state’s new voter ID law. “…Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression,” wrote Circuit Judge Richard Niess elegantly and eloquently.

The victories in Texas and Wisconsin probably are short-lived.  The Supreme Court is set to overturn Section 5 – if not the whole Voting Rights Act – later this year or early next year.  The court will remove much-needed protections for minorities and it will reduce the growing number of HispanicLatino voters who might be needed in the future to help defend attacks against women that – believe me – will continue.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.