Cover Of NAACP’s Official Magazine Features Justice Scalia With Confederate Bandanna

Scalia’ comment, and the NAACP’s commentary upon it, highlights one of the many pitfalls facing the Republican Party as it attempts to rebrand itself as a party that can potentially appeal to voters of color. Just a few weeks after Scalia’s “racial entitlement” comment, the Republican National Committee released an “autopsy” of it’s 2012 election losses claiming that “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round” and that “[i]t is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party.”

Meanwhile, while Scalia’s four fellow Republican justices do not share his penchant for offensive rhetoric, they appear poised to join Scalia strike down a key prong of the Voting Rights Act that likely did more than any other law to bury Jim Crow. Similarly, on the same day that the RNC released its autopsy, three top Republicans responded to President Obama’s nomination of Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez to lead the Labor Department with racially charged attacks. The next day, Arkansas Republicans voted to enact a law suppressing the minority vote in that state.

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Romney Supports Voter ID Laws That Could Disenfranchise 25% Of African-Americans

Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention. He will purportedly focus solely on the economy, steering clear of addressing the controversial voter identification laws that the civil rights organization sees as “systematically suppressing voters of color, students and the elderly.” Indeed, Romney has previously backed the very efforts the NAACP opposes, saying, “I like Voter ID laws by the way… more of them,” ignoring the evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise African-Americans:

• A Center for American Progress investigation concluded that “these laws hinder voting rights in a manner not seen since the era of Jim Crow,” given that minorities (along the young and the poor) are more likely to be unable to acquire photo identification.
• Indeed, 25 percent of African-American voters lack the type of ID required to vote under these laws.

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NAACP Exposes Ties Between Tea Party and Racist Extremist Groups

The Tea Party movement has links to white supremacists, anti-immigration groups, 'birthers' and other extremists, according to new report.



The Tea Party movement has links to white supremacists, anti-immigration groups, "birthers" and other "extremists," according to a report released by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The 94 page report, entitled Tea Party Nationalism (.pdf), investigates six national organizations "at the core" of the Tea Party: FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and the Tea Party Express.

"Based on their past allegations about the Tea Parties, I expect the NAACP's newest attack will once again be riddled with stupid and baseless accusations," said Project 21's Emery McClendon. "They are continuing to be the 'squeaky wheel' that demands attention and hopes that enough screaming will make their myths into fact. I hope the NAACP's 'research' receives the scrutiny it deserves."

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Haley Barbour Will Decide the Fate of the Scott Sisters

— By James Ridgeway

Jamie and Gladys Scott are two young women from rural Mississippi who were convicted, on questionable evidence, of involvement in an armed robbery that netted $11, and were sentenced to life in prison. Jamie Scott is suffering from end-stage renal disease, exacerbated by prison conditions and inadequate treatment–so her life sentence may soon become a death sentence.

Mother Jones was among the first non-local media to cover the case of the Scott sisters. Now the case in finally getting some national attention: The president of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, has called the sisters’ situation “utterly inhumane”; along with a growing number of grassroots supporters, he is urging Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to consider a pardon or commutation of their sentence. Today, this same call was made by New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert. After describing the Scotts’ conviction and sentence, he writes:

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