Word: louisiana
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...Justice Department to reject election law changes that weaken minority voting power. By a 7-2 vote, justices clarified how courts may use the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when reviewing changes state or local governments make in district boundaries or other voting procedures. At issue was a Louisiana school redistricting plan that the Justice Department rejected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for failing to comply with Section 2 of the act. Section 5 requires federal approval of many state and local election law changes, while Section 2 prohibits any voting practice that dilutes minority voting strength...
...crime. Though upholding such laws required ever more tortured legal definitions of who was black and who wasn't, 16 states continued to ban interracial marriages until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such laws. In what was perhaps the most ridiculous example of racial pigeonholing, Louisiana ordained that anyone with a "trace" of black ancestry would be classified as black. Then, in an ostensibly "humane" 1970 reform, it enacted the "one thirty-second rule," by which anyone with a single black great-great-great-great-grandparent and 31 white great-great-great-great-grandparents was legally black...
...Gephardt staking out positions to the left of Gore on a range of issues, Republicans complain they are suddenly finding Clinton far less accommodating than they had hoped. Even Democrats agree. Not only is the White House gauging g.o.p. reaction to each proposal, says Democratic Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, "they also now have to worry about how much of a real political fight it creates within our own party as presidential politics become part of the equation...
These days, Jackson says he considers Gore "a very decent man." But some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have a new grievance against Gore. Last week the caucus drafted a letter to Clinton demanding to know why former Louisiana Congressman Cleo Fields did not get a high-level appointment. Fields' backers had been led to believe he had earned one after Gore persuaded him to set aside his differences with Senate candidate Mary Landrieu and help her win the race. When Fields showed up for work in Washington on March 31, he found that the prestigious...
...QUIZ: What do Arkansas, Delaware, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin have in common...