Voting Rights Act of 1965

WASHINGTON — November’s election marked the first time in U.S. history that black voters turned out at a higher rate than whites, according to new census data showing how much the country’s burgeoning population of racial and ethnic...

Residents in parts of the greater Lehigh Valley are going to need a new score card to keep track of who their state lawmakers are. The state Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld new legislative boundaries for the House and Senate as more geographically...

By William Yeomans May 7 (Reuters) - The inspector general for the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, recently issued a report recommending that the Civil Rights Division should no longer favor applicants who have demonstrated an interest in civil...

I support The Sun's position on Dr. Ben Carson ("The price of free speech," April 13). Dr. Carson was accorded his First Amendment right to freely express his views on marriage equality — and those outraged by the hurtful and insulting comments he...

Sometimes U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia remind me of Statler and Waldorf, the grumpy old cranks in the balcony of "The Muppet Show" — except that in the courtroom Thomas usually lets his fellow conservative do all...

One day, many years ago, I was working in my college bookstore when this guy walks in wearing a T-shirt. "White Power," it said. I was chatting with a friend, Cathy Duncan, and what happened next was as smooth as if we had rehearsed it. All at once,...

On April 9, many Illinoisans will go to the polls for local and consolidated elections. Enshrined in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, universal suffrage evolved piecemeal. The 15th Amendment in 1870 and the 19th Amendment in 1920 enfranchised African-...

Olen Burrage, a farmer and Ku Klux Klan member who owned the Mississippi land where the bullet-riddled bodies of three civil rights workers were found buried in the 1960s, has died. He was 82. Burrage, who was acquitted on civil rights charges related...

If it is done right, the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) may well promise uninsured Americans a lot more than cheap, reliable medical care. It can also open the door to the democratic empowerment of millions of poor people, who are often...

After taking on campaign finance with his super PAC last year, Stephen Colbert appears to have moved on to a new favorite cause: voting rights. As the host explained Wednesday night  on “The Colbert Report,” he’s “personally...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is alleged to be one of the great intellects of conservative jurisprudence, but his comments during oral arguments over a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act displayed all the mental acuity of a third-tier...

How fitting that after Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, plus lost the popular vote for Congress by over a million votes — and only hold on to their majority in the House by vigorous gerrymandering...