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Rush Limbaugh says that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia should be "honored" to be compared to be compared to him over the justice's recent suggestion that voting rights were a "racial entitlement."

During oral arguments about the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act last week, Scalia had pointed out that the law had enjoyed multiple nearly-unanimous reauthorizations because lawmakers were scared to be seen voting against discrimination, calling it “a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Several media outlets -- like Mother Jones and Salon -- noted that Scalia's argument was not unlike something that would have been expected from Limbaugh. And MSNBC's Al Sharpton observed that the Supreme Court justice had a history of taking cues from Fox News and conservative radio hosts.

On Monday, Limbaugh declared that he would be "honored" to be compared to himself and so Scalia should be too.

"Imagine that!" Limbaugh exclaimed. "Arguably one of the most well-endowed intellects in court's history, Antonin Scalia, was accused of sounding like me. And I'm sure it's a big day for him too!"

"This is one of those things that goes both ways. I know if I were Antonin Scalia, I would be honored. Just like I am honored to be compared to him."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry had a few words for old Fat Tony after the remarks he made during this week's Supreme Court hearing on the Voting Rights Act -- Voting is no ‘racial entitlement,’ Justice Scalia:

Dear Justice Scalia,

It’s me, Melissa.

By now, we know you well enough that there’s not much you can say or do that would come as a surprise. We can set our watches by your decisions that, predictably, will be in alignment with the Court’s most radically conservative reasoning. We know that unlike your friend Justice Clarence Thomas, who has a permanent mute button on, you will always voice an opinion, and it will be heavily influenced by your political agenda..

But even given all of that, what you had to say during Wednesday’s oral arguments still came as a genuine shock.

Commenting on Congress’s nearly unanimous re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, you said, “I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

You went on to say, “I am fairly confident it will be re-enacted in perpetuity…unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution…It’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress.”

Racial entitlement? Not a question you can leave to Congress? Even for you, Justice Scalia, this is a particularly willful misreading of the Constitution you claim to adore.

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On Thursday night's The Daily Show, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow had this to say about going to the Supreme Court in person to see how it functions. Maddow heaped scorn on the justice after he characterized part of the "Voting Rights Act" as a "perpetuation of racial entitlement".

Transcript via Fox News

JON STEWART, HOST: Does he, you know, I only read some of the transcripts of what he was saying. And he was saying certain thing like, “We've got to get rid of this because it's one of the last vestiges of racial preferences,” the Voting Rights Act I guess.

MADDOW: He said that, he said when Congress re-upped the Voting Rights Act, they looked into whether or not it was still necessary. Ten months of debate, 21 hearings, 15,000 pages of evidence, and in the Senate they voted 98-0 yeah we still need that. But he said, “That vote really, what does that vote mean?”

STEWART: Didn’t he say something like, “We told them to fix this in 2006 but clearly they won’t or can't, so we have to do it for them?”

MADDOW: Because it’s not, it’s not a real vote. It’s a racial entitlement now. Voting is a racial entitlement, something that you are entitled to on the basis of your race.

Wait a second. Do you know how that sounds?

But I think he does know how that sounds, and that's the neat thing about being there in person because you can see oh, actually, he's a troll. He’s saying this for effect.

Naturally, this affront forced Fox News host Megyn Kelly to breathlessly rush to Scalia's defense, saying she personally objects to "that kind of language against the Supreme Court justice."

"I don't think it does anybody any good," Kelly said. "I think they vote their consciences up there whether they're left or right." (via TPM). Tellingly, she wouldn't mention Rachel Maddow by name, referring to her only as "a liberal commentator". (And no she didn't use the word "biotch", though you know she was thinking it.)

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Full transcript of Maddow below, along with a recording of Justice Scalia's remarks in court to the Solicitor General.

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Here we go again with MSNBC's replacement in the afternoon for Martin Bashir's show, The Cycle, after Bashir moved into Dylan Ratigan's old time slot, and more proof that the network really screwed the pooch with giving S.E. Cupp a spot as one of the co-hosts on this god awful show.

As Fran rightfully pointed out a couple of weeks ago, this show "has all the markings of a summer replacement series" and that's probably giving it way too much credit. I caught some of this on the satellite radio this Wednesday afternoon and this has to be one of the more obnoxious appearances I've had the unfortunate circumstance of listening to since I first had the unfortunate circumstance of ever hearing the woman's name in the first place.

The segment, I assume was supposed to be a serious interview with The Nation's Ari Berman, who's done some excellent reporting on the problem we've got going on right now across the country and voter disenfranchisement, some of which you can read about here: Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court .

Rather than the other hosts and their guest being allowed to have a sane debate on the topic, the viewers were treated to Cupp demanding that the rest of them explain to her how to solve the 86 cases of voter fraud which were prosecuted under the Bush administration, as though those cases being prosecuted wasn't a solution in and of itself and her defending the disenfranchisement of millions of voters in order to do something about the minute number of actual fraud cases, that almost never happen and are not statistically a problem when it comes to the integrity of our elections in the United States. Unlike, you know, throwing millions of people off of the voting rolls because less than a hundred may have had some irregularity with how they voted.

If Cupp is so worried about the types of problems that were likely to be found in those 86 cases, maybe we can get her to go ballistic over her buddies Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and making sure they're both voting from the addresses where they actually reside. Listening to her rail on over and over about them not having a "solution" to those cases of voter fraud, when they ended up in the courts, was enough to make me want to throw something at my TV set when going back to record this debacle.

If MSNBC doesn't want to lose all of their viewers in this time slot, they'll start looking for a new host and a new format for that matter. Four hosts don't work. The show has mainly been a shoutfest with them talking over each other constantly since it first aired and S.E. Cupp has no business hosting anything. The woman is just another know nothing flame thrower who is a bad guest and an even worse host. I put up with watching a lot of really bad television to help with monitoring cable "news" for C&L and this show is already somewhere in the range of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity awful with trying to watch or listen to any of it.

If MSNBC were serious about having anyone want to watch their network in this time slot, they'd consider giving it to someone like Sam Seder. They'd also take Michael Steele out of Pat Buchanan's old cot on the set and send him packing as well. He's ruining shows from Morning Joe straight on through their prime time programming.

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I'm not sure what "liberals" Washington Post columnist Charles Lane was talking about on this week's Fox News Sunday when he said this, but I've got a few words for his assumptions about how "liberals" are going to have to act if Supreme Court Justice John Roberts overturns part of the Voting Rights Act or affirmative action and that's "I don't think so pal."

LANE: What he has done in his brilliant opinion is to sacrifice a pawn, called the individual mandate and put the entire Great Society in check. And he has done that by getting two liberal justices to agree with him in a seven to two ruling that there are serious limitations on the federal government's ability to use its spending power to get the states to cooperate in welfare and education programs, which is really how everything works, or a lot of things work including education, Medicaid, etc.

And he has done that and gotten liberals to applaud him for it, so that now, next term when Voting Rights Act Section 5 and affirmative action in colleges come up before the court as they're going to and he votes with the other four conservatives to strike them down, all those liberals who might otherwise complain will now have to acknowledge that this fair-minded statesman, John Roberts, was involved in that decision.

This is a man of great brilliance and all those conservatives who are griping about this ruling need to give it a second thought.

Here's what most liberals still think of John Roberts, no matter how he ruled on this insurance friendly, Republican health care law he just upheld: 10 Ways John Roberts Is Still A Conservative’s Best Friend.

And calling someone ruling to keep "the Great Society in check" "brilliant" has to be one of the most crass things I've heard come out of anyone's mouth in a while now.

From The Young Turks and nsfw at the end: Sadly Not From The Onion - Texas GOP Against Thinking & Voting Rights :

"It seems more like a headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion, but the Republican Party of Texas recently published its party platform, a report that - among other things - calls for a ban on teaching critical thinking skills in Texas schools because of its "focus on behavior modification" that has "the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." That's just one of the many startling positions adopted by the state's Republican Party at its recent convention in Fort Worth...".* They also want to repeal the Voting Rights Act Of 1965. Cenk Uygur and Jayar Jackson discuss on The Young Turks.

*Read more here from Austinist.com:
http://austinist.com/2012/06/27/texas_republican_party_seeks_ban_on.php

In-video quote courtesy of Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/06/26/506363/texas-gop-voting-rights-act/

h/t Radically Moderate ad infinitum

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Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Monday suggested that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was "inciting racism" in a effort to get more minorities to vote for President Barack Obama.

Kilmeade noted on Monday that the state of Florida had vowed to defy a Justice Department order to halt a massive unauthorized purge of voter rolls.

"The U.S. Justice Department telling Florida its efforts to prevent voter fraud, but the state now fighting back against Attorney General Eric Holder and defying the order," the Fox News host reported. "The search of the voter list turned up over 180,000 registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens are are therefore ineligible to vote. Florida says it has a duty to make sure that only eligible voters are allowed to vote, but the DOJ, however, says the efforts are discriminatory and violates the Voting Rights Act."

"Some of Eric Holder's harshest critics say he's trying to boost the minority turnout in the November election by inciting racism," Kilmeade concluded.

Those remarks echo an article in the Wall Street Journal last week titled "Holder's Racial Incitement."

"The two most powerful men in America are black, two of the last three Secretaries of State were black, numerous corporate CEOs and other executives are black, and minorities of many races now win state-wide elections in states that belonged to the Confederacy, but the AG implies that Jim Crow is on the cusp of a comeback," the Journal insisted.

"For all of Mr. Obama's attempts to portray Mitt Romney as out of touch, no one has suffered more in the Obama economy than minorities," the article continued. "Which explains Mr. Holder's racial incitement strategy. If Mr. Obama is going to win those swing states again, he needs another burst of minority turnout. If hope won't get them to vote for Mr. Obama again, then how about fear?"

"It's worse than a shame that America's first black Attorney General is using his considerable power to inflame racial antagonism."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Andrea Mitchell invited civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis on her show this Thursday, and after opening the segment by showing his recent take-down of fellow Rep. Paul Broun on the House floor, for pushing an amendment that would have stripped funding for enforcement of Title V of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, Lewis spoke to Mitchell about how dangerous the recent efforts by Republicans to take our country backwards with are all of these voter suppression laws being passed in states across the country.

What I'm surprised they did not discuss are the recent efforts by the House Democrats to fight back against voter suppression:

Today, House Democrats did something really important. Something fundamental to our democracy. Today, House Democrats unveiled the Voter Empowerment Act - a legislation that would roll back many GOP state-sponsored efforts and laws to suppress the vote.

The bill will protect voters from restrictive voting measures that have been enacted in states across the country over the last year. These measures make it harder for millions of eligible voters to register or vote, and disproportionally affect our service members, the disabled, minorities, young people, seniors, and low-income Americans.

The bill will protect voters from restrictive voting measures that have been enacted in states across the country over the last year. These measures make it harder for millions of eligible voters to register or vote, and disproportionally affect our service members, the disabled, minorities, young people, seniors, and low-income Americans.

You can read more details on the bill in the link above. Mitchell also asked Lewis about President Obama's recent endorsement of gay marriage and as Think Progress reported, it looks like the numbers are starting to turn around on that issue in the African American community now as well: The Obama Effect: Growing Number Of African Americans Come Out For Marriage Equality:

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