Apparently, not.
But that didn't stop him from making a false statement:
"Chief Justice John Roberts made a claim in the hearing of oral arguments on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Acts that Massachusetts has the worst African American voter participation in the country. Way off the mark, according to the the state's secretary of state as quoted by the Boston Globe.
The problem is, Roberts is woefully wrong on those points, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who on Thursday branded Roberts’s assertion a slur and made a declaration of his own. “I’m calling him out,” Galvin said. Galvin was not alone in his view.
Academics and Massachusetts politicians said that Roberts appeared to be misguided. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to offer supporting evidence of Roberts’s view, referring a reporter to the court transcript.
On Thursday, Galvin tried to set the record straight. “We have one of the highest voter registrations in the country,” he said, “so this whole effort to make a cheap-shot point at Massachusetts is deceptive.”
MORE HERE FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE:
“In the state of Massachusetts, we’ve seen a great increase in voter participation in communities of color, particularly among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians,” said Boston city councilor Tito Jackson, who served as political director for Governor Deval Patrick’s most recent campaign.
In the November 2012 election, there was little difference in voter turnout in Boston neighborhoods with high concentrations of white or black voters.
In Charlestown, where 80 percent of residents are white, 68 percent of voters cast ballots in November.
In Roxbury, the traditional heart of Boston’s African-American community, about 64 percent of voters came out to the polls.
Galvin and political scientists speculated that Roberts drew his conclusions using US Census Bureau data known as “The Current Population Survey,” which collects information on voting and registration every other year. Political scientists say this is one of the few national databases, if not the only one, providing state-by-state voting information.
But a review of those census data appears to contradict Roberts, showing such states as Washington, Arizona, and Minnesota with similar if not bigger gaps between black and white voters. “The concept of black communities in Massachusetts not voting is an old slur, and it’s not true,” Galvin said. “I guess the point [Roberts] is trying to make is Mississippi is doing so much better they don’t need the Voting Rights Act. He can still relay that conclusion, but he shouldn’t be using phony statistics.
It’s deceptive, and it’s truly disturbing.” According to the census figures, a larger percentage of blacks voted in Mississippi than whites, one percentage point more. But political scientists caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from the census survey or using it to compare states. The black population in nearly one-fourth of states surveyed in 2010 was so small that it was not possible to make statistically reliable comparisons. And the margin of error for nearly another quarter of the states, including Massachusetts, was in the double digits. “The margin of error is huge,” said Michael P. McDonald, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University who specializes in American elections. “They’re not reliable numbers.”
Massachusetts has always been the favorite punching bag for conservatives, but for those who take the time to actually learn the facts, this state has much to be envied. When one looks at the facts, and not dubious statistics, as apparently Roberts did, one can see that Massachusetts has a fine voting record where it concerns minority participation.
It's too bad that people are so willing to believe lies that confirm their prejudices about Massachusetts.
Just look at the voting percentages in two communities: Charlestown, with a majority white population, and Roxbury, a heavily African American population, to understand how off the mark Roberts' claim is.
This seems to be a rampant disease in the conservative community: Believe your misguided ideas about a liberal community, then look dumb when those ideas are refuted by facts.
Bad going, Mr. Chief Justice.
Between you and Justice Scalia, the SCOTUS has attracted a very unpleasant smell to itself this week.
More here:
Massachusetts 1, John Roberts 0
Meanwhile, another Supreme Court Justice weighs in:
19 comments:
Please, please PLEASE don't use "fact check" as a verb, I beg you. The proper term is VERIFY.
The process of determining whether information presented is accurate is called VERIFICATION.
Thank you.
The Risibility Factor in the Left's sudden turning on JOHN ROBERTS of all people overwhelms me at this juncture.
The Chief Justice, was solely responsible for the survival of the legislative abomination popularly referred to as OBAMACARE.
One would think that alone would assure Jon Roberts a permanent niche in Pantheon of Leftist Heroes, but apparently loyalty -- and especially gratitude -- are in short supply among the minions of the left.
I for one see this as a sad-but-positive development, because it so clearly demonstrates the left's essentially malevolent spirit and its absolute intolerance for the slightest deviation from its sacred Agenda.
Nothing short of complete Self-Immolation of even the mildest Critic of the Left could ever satisfy your average leftist, and even then it's likely he, she, or it would claim the flames were not quite hot enough to satisfy the demands of "Justice."
What so astonishes me is the close resemblance the Leftist Establishment bears to the once-dominant Catholicism that fueled the Inquisition.
Taking note of the comic irony is hard to resist, because of the Left's virulent hatred and contempt for religion -- Christianity in particular. The Inquisition, the Crusades, the persecution of the Huguenots, the corrupt, hypocritical lives of many of the Popes, Cromwell's Persecutions, the Salem Witch Trials and other, similar period horrors are used so often by leftists as justification for their rejection of Jesus Christ that it's downright FUNNY that the left, itself, should adopt similar policies of intolerance and punishment to anyone deemed "heretical" to LEFTIST ideology and the Agenda it promotes so assiduously.
Of course, partisans of ALL stripes are blind to their own faults, so this assessment is sure to be resoundingly rejected -- which will only further confirm the conviction I hold on the matter.
PS: Any and all similarities to or congruencies with statements I have made applying to the left's recent treatment of Bob Woodward are deliberate and intentional.
"To fact-check" is perfectly acceptable usage. That usage has been in effect since the 1970s. The great thing about American English is that it is a living language, able to grow and accept new usages.
Some people just don't like change. That's fine. But "fact-check" is a perfectly acceptable synonym for "verify."
fact–check transitive verb \ˈfak(t)-ˌchek\
Definition of FACT-CHECK
: to verify the factual accuracy of
— fact–check·er noun
First Known Use of FACT-CHECK
Pointing out that Chief Justice Roberts made an error in his disputation is not "turning on him," it is point out that he made a mistake.
His decision on the ACA did not immunize him from criticism. When he makes an error, he should get called on it.
If I remember correctly, the rightwing went berserk and called for his head on a platter in his finding that the ACA was constitutional.
I'm not anywhere near the hysterics that were evident on the right when that happened last summer.
I merely reported that, according to the actual records kept by Massachusetts Secretary of State, Galvin, Justice Roberts was wrong.
Perhaps it is you, Mr. Free Thinke, not I, who has overreacted?
Justice Antonin Scalia calls the Voting Rights Act "racial preferencing?"
The conservative south spent its history enslaving, torturing, murdering; and then after the Civil War, denying African-Americans their constitutional guarantees, while lynching any A.A. who dared to so much as look at a white woman or disturb the south's racist laws and customs.
This went on for centuries, and the lynching stopped only as recently as the 1960s.
Why would anyone believe that what has been part of the south's racist culture would change in a matter of 50 years?
The worst sort of racist emails I have received have come from a commenter who proudly calls himself "Radical REDNECK."
I would guess he's not the only one in this country who still holds those warped and sick prejudices.
Prejudices and bigotry die hard Shaw, both have been around for thousands of years, they continue to exit today, and humans being humans it is likely they will be around long after we are gone.
It is indeed sad and unfortunate.
I pin my hopes on the younger generation. Their acceptance of minorities--gays, people of color, etc., is far superior to their grandparents and some of their parents.
From what I've observed, and I admit my experience is only anecdotal, the younger generation just doesn't embrace the previous generation's bigotry.
There is hope.
Free Thinke, FYI, "check" is a legitimate verb and using the phrase "fact-check" is correct English as a verb construction. As in, "I'm going to fact-check that." The only valid criticism, a minor quibble, is that the phrase should get a hyphen.
It's becoming increasingly clear several of our Supremes bear attitudes and harbor misinformation and disinformation manufactured and distributed by one of the nation's most buoyant and profitable industries, the Right Wing Noise Machine. So, Roberts' latest erroneous utterance comes as no surprise.
On its face (maybe excepting South Boston, an area that felt put upon in the era of school busing) the notion Massachusetts is a hotbed of discrimination so onerous that it extends to inhibiting minority voting seems very unlikely. It's the kind of thing a thinking, reasonably well-informed person would want to verify before stating as fact in public.
I remember reading about how the Republicans hated the Warren Court for being so liberal. But these same Republicans don't see the naked conservative bias of the Roberts court, his ruling on the ACA notwithstanding.
The naked bias voiced by the likes of Scalia is scandalous in a branch of the government that is supposed to mete out blind justice.
Many bizarre, disturbing things -- including myriad linguistic atrocities -- entered American life in the mid 1960's and have subsequently been deemed "acceptable," because -- like it or not -- once an idiotic illiterate expression gets bruited about incessantly on television by the fiends who have been deliberately "dumbing us down" since the early 1950's, the expression inevitably takes hold and soon "goes viral." That does not make it good.
Split infinitives, recognition and proper use of the subjunctive and the possessive have all but vanished -- even in the ivory towers of academe -- persistent use of extraneous prepositions and clumsy, hopelessly inelegant phrases such as "I don't know where I'm at," "I like the fact that the apartment has two bathrooms," or "I like that my girl friend has blond hair," or "Her and me are way cool with each other," or "Message me, and I'll let you now if we can hook up." and on and on proliferate like roaches in a filthy kitchen in the slums.
I sit in front of the TV and writhe in anguish, precisely because this sort of thing is considered "perfectly acceptable usage" today.
Ergo, I'll try to verify,
While you work to fact check.
It matters not that I could cry
'Cause syntax now's a wreck --
A travesty of competence --
An aggravating bore --
And I must watch in impotence,
While standards hit the floor.
I offer one last parting shot
As I head for the 'burbs:
It's clear the culture's gone to pot
When nouns are used as verbs.
And by the way, Mr. Anderson, I'm certain that while compound nouns are, indeed, hyphenated compound verbs are not.
And now I'm going to discontentedly leave you and go back to shouting epithets and throwing wads of tear-soaked tissues at the TV to impotently express my rage, frustration and grief over the fact that degeneration has overtaken us with a vengeance and nobody but a few old diehards like me gives so much as hoot in hell about it.
As we slide fecklessly in The Abyss, I wish all of you Happy Landings!
Cheerio!
There is no constitutional qualification to be a member of the Supreme Court. It has (or perhaps has always been) a political plum.
Oh dear. You DO know, Mr. Free Thinke, that every older generation has said the very same about the younger generation since Plato?
I admit I agree on with a lot of your observations, but I also understand that the species will continue with or without our approval.
mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis.
Be of good cheer.
We'll always have Mozart, and Beethoven, and Mahler...
Seems to me that we should stop looking at the voting rights act as a racial remedy and see it as a measure that needs to be expanded to give national coverage.
The latest shenanigans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida among other states should be instructive.
But, Ducky, conservatives don't see voting restrictions and making voting for minorities difficult as violating anyone's right to vote.
Oh I DO know, Ms Shaw. I'm just having a bit of fun satirizing myself if you really want to know. I find that writing doggerel is great therapy. I hope no one here takes what I said literally? A box of Kleenex usually lasts for months in this house.
I guess I may be too much like Miniver Cheevy -- except I do not "drink," more's the pity. ;-)
And yes Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler -- and BIZET! -- and all the rest of that august company -- make of life much more a delight than a pain.
I think what truly bothers me is my inability to imagine how younger people could ever hope to enjoy themselves as much as I have. I feel bad for them.
But, I do realize we can never know what it's really like to live inside another person's skin. We only think we can. I have known very poor people who had a tremendous talent for merriment and deep lasting affection. I'm sure they were better off than some of more highly placed individuals I've known who were tortured by self doubt, neurotic compulsions, uncontrollable appetites -- and resentment of Heaven-knows-what.
One man's meat is another's poison and all that.
And you are right in saying life will go on and do what it will regardless of whether you and I approve or not. It has been ever thus.
I just don't want us to plunge backward into a long period of darkness and barbarism -- the way Greece did after the brief, beautiful flowering of Athens' Golden Age.
Civilizations really do rise, decline and fall, then disappear leaving only precious remnants behind. But again, there's not a whole lot I could hope to do about it, so all this fret and worry really is a waste of time, isn't it?
Happy Sunday to you, Ma'am!
Some social conservatives and tea party fanatics would love to return to the days of yesteryear when Jim Crow laws were SOP, and political intimidation of voters at election precincts was frowned upon, yet widely tolerated ... and some justices on the SCOTUS appear to be all too eager to accommodate this quest for social devolution.
FreeThinke, perhaps anxious to bypass the Shaw's post topic, wrote: "Many bizarre, disturbing things -- including myriad linguistic atrocities -- entered American life in the mid 1960's and have subsequently been deemed "acceptable," . . ."
That could be said about any era. Twenty-three skidoo to you. Beat you, daddy, eight to the bar. Don't be such a square.
American English has largely displaced French as the closest thing we have to a universal world language in part because it's dynamic and evolving. Times and needs change. Indeed, change is the one constant in this life.
If you don't care for expressions such as "fact check," you can refrain from using them and try to ignore them when others do. Or, you can go to a mountaintop, live as a hermit, let moss grow on your north side and waste the rest of your life resenting and cursing the inevitable.
In the meantime, try to keep in mind that when a blogger writes a post and accepts comments, he or she does so expecting responses to be about the subject of the post. If you want to pontificate and scold about other things, such as language purity by your lights, you should do that in posts on your own blog.
Freethinke also wrote: "And by the way, Mr. Anderson, I'm certain that while compound nouns are, indeed, hyphenated compound verbs are not."
If you can read this through your tears, in "fact-check," "fact" is a noun, "check" is a verb, and your statement simply adds to the irrelevance of your diatribe.
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