The Political Grapevine: No more responsibilities

And now the most compelling two minutes in television, the  latest from Special Report's "Political Grapevine."

No more responsibilities!

A voter rights group is suing Florida officials to block part of the state's new election reform bill.  The Florida Voters League, a project of the ACLU, objects to the list of voter responsibilities to be posted in polling places along with a list of voter rights.

Those responsibilities, which are not mandatory under the law, include "studying and knowing candidates and issues, bringing proper identification to the polling station, and checking completed ballots for accuracy."  JoNel Newman, a lawyer for the Voters League said such responsibilities were "a step so far backward as to be a literacy test."

Calls for Condit to quit... or not

The first House Democrat has called for Gary Condit's resignation.  On a Pittsburgh TV show Wednesday night, Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle said, "I think it would be in the best interest of his constituents that he resign.  I think he's lost credibility."

In the morning, though, Doyle issued a clarification claiming that  what he meant to say is that Condit's constituents must decide, adding, "I'm not calling for Gary's resignation."

The war of the rubbish

No less a feminist than the British author Doris Lessing says men are the new victims of sexism.

In a speech at the Edinburgh book festival this week, Lessing said that feminism has achieved great things but asked, "Why did this have to be at the cost of men?"  She described auditing an elementary school class in which the teacher told 9- and 10-year-old boys and girls that "the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men."

"It is time," said Lessing, "that we begin to ask, 'Who are these women who continually rubbish men?'  The most stupid, ill-educated, and nasty women can rubbish the nicest, kindest, and most intelligent man, and no one protests."

Bipartisan immigration plan

The New York Times in a story Wednesday reported sympathetically on the case of a cattle farmer from Colombia who ended up in jail when he tried to get political asylum in this country.  The story partly blamed the man's ordeal on what it referred to as "a Republican-backed law passed five years ago."

As journalist Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic points out, that immigration law passed five years ago cleared the U.S. Senate by 97 to 3 and the House by 387 to 87 and was signed by President Clinton.

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