the great Thomas Sowell on voter fraud

Pretty much every essay that Thomas Sowell writes is an important one, but that said, this is, I think, an important essay. An excerpt from the middle of the piece:

Since blacks and whites both have to show photo I.D. for everything from cashing checks to getting on a plane, why has requiring a photo I.D. for voting caused such shrill outcries?

Unfortunately, this is part of the cynical politics of promoting as much racial polarization and paranoia as possible, in hopes of getting more black voters to turn out to vote for the Democrats.

Nothing is too gross when promoting racial hysteria in an election year. Veteran Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel from Harlem declared that Republicans "don't disagree — they hate!" According to Rangel, "Some of them believe that slavery isn't over and that they won the Civil War!"

Republicans did win the Civil War. That's why there is no more slavery. It was a Republican president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that voted for the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery.

In the 1960s, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If we are going to talk about history, let's at least get the facts right.