Two Other Good Reads from The Times

First, there's this editorial on states like Florida who refuse voting privileges to those who have finished jail sentences:

About 4.7 million Americans, more than 2 percent of the adult population, are barred from voting because of a felony conviction. Denying the vote to ex-offenders is antidemocratic, and undermines the nation's commitment to rehabilitating people who have paid their debt to society. Felon disenfranchisement laws also have a sizable racial impact: 13 percent of black men have had their votes taken away, seven times the national average. But even if it were acceptable as policy, denying felons the vote has been a disaster because of the chaotic and partisan way it has been carried out.

Thirty-five states prohibit at least some people from voting after they have been released from prison. The rules about which felonies are covered and when the right to vote is restored vary widely from state to state, and often defy logic. In four states, including New York, felons on parole cannot vote, but felons on probation can. In some states, felons must formally apply for restoration of their voting rights, which state officials can grant or deny on the most arbitrary of grounds."

There is also this one on the Israeli security wall:

Two very different courts issued two very different judgments recently on the separation barrier Israel is building through the West Bank. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that Israel had the right to build a security barrier on occupied territory, but that certain sections posed an undue hardship on Palestinians and had to be rerouted. The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled on Friday that all of the barrier built on occupied territory was unlawful.

The Palestinians will fashion the nonbinding ruling from The Hague into a political battering ram, but their greatest victory may lie in the similarities between the international and Israeli rulings. In his opinion, Aharon Barak, the Israeli chief justice, agreed that Israel holds the West Bank "in belligerent occupation" and is therefore subject to international law. The court accepted, moreover, that Israel cannot build barriers on occupied land if their purpose is political or "motivated by the desire to annex territory." It held that Zionist ideology is not an acceptable justification for seizing occupied lands.

The emphasis on the last part is mine, something I'd like desperately to point out to some wing-nut jerks here at home.