Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that he’ll be pursuing a suit against the state of Texas for their voter ID laws, specifically to require certain states with a history of discrimination via the 50-year-old standard of the Voting Rights Act to submit changes to their administrative voting laws to the federal government for approval, regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue. Ergo, and in light of the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and March on Washington this week, we’ve most recently been treated to such delightfully fair-minded lines of progressive thought as, “Are conservatives the new confederates?” And, “Congratulations, Republicans. You have taken the place of Jim Crow.” …Hyperbole? Joe Scarborough certainly thinks so:

SCARBOROUGH: Not cross examining you here, I’ve been reading this and the new stories on it and makes it sound like we’re going back to Jim Crow laws, there are going to be white people with bull whips whipping black people if they come to vote and Bull Conner is there ready to release German Shepards. Again I ask innocently, does North Carolina or Texas require anything more than a picture I.D. that when somebody shows up to vote, that the person has a picture I.D. with them, that proves they are who they say they are? Anything else? … I’m not being cute here. I’m reading all of these stories that talk about basically you’re putting a white hood over the governor of North Carolina, putting a white hood over the entire Texas legislature, most Americans would think it’s not racist to ask somebody to just have a picture I.D. when they show up at the voting booth. But you read “the New York Times” and you read these other media outlets that again make politicians in North Carolina and Texas sound racist for just saying hey, you’re going to need a picture I.D. to prove you are who you are. I ask, Mike, Willie, Richard Haas, anybody, is there anything else in these laws other than a demand that somebody have a picture I.D. when they show up to vote?