Bigfoot Is A Red Brother

Here’s a uniquely bizarre biological perspective that probably wouldn’t wash even in Shelby County, Alabama. Bigfoot is Native American. Honest injun! (via SGU# 397)

So what’s this all about? Why, exactly, is Ketchum struggling so mightily to prove that Bigfoot exist? Though Ketchum is charging for copies of her article, her motivation is likely not profit, since she’s not going to get rich from her research. Nor is it fame, since the paper is garnering universally scathing reviews from scientists, which can only further tarnish her reputation.

Instead, the answer may surprise you: Ketchum sees her research as an important first step in obtaining legal status for Bigfoot, which she believes are an undiscovered Native American population. Ketchum issued a statement demanding that the U.S. “Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a ‘license’ to hunt, trap, or kill them.”

Sore Losers Grumbling To SCOTUS

Here’s an example – in a debate stretched over two segments on Up w/ Chris Hayes, Why States Are Treated Differently Under Section 5 and What Section 5 Has Accomplished – of how conservatives move the goalposts in any context where a minority’s privileges are successfully challenged, in this case voting rights. It’s hard to distinguish The National Center for Public Policy Research line from conservative boilerplate.

In the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric H. Holder, Jr., Shelby County officials want the Court to invalidate “preclearance” standards imposed on specific states and localities by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Due to reports of discriminatory behavior during the 1964 elections, states and localities covered under the Act are required to obtain federal approval for all voting procedure changes. This requirement, imposed 48 years ago, was intended to be temporary.

Although preclearance standards were considered to be an “extreme temporary measure” when adopted, Congress has repeatedly failed to address changing demographics and the evolution of American society during reauthorizations of the Act. As noted in Project 21‘s brief: “Section 5… is not consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution… [N]ew circumstances now place even covered jurisdictions well ahead of where non-covered jurisdictions were in 1965, and provide an ongoing political check against backsliding. The urgent necessity for extreme measures such as preclearance is thus well past, and such legislation is no longer appropriate.”