9th Circuit: Photo ID Okay--Kirsten Powers Agrees

Sorry vote fraudsters: Even the super liberal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that the requirement to show a government-issued photo ID to vote is legal.

Earlier this week, the full (i.e., "en banc") court ruled in favor of 2004 Arizona ballot initiative--Proposition 200--requiring photo ID to cast a ballot. in Gonzalez v. Arizona, the appellate panel concluded that the mandate to show a driver's license or the equivalent was not discriminatory, as every common-sense person irrespective of ethnicity already knows.

As the Arizona Daily Star explains:

...the judges rejected arguments that mandating would-be voters show a driver's license or other identification unfairly discriminates against Latino voters. Judge Sandra Ikuta, writing for the majority, said while challengers made that claim, they failed to present any credible evidence.

The court disallowed one provision of the Arizona law that requires proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote using the federal form because it was inconsistent with the federal "Motor Voter Law," one of the worst pieces of legislation signed into law by then-president Bill Clinton. This issue will eventually find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kirsten Powers, one of the few liberal TV commentators who doesn't rely on propaganda and disinformation, says Democrats and liberals are trapped in the past with their obsessive opposition to photo ID laws:

Appeals Court: Millenium Bomber Sentence Not Tough Enough

The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has a reputation for "going rogue." The Supreme Court has reversed the 9th Circuit more than any other federal appeals court. However, in a complete role reversal, a divided 9th Circuit panel ruled that a lower court was too lenient in meting out a jail term for the so-called Millenium bomber:

The long legal battle of an al-Qaida-trained terrorist convicted in an attempted bombing on the millennium has taken another turn after an appeals court threw out his sentence and removed the trial judge from the case.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Tuesday said Ahmed Ressam's 22-year prison sentence is too lenient. Border agents in Washington state arrested the Algerian national in 1999 after he entered the United States from Canada on a ferry with a car packed with explosives. He was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

The appeals court also said Tuesday that it's taking the rare step of assigning the case to another trial judge because it doubts U.S. District Judge John Coughenour's impartiality in the matter.

...the appeals court said Ressam has an extensive criminal history and Coughenour's conclusions were "clearly erroneous." Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon said the Coughenour failed to take into account public safety with the 22-year prison sentence....

Ressam's case will be randomly assigned to another federal judge in Seattle in the coming weeks and it's expected that the Algerian national will receive a harsher sentence. A divided three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled Ressam, 41, deserves a much longer prison term because he had reneged on a deal to cooperate with terrorism investigators around the world.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, the defendant faces a prison sentence of 65 years to life. Incredibly, Judge Coughenour is a Reagan appointee.