Regarding the Eric Holder brief kerfuffle, I have obtained and uploaded the briefs and other documents for your perusal. They are listed after the jump.

Last Friday, David Savage had this article in the LA Times saying, among other things, "The six briefs to the Supreme Court were not Holder's work alone. In every instance, he was one of a group of prominent lawyers or ex-judges who signed a friend-of-the-court brief."

I expect that is an understatement. It would not surprise me if Holder did not write a single word of any of the briefs. He has been part of an irksome trend toward filing group amicus briefs filed for the purpose of assembling a bunch of names that some people might find impressive, often on a brief that contributes little of substance beyond the arguments submitted by the parties. I doubt such name-dropping has much impact on the Court.

Along with the Padilla briefs that have gotten most of the press, Holder also signed on to a brief arguing that taking the vote away from people who have committed felonies is a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because it is supposedly racial discrimination. This view turns the notion of racial prejudice completely on its head. "Prejudice" means pre-judging people. It means forming a judgment about someone's character before you have individualized information, based on a group characteristic such as race. A judgment made and consequence imposed after the person's individual behavior has been proved (in criminal cases, beyond a reasonable doubt) is the antithesis of prejudice. To say that we should refrain from letting people bear the consequences of their individual, voluntary acts because of how racial numbers break down is the opposite of the color-blind ideal of judging according to the content of one's character rather than the color of his skin.