In a momentous 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court Tuesday invalidated a major provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that mandated federal oversight of election laws in states with a history of discriminatory practices.

I had not thought that there was anything new to say in the debate over same-sex marriage.

We stand together, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio and a senior appointee in three Republican presidential administrations, united in our support for the freedom to marry and an end to the discrimination caused by the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which treats one legally married couple differently from another.

Three years ago, in the widely watched case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court did something that many court observers found astonishing: It gave Congress an opportunity to, in effect, do over some provisions of the Voting Rights Act it reauthorized in 2006.

Yes, we need to revamp our mental health laws and state policies, but the relationship between gun violence and severe mental illness is a tenuous one: the vast majority of people with schizophrenia, bipolar illness and other psychotic disorders are not violent and most violence is not committed by people who are mentally ill. 

Cynthia Tucker, in her confessional editorial in the South’s premier newspaper, was too hard on herself. She had long supported race-conscious districting, but her erstwhile convictions had been those of the entire civil rights community and of elected officials across the political spectrum who saw such districting as one litmus test of a commitment to racial equality.

A now-irrelevant provision of the Voting Rights Act may soon be no more.