If you live in Alabama and need to register to vote before the 2016 presidential election, it just got a little harder, especially if you live in any of the counties where black Americans make up more than 75% of the registered voting population.

Because due to "budget constraints" - 31 DMV offices are losing their driver's licenses examiners.

As John Archibald wrote in a column at AL.com, of the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters, 8 will lose their driver's license bureaus.

Of the 10 that voted in the highest percentages for Barack Obama, 8 of them had their offices closed.

And all five of the counties that voted most solidly democratic lost their driver license offices.

Which means that people within those majority-African American counties will need to travel to another county in order to get a driver's license, and that's a big problem for people who still need to register to vote.

Because the same Alabama Legislature that set up this voter suppression tactic also passed a bill in 2011 that requires all voters to have a photo ID.

This is almost certainly not a coincidence, it looks more like a concerted effort to suppress Black votes.

Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature is making it harder and harder for minorities and low-income people to get the type of photo ID that they will need in order to vote in the next elections.

But even if this isn't a targeted effort to suppress minority and low-income votes in the state, the end effect is that it fundamentally undermines our democracy by making it more difficult to register to vote in the counties that just lost their driver's license bureaus.

This bald-faced attempt to block minorities from voting should face a Justice Department investigation.

Read more here.

-Thom

Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10pm... Is the Great Conveyor Belt Failing? (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)

  

Thursday's Daily Stack 

Article: "Major Hurricane Joaquin to Impact Over 65 Million From South Carolina to Massachusetts" by Alex Sosnowski.

Article: "Donald Trump Says He Can Buy Politicians, None of His Rivals Disagree" by Lee Fang.

Quote: "You've got a choice between honest Socialists on the Left, like Bernie Sanders, and lying conservatives on the Right." - Bobby Jindal (video).

Article: "Kevin McCarthy Admits Benghazi Was All About Doing Political Harm To Hillary Clinton" by Karoli.

Article: "You can legally buy recreational pot in Oregon starting today" by Tom Huddleston, Jr.

Article: "5 of the Latest Marijuana Studies That Upend Decades of Myths and Fearmongering" by Paul Armentano.

Article: "Bernie Don't Get No Respect From Media" by Chris Weigant.

Article: "9/11 heroes face death as dysfunctional Congress lets Zadroga Act expire" by Cameron Joseph, Jennifer Fermino.

Video: Hillary Clinton returns to "Face The Nation" after four years.

Article: "New DEA Chief: Marijuana Has No Medical Use, Should Stay in Schedule " by Tom Angell.

Article: "Michele Leonhart, DEA Chief, Won't Say Whether Crack, Heroin Are Worse For Health Than Marijuana" by Nick Wing.

Article: "Voter ID and driver's license office closures black-out Alabama's Black Belt" by Kyle Whitmire .

Article: "Democrats Call For Immediate End To Benghazi Investigation After McCarthy Admits Fraud" by Jason Easley.

Article: "Bernie Sanders Tells the Truth: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on His Surging Campaign" by Democracy Now!

Law: "Glass-Steagall Act", 1933.

Article: "Senator Elizabeth Warren to Join Call to Alter Sales of Distressed Loans" by Matthew Goldstein.

Article: "Investor lawsuits pile up claiming US Treasury market is rigged" by Joe Rennison.

Article: "How to Spot the Reptilians Running the U.S. Government" by Philip Bump.

Law: "Sherman Antitrust Act", 1890.

Article: "Telecommunications Act of 1996" by Wikipedia.

Quote: "It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being at the essence of getting the nominations for president or elected president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and Congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election's over'." - President Jimmy Carter on unlimited money in politics on the Thom Hartmann Program, 28 July 2015.

Book: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times by Howard Zinn.

Article: "Fairness Doctrine" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Watch Hillary Clinton's Tense Meeting with Black Lives Matter Activists" by Kia Makarechi.

Article: "Shock Jock Thom Hartmann: Climate Change Deniers Should Be In Prison" by James Delingpole.

Documentary: Merchants of Doubt.

Article: "Tea Party Hypocrite Toppled by Sex Video" by Kelly Weill.

Article: "WikiLeaks Reveals the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Canada Post May Be Sold Under TPP Agreement" by Obert Madondo.

Article: "Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement" (TPP) by EFF.

Article: "CDC Scientist Still Maintains Agency Forced Researchers To Lie About Safety Of Mercury Based Vaccines" by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Article: "Hippocratic Oath" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Thou shalt not kill" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Republicans afraid of running against Bernie, want Hillary instead" by NorthCarolina.

Article: "First law of thermodynamics" by Wikipedia.

Book: "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Fifth Assessment Report" by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Article: "Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold 'blob' in the North Atlantic Ocean" by Chris Mooney.

Article: "Thermohaline circulation" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Shutdown of thermohaline circulation" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"" by Thom Hartmann, 2004.

Article: "The Danger of American Fascism" by Henry A. Wallace.

 

Talk Radio News Segment:
- Bob Ney 

Article: "Next Speaker Of The House Kevin McCarthy Admits Benghazi Investigation Is A Sham" by Jason Easley.

Article: "Rules" by Commmittee on Ethics.

Article: "Hillary Clinton's forceful response to a GOP leader's miscue on Benghazi" by Jonathan Allen.

Article: "Pelosi Calls On House GOP To End Benghazi Committee" by Ryan Prete.

Site: "Goats for the old Goat".

Site: Governor Free Don Siegelman.

Book: "Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men of Capitol Hill" by Robert Ney.

Article: "TRNS News Notes- 10/1" by Victoria Jones.

Article: "TRNS News Notes- 9/30" by Victoria Jones.

Hour Three: Free Speech Gets the Death Penalty
- Dahr Jamail, Truthout/The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible  

Article: "Free Speech Gets the Death Penalty" by Dahr Jamail.

Article: "First Amendment to the United States Constitution".

 

Video: Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen.

Article: "Homo sacer" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Freedom of the Press" by George Orwell.

Article: "Congressman uses misleading graph to smear Planned Parenthood" by Zachary Roth.

Article: "At least 13 killed in college shooting in Oregon" by BBC.

Article: "Bernie Sanders's Campaign, Hitting Fund-Raising Milestone, Broadens Focus" by Patrick Healy.

Article: "The Right Attacks Bernie Sanders As Michael Savage Calls Candidate a "Liberal Weasel Jew"" by Hrafnkell Haraldsson.

Article: "Walter Cronkite" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Gore: Florida climate crisis mired in politics" by Jenny Staletovich.

Article: "Local Global Warming Blamed For South Florida Severe Flooding" by Gary Nelson.

Site: Restore 49 - Let the People Speak (California).

Event: October 6, San Francisco "Rally to restore prop 49" (overturn Citizens United).

 

Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET 

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