Honoring MLK by Restricting the Right to Vote

Jared Patterson is running in the 2014 GOP primary to replace Angie Chen Button as representative in Texas House District 112. He posted this on Facebook the morning of August 28, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech:

Fifty years ago, a Christian conservative stood before the nation to proclaim his Dream. May we honor the content AND context of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech.

Source: Jared Patterson, Facebook.

Just ten hours earlier, the same Jared Patterson posted this on Facebook:

Voter ID laws have to be among the most common sense pieces of legislation during my lifetime.

Source: Jared Patterson, Facebook.

Somehow, I don't see the sentiment expressed here as being compatible with honoring either the content or context of MLK's speech.

After the jump, how far have we come in 50 years?

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We really have come a long way in 50 years. That's longer than Jared Patterson's lifetime, so it's understandable if his "common sense" was formed without the context of history. He is blind to the obvious contradiction between praising MLK's March for Freedom and praising a 2013 law that, for the first time in 50 years, puts new restrictions on the fundamental right to vote.

"A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon." -- Bill Clinton, August 28, 2013. Now that is what I call common sense.