<x-flowed>is the front-page Washington Post article on the voting rights section of the Justice Department (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/22/AR2006012200984.html), linked to in my morning e-mail.

Without the Supreme Court's developments today, I expect we would have seen more focus on this article.  It was not that there was too much new in it---it mostly recounted the very important earlier reporting by the Post on the controversy at DOJ (over Texas redistricting, Georgia voter i.d., and the directive that career attorneys not make recommendations in major section 5 cases). But it was a page 1 article featuring quotes from Joe Rich, and this comprehensive article is bound to get attention when Congress (particularly on the Senate side) considers whether changes are in order to the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, coming up for renewal in 2007.