Photo And Quote Of The Day - Selma, Alabama

President Obama speaks at Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015. (Getty Images)

... Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor.

How can that be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.

Full transcript of President Obama's address here.

Selma, Alabama

(That's John Lewis, now a Democratic Representative from Georgia, in the white trench coat getting his skull fractured in March 1965.)

Fifty years ago this weekend was "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama, a key turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.  The stomach-turning, violent police clubbing of peaceful protestors made many Americans who might have been, up until then, indifferent towards the movement civil rights converts.  Unfortunately, 50 years later, many of the spiritual heirs of the segregationist power structure are still indifferent, if not actively hostile:

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when civil rights activists trying to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to the state capital of Montgomery to work for voting rights were instead beaten with billy clubs by state troopers and local police. 

Nearly 100 members of Congress will be in Selma during a three-day event to mark the anniversary, as will President Obama and former President George W. Bush. The lawmakers who won't be there are the members of the Republican leadership team in the House of Representatives. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn't bothering to show up, either. 

There are dog whistles, then there are air raid sirens.