"There is a purity, a simplicity..." to Eric Holder's fight for voter rights.

Asserts Jeffrey Toobin... mystifyingly. Holder is fighting against voter ID laws, and the argument that these laws violate rights isn't pure and simple, as Toobin's own article shows. So why is Toobin saying that? It's by contrast to all the other issues that Holder might want to use "to define his legacy as Attorney General — as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York."

There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae.

Why be sad? The straightforward civil-rights battles have been won. Those that are left are questionable. That's good. Unless you define the good in terms of opportunities for Eric Holder to define his legacy.

It's about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. [Voter ID] laws are, quite literally, indefensible...

Ridiculous! They're completely defensible. The case law is clear that requiring an ID doesn't violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court said so in 2008, in a 6-3 case. Holder still has a chance to use statutory law against the states that are covered by the Voting Rights Act, but to do that he'll have to argue for a broad interpretation of congressional powers, and what's pure and simple about that?