By Brad Friedman on 12/9/2014, 6:35am PT  

We'll let our friend Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks handle this one...

"Deep irony", indeed.

In addition to the bizarre questions from Louisiana's literacy test for African-American voters in the 1960s that Cenk cites above, here are some of the ridiculously difficult questions from one of Alabama's Jim Crow-era tests [PDF] that we cited back in 2010 when immigration foe and former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo was similarly calling for literacy tests:

"If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?"

"If a president does not wish to sign a bill, how many days is he allowed in which to return it to Congress for consideration?"

"If the United States wishes to purchase land for an arsenal and have exclusive legislative authority over it, consent is required from [fill in the blank]."

Yes, it's ironic that these idiots from Fox "News" and elsewhere on the right seem to know so little about American history that they'd call for literacy tests for voters without understanding that such tests were found to be illegal and unconstitutional as practiced in the Jim Crow South. Aside from being ironic, however, it's also very lucky for brain-dead Fox viewers that literacy tests aren't required for voting, given that study after study after study find them among the least informed Americans.

[Hat-tip @DRTucker]

Share article...