In June, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, effectively reaffirming states’ sovereignty in determining their own voting procedures and their right to institute their own voter ID laws — but evidently, that doesn’t much matter to President Obama’s Department of Justice. Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to get around that ruling and is currently preparing a fresh bout of legal action across the country to preserve some of the federal government’s power, specifically to force certain states to obtain the DOJ’s “pre-clearance” before they can change their election laws.

Holder has Texas locked in his sights, and Gov. Perry is obviously not pleased about it. Via The Hill:

Attorney General Eric Holder’s move to require that Texas seek federal approval before changing its voting laws shows an “utter contempt” for the Constitution, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Thursday.

“Once again, the Obama administration is demonstrating utter contempt for our country’s system of checks and balances, not to mention the U.S. Constitution,” Perry said in a statement.

“This end-run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state’s common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process.”

Of course the Supreme Court’s invalidation of federal oversight over states’ election laws wasn’t going to go over well with the Obama administration, but the implicit and continuing crusade to disallow states from requiring identification to vote is getting out of control; as Krauthammer put it last night: “It seems utterly logical that you would have to ask for a simple demonstration that you are of age, that you live where you live, you aren’t a felon, and in fact that you haven’t voted an hour and a half before. And in fact, it’s not even a question of logic, it’s a question of law. … What Holder is doing is, he wants to stigmatize [voter ID] and to go after any state that actually institutes it. I think he’s got a very weak case.”