Following a ruling Friday by a federal judge, thousands of farmers who endured racial discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s should start receiving portions of a $1.25 billion settlement.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said in his written opinion that the proposed settlement, which creates a system of compensation for black farmers and their descendants who joined the class-action suit claiming discrimination by the government, is fair and workable.

“Historical discrimination cannot be undone,” Friedman wrote.

There are two compensation streams available to the farmers, depending on the individual paper trail in each case. The first stream, known as “Track A” would provide an uncontested payout of $50,000 to qualified claimants. The second stream, known as “Track B,” could provide up to $250,000, but requires more documentation of wrongdoing. Farmer must choose one track or the other, and it is estimated that nearly 70,000 farmers across the nation will be eligible for compensation. More details regarding the plan can be found in an earlier report by The Iowa Independent.

The black farmers’ case is an outgrowth of Pigford v. Glickman, a federal class-action lawsuit originally settled in 1999. The farmers alleged that the USDA had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by maintaining a pattern and practice of discrimination against African American farmers.  Such pattern and practice delayed, denied, or otherwise frustrated the efforts of African American farmers to obtain loan assistance and to engage in the vocation of farming, they said.

By next year's election, poor penmanship might be reason enough to disqualify a voter's mailed absentee ballot in Virginia.

The Republican-controlled State Board of Elections withdrew one set of rules governing absentee ballots - they gave election officials more leeway to count the ballots of voters who made mistakes filling them out - and substituted them with less-flexible guidelines.

The change comes as Republicans in other states work to tighten election laws ahead of the presidential election, a move some observers contend is part of a campaign to reduce turnout among voters, particularly Democratic-leaning ones, next year.

More than 5 million voters in some battleground states could face greater difficulties in voting because of stricter election policies on voter identification, registration and early voting, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

The study concluded those "new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities" and they have the potential to "sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election."

Virginia's absentee ballot proposal is "in line with what we're seeing across the country, which we perceive to be the most widespread voter suppression effort since Reconstruction," said Judith Browne-Dianis, a co-director of the Advancement Project, which lobbies for more open voting policies.

Removed from the current state absentee ballot regulation is language in the previous version that made it clear that illegible voter or witness signatures on a ballot wouldn't invalidate it, and a catch-all paragraph that specified ballots wouldn't be tossed if a voter's identity could be otherwise confirmed by election officials.

For several weeks, the White House has maintained that the American Jobs Act had a legitimate shot in Congress. It's a good plan, which includes ideas from both parties, and which has drawn praise from economists from across the spectrum. Its provisions are broadly popular, and with some public pressure, President Obama believes lawmakers could be pressed to do the right thing.

And while, under normal circumstances, this is exactly the kind of jobs bill that a Congress and a White House would work together to pass, the fantasy came to a rather abrupt halt yesterday afternoon.

In the morning, the president told reporters before a cabinet meeting that he'd like to see the House and Senate vote on the American Jobs Act before the end of October. "If there are aspects of the bill [Republicans] don't like," Obama said, "they should tell us what it is that they're not willing to go for."

Soon after, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters that congressional Republicans aren't willing to go for much of anything.

Cantor said the House would not bring up the president's American Jobs Act for a vote as a whole, but by the end of the month would move forward with elements supported by GOP leaders, including three pending trade agreements and a reduction in the withholding tax for businesses.

"The president continues to say, 'Pass my bill in its entirety.' As I've said from the outset, the all-or-nothing approach is just unacceptable," Cantor told reporters Monday in his weekly Capitol briefing. [...]

Asked directly if the bill was dead as a comprehensive package, Cantor replied, "Yes."

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Does Virginia Republican Eric Cantor have a problem meeting with voters who might be critical of him?

In October, Cantor, now House majority leader, was attending an electoral “meet and greet” at a small eatery in the tiny town of Louisa within his 7th District. Local Democrat John Taylor and three others, one of whom carried a sign boosting Cantor’s opponent, wanted to “ask Cantor some questions.” Taylor ended up being forcibly removed from the coffee shop and pinned to the ground by police.

On Wednesday, Cantor was in Midlothian in suburban Richmond at a hotel conference center holding a meeting of his “advisory council.” The news media was banned from the room as 200 protestors rallied outside complaining of Cantor’s big business ties and his failure to create jobs.