Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of September 2, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

Scott Olson/Getty Images
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Voter ID

According to the Texas Tribune, Texas' voter ID law is heading to court today.

The three-year-old Texas voter ID law heads to federal court on Tuesday in Corpus Christi, where a judge will determine whether the state's measure requiring voters to present photo identification at polling places is unfair to minority voters.

Conservatives backed the 2011 law, claiming it was the best way to combat voter fraud. Proponents of the law say that even if a voter doesn't have an ID, it is not something that hard to get.

“Most every Texan already has a valid ID, but if they don’t they can get one for free," said Lauren Bean, spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. "Voter ID has already been used in several elections in Texas without the disenfranchisement claimed by partisans who seem to be against election integrity.”

But opponents have said there's little evidence that voter fraud is a problem and claim the law is a way to keep voters aligned with the Democratic Party from showing to vote.

The Texas voter ID law gives state voters a choice among five forms of photo ID — including a driver's license, passport or concealed handgun license — to present to election workers at polling places.

On Tuesday, the  plaintiffs, who include U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, and the NAACP and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, will try to convince U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos that the law puts an unfair burden on minority voters.

The trial, expected to take two weeks, will focus on statisical data from both sides.

The case is one of the key national test cases involving the U.S. Department of Justice's attempt to deal with laws that popped up after last year's Supreme Court ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case. In that case, the justices had struck down the part of the federal Voting Rights Act that had required Texas to submit its voting changes for federal approval, clearing the way for the Texas voter ID law.

“The question is whether the remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act can provide a good substitute for the Department of Justice to try to rein in what it views as impermissible infringement on the right to vote,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Irvine.

Texas’ law is more restrictive than similar laws in other states, Hasen said, with fewer ID options that do not include some common forms like student ID.

Fraud is everywhere in the United States as is identity theft. Showing an ID doesn't hurt anyone out there and I've yet to hear an argument against Voter ID that doesn't sound like an like a larger than life scare tactic.

Cruz Talks Shutdown

Will there be a government shutdown because of the ongoing immigration battle? According to TheHill, Senator Ted Cruz dismissed any talk of that happening.

 “There is one person and one person only talking about shutting down the government, and that is the White House,” he told The Washington Post after offering a blistering critique of the administration’s policies at the Americans For Prosperity conference in Dallas.

Last October, Cruz led a conservative charge to shut down the government rather than fund ObamaCare.

The president is reportedly weighing circumventing congressional lawmakers, possibly before the end of the summer, to implement some measure of immigration reform.

Speaking before the conference, Cruz told the crowd that Obama “has no authority to prospectively grant amnesty to anyone.”

He warned if the president did move forward without Congress, doing so “would be utterly lawless.”

Cruz told reporters that the next presidential election is "going to be very much like 1980 -- it took Jimmy Carter to give us Ronald Reagan.”

The president is “going to produce new leadership in the Republican Party that brings up back to the principles this country was founded on,” he predicted.

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These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.

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