In a speech at the American Bar Association, Â Hillary Clinton says that there is a new effort to obstruct voting "often undercover of addressing a phantom epidemic of election fraud" and takes issue with the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act ruling. 
 
 Hillary Clinton offered some of her sharpest political rhetoric since stepping down as secretary of state on Monday when she roundly criticized stricter voter ID laws and a recent Supreme Court decision striking down a central component of the Voting Rights Act. 
 
 Clinton, who is viewed as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, decried a series of state laws enacted — often by Republicans — to tighten restrictions on who may vote in elections. 
 
 Clinton criticized a "sweeping effort to construct new obstacles to voting, often under cover of addressing a phantom epidemic of 'election fraud.'" 
 
 And she said that those laws have driven a disparity in access to the ballot, which Clinton claimed threatened to undermine the thrust of the Voting Rights Act, the historic, 1960s-era civil rights legislation. 
 
 "Now, not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," she said. 
 
 Clinton later urged her former colleagues on Capitol Hill to fix "the hole opened up by the Supreme Court's ruling," warning otherwise that "historical progress toward a 'more perfect union' will go backward, not forward." 
 
 Her remarks at times resembled a formal policy address delivered by candidates for office — a tantalizing glimpse of the presidential campaign many Democrats hope Clinton will mount come the next election. 
 
 To improve access to voting, Clinton also encouraged the Justice Department to more rigorously enforce voting laws left on the books, and urged Congress to pass legislation to replace portions of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court this June. She also urged fellow lawyers, gathered for the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco, to step up their own efforts on behalf of voting rights. 
 
 She also endorsed legislation to make voting easier in a variety of ways, for instance by working to reduce waiting times at polling places, and address disparities in access to voting. 
 
 The speech was one of the most overtly political steps taken by Clinton in the six months since she left the Obama administration to return to private life. 
 
 Moreover, Clinton said today's speech was a first in a series of remarks she'd deliver this year; the former New York senator said she would address transparency of national security programs next month, and speak to global issues this autumn. 
 
 The speeches help lay the groundwork for and outline the rationale for a potential Clinton presidential candidacy in 2016. She spoke to the barriers many communities have faced throughout U.S. history — an oblique reference to the possibility that her own candidacy might shatter the glass ceiling for women seeking the presidency. 
 
 "Despite our founding principles and the many ways our Constitution protects individual liberties, we do — let's admit it — have a long history of shutting people out. African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities," she said. ||||| As Hillary Rodham Clinton weighs a second presidential run, there are certain steps she needs to take along the way to a decision. She took a couple of them in San Francisco Monday afternoon in a speech about voting rights. 
 
 Clinton can afford to keep a low public profile more than the other potential 2016ers. But she simply can't be a non-factor on the big issues of the day. If she were to do that, she'd face criticism that she was absent from the political debate for a couple of years, assuming she makes an announcement after the 2014 midterms. 
 
 She dove right into one big issue on Monday, weighing in with a lengthy take on a matter that has fired up the Democratic base. 
 
 When the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in June, Democrats all the way up to President Obama expressed swift and sharp disappointment. Meanwhile, the state-by-state battle over voter ID laws has also been a galvanizing force for party activists and leaders. The debate has thrust issues of race into the forefront of the political conversation. 
 
 “Anyone that says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention,” Clinton told the annual gathering of the American Bar Association. She also criticized the court's ruling and singled out the states that have, in her view, the most voting repressive laws. 
 
 In all, it was a pretty impassioned address. It was also a necessary one for the potential White House contender. 
 
 Clinton doesn't need to cobble together a coalition in early nominating states or build the trust of key donors and power brokers like some other potential candidates do. Many Democrats are already lining up -- privately and publicly -- to support her, and she'd be the instant Democratic front-runner the moment she says the words. 
 
 But Clinton does need to get in the game, so to speak, on some key issues. Voting rights is one, not only for the reasons mentioned above. It's also a topic over which Clinton could begin to make her case as the heir apparent to Obama and try to persuade parts of his coalition -- minorities and liberals in particular -- to back her. 
 
 Gay marriage, for which she announced her support in March, is another. And there are more. 
 
 All of which brings us to the second thing Clinton did: She signaled that she will be weighing on other big issues in the coming months. 
 
 "Next month at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, I will talk about the balance and transparency necessary in our national security policies, as we move beyond a decade of wars to face new threats," Clinton said. "And later in the fall, I will address the implications of these issues for America's global leadership and our moral standing around the world." 
 
 The question of whether Clinton will run for president remains up in the air. Until she says yes or no, her every move will be scrutinized. And she'll be expected to weigh in, to some extent, on the issues the Democratic base are most concerned with right now. And that's just what she did on Monday. 
 
 Fixbits: 
 
 It's Election Day in New Jersey! Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. 
 
 Obama will tout his economic message on a bus tour of New York and Pennsylvania next week. 
 
 North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed an extensive voter ID law. 
 
 South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is officially running for reelection. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Democrats will have a candidate for the West Virginia Senate race to announce shortly. 
 
 Ron Paul said it's "safe to say" he is not a fan of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). 
 
 The NRCC is hitting Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) with a $10,000 ad buy. 
 
 Anthony Weiner said the coverage of his campaign has been "fairly brutal." 
 
 Must-reads: 
 
 "Gansler said rival Brown relying on race in Maryland governor’s contest" -- John Wagner, Washington Post 
 
 "Eric Holder’s ‘mandatory minimums’ gamble" -- Josh Gerstein, Politico ||||| An activist challenged Hillary Clinton's record on race Feb. 24, during a private fundraising event in Charleston, S.C. (YouTube/#NotASuperpredator) 
 
 “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today,” Hillary Clinton told me in a statement when I asked her what she would have said to Ashley Williams, the activist who interrupted Clinton at a Charleston, S.C., fundraiser Wednesday night. 
 
 Unfurling a banner that read “We have to bring them to heel,” Williams wanted the Democratic presidential candidate to “explain for the record” why she “called black youth ‘superpredators’.” Before Williams was escorted out of the event, she asked, “How come you didn’t address that in the prior debate?” Clinton replied, “You know what? Nobody’s ever asked me before. You’re the first person to ask me and I’m happy to address it.” Clinton never got the chance to. Williams was gone. 
 
 So, I asked Clinton for a response. Here’s what she told me in full. 
 
 In that speech, I was talking about the impact violent crime and vicious drug cartels were having on communities across the country and the particular danger they posed to children and families. Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today. My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society. Kids who never got the chance they deserved. And unfortunately today, there are way too many of those kids, especially in African-American communities. We haven’t done right by them. We need to. We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline. As an advocate, as First Lady, as Senator, I was a champion for children. And my campaign for president is about breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of all kids, so every one of them can live up to their God-given potential. 
 
 “That speech” was a 1996 address at New Hampshire’s Keene State College in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, otherwise known as the crime bill. In her remarks, then-first lady Clinton said, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘superpredators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” 
 
 This isn’t the broad brush Clinton’s critics today are accusing her of using 20 years ago. Despite Williams’s assertion that “I know you called black youth ‘superpredators,’” Clinton was clearly talking about a narrow band of young people who would not have included the admirably assertive Williams or the vast majority of African American youths then and now. And in light of the overarching fear of crime across the United States back in the 1990s, Clinton’s going out of her way to define “superpredator” as a kid with “no conscience, no empathy” is noteworthy. 
 
 Also noteworthy is Clinton saying then, “We can talk about why they ended up that way.” I highlight that because Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s presidential campaign rival and then a member of the House, gave an impassioned floor speech in 1994 raising questions about cause and effect. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is my firm belief that clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them. But it is also my view that through the neglect of our Government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence. 
 
 The 1994 crime bill, the statute that many African Americans single out as the cause of mass incarceration of blacks over the past 20 years and that many in the criminal justice field view as a mistake, passed the House with 235 votes. Sanders joined 188 Democrats and 46 Republicans in voting “aye.” 
 
 
 
 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee, on Feb. 11. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images) 
 
 No one would question Sanders’s commitment to justice before or after he voted for the crime bill. Nor should anyone do the same to Clinton, who didn’t even have a vote. Sure, her words sting in the light of 2016, but they should not blind anyone to what she did before and after she uttered those 42 words in the span of 12 seconds. 
 
 At the time Clinton was speaking, she was talking about body cameras, which is part of Clinton’s criminal justice platform that she first outlined in a major address last April. The same speech where she said, “It’s time to change our approach. It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration.” 
 
 Pushing Clinton on her past statements as Williams did is eminently fair. What isn’t fair is ignoring what Clinton promises to do to fix the glaring problems unleashed by a bill Sanders voted for and Clinton’s husband signed into law. 
 
 Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj ||||| February 11, 2016 - Former President Bill Clinton delivers a speech Thursday at Whitehaven High School in support of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is running for President of the United States. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) 
 
 SHARE February 11, 2016 - Kinslee Miller, 7, naps as former President Bill Clinton delivers a speech at Whitehaven High School in support of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is running for President of the United States. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) February 10, 2016 - Whitehaven High School government teacher Brian Davis holds a copy of Bill Clinton's book, "My Life," while standing in line at his school with daughter, Elizabeth Davis, 10, as they wait to see former President Bill Clinton speak. Clinton is in Memphis to campaign for his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is running for president of the United States. "I just thought it would be a really cool opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share with my students. How many times do you get to hear a former president talk in person?" (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) 
 
 By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal 
 
 This story has been changed to clarify a quote in the 10th and 11th paragraphs. 
 
 Hundreds packed into the Whitehaven High School gymnasium Thursday to hear former President Bill Clinton stump for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Bill Clinton, a giant state flag behind him, spoke largely on issues that plague Memphis, including high unemployment, violent crime and poverty, and said Hillary would help America "grow together." 
 
 "Without an economy that works for everybody, we can't be one America, and we can't go forward together," Clinton said. 
 
 Clinton also hit on several campaign issues, including the need to improve the economy, create more jobs, lower health care co-payments, and free college tuition for people with lower incomes. He even acknowledged the anger at the status quo that has boosted the campaigns of his wife's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, and Republican candidate Donald Trump. 
 
 "Why is everyone so mad and full of anxiety? Because we got jobs back but not income, but not enough jobs," he said. 
 
 The former president said science has shown that people are genetically 99.5 percent the same, but some people are "fixated" on the 0.5 percent that makes people different. "So what we need now is to say: 'How can we act like we're all 99.5 percent the same?'" 
 
 Clinton came to Memphis as his wife's campaign ramps up its effort to reach voters in the state after the start of early voting Wednesday in the state and before the March 1 "Super Tuesday" primary election. 
 
 Clinton paid homage to Memphis' good qualities as well, singling out St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for not requiring patients to pay, and said that's how health care should work. 
 
 "We need health care plans to induce doctors to do what they do at St. Jude, where nobody pays," he said. 
 
 But in talking about the struggles of middle- and lower-class America, Clinton said the country's financial system is "rigged." 
 
 "Yeah, it's rigged, because you don't have a president who's a change-maker, who, with a Congress who will work with him. But the president has done a better job than he has gotten credit for." 
 
 He wrapped up at about the same time the sixth Democratic debate started in Wisconsin. 
 
 U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen introduced Clinton, and said Hillary would continue her husband's legacy of creating economic prosperity for all. 
 
 "She's helping out the women, she's helping out the children, she's ready to go into the White House on Day One," said state Rep. Raumesh Akbari, who with Rep. Joe Towns warmed up the standing-room-only crowd before Clinton's arrival. 
 
 The crowd of more than 650 was diverse in age, race, gender, and where they lived in the area, as well as the reasons why they were there. 
 
 Marietta Bridgeforth, wrapped in a black coat and wearing a toboggan to ward off the cold, sat on the steps outside the event while her son held her place in line. 
 
 Bridgeforth, a Whitehaven resident, said she hadn't decided whether Hillary Clinton would get her vote. She said she wanted to hear more about what Clinton would do to make college education more affordable, which she said could help ease some of Memphis' problems, including high poverty and violent crime rates. 
 
 But is Clinton the best one to tackle that problem? "I really don't know. I just don't know," she said. 
 
 Shelby County Schools Superintendent Dorsey Hopson said Clinton's words on poverty stuck out to him the most. 
 
 "All of it goes back to education," he said. 
 
 Several students were also in attendance. 
 
 Adrena Nelson, a 17-year-old junior, said the event was exciting for her as she narrows down her choices of whom to vote for when she turns 18. 
 
 "It's neat for a school like Whitehaven," she said. Nelson said the words that resonated with her the most were about lowering the cost of college tuition. 
 
 Kyrohbi Jones, a 15-year-old member of the Whitehaven marching band that played before Clinton's speech, said he was glad to hear Clinton talk about racial issues. 
 
 "It's good to hear... somebody as big as Bill Clinton say 'Black Lives Matter,' " he said. 
 
 Waiting in the long line before the event, LaMesa Cole of Southaven said she hopes 10-year-old daughter Leah Cole will be inspired by Hillary Clinton's campaign. 
 
 "I want my daughter to see anything is possible," she said. 
 
 Cole said she is an aspiring business owner, and hoped to hear Bill Clinton speak to what Hillary Clinton would do to help black, female entrepreneurs. 
 
 Clinton was the pick of 47 percent of self-described Democrats in the state in a recent poll by Middle Tennessee State University, compared to the 15 percent who picked her rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, and 26 percent who were still undecided. 
 
 Clinton's next challenge will be in the Nevada primaries, which could settle the question about whether Sanders will lose the steam he built from a narrow loss in Iowa and a nearly 22-point victory in New Hampshire. 
 
 Nevada could also show how the candidates do in a state that's more racially diverse than the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, Sanders won almost every demographic, including women and young voters. 
 
 Clinton's team announced the rally this week, and state Republicans were quick to seize on the late notice as a sign that Clinton's campaign was "scrambling in response to the surging of a Socialist (Bernie Sanders)." 
 
 "But parachuting in Bill Clinton, hastily opening offices at the last minute and trying to out-flank a Socialist aren't going to be enough," TNGOP Executive Director Brent Leatherwood said in a prepared statement. "It looks increasingly likely that Tennessee is poised to deliver another loss to the Clinton campaign." 
 
 Sanders' office is already operational, with seven staff members and a grand opening set for Saturday. 
 
 Staff reporter Jennifer Pignolet contributed to this story. ||||| WASHINGTON/NEW YORK Hillary Clinton will announce her second run for the presidency on Sunday, starting her campaign as the Democrats' best hope of fending off a crowded field of lesser-known Republican rivals and retaining the White House. 
 
 The overwhelming favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton will nonetheless face multiple challenges as she returns to the campaign trail seven years after losing the nomination in 2008 to Barack Obama. 
 
 She has been a high-profile figure in American politics for more than two decades since her husband, Bill Clinton, won the presidency in 1992, and her fame still eclipses the other likely Democratic contenders and Republican opponents. 
 
 But with the fame comes a set of challenges Clinton will need to overcome in the coming months. She will try to get past a controversy over her use of personal email while secretary of state, and find a way to connect with ordinary Americans after her years as the top U.S. diplomat. 
 
 Her advisers, including her husband, have urged her to take nothing for granted, arguing voters would be repelled by anything that resembles a pre-ordained coronation. 
 
 A Democrat close to the Clinton camp told Reuters on Friday that Clinton, who is also a former U.S. senator, would announce her long-anticipated plans through video and social media. 
 
 After the announcement, she will travel to the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, said the source, who asked to remain unidentified. 
 
 A representative for Clinton declined to comment. 
 
 Clinton, 67, has sounded out potential campaign themes during public appearances, casting herself as both a love-filled new grandmother with a vested concern in the future and a wise former diplomat who understands how countries thrive and fail. 
 
 In contrast to her 2008 campaign, Clinton has shown signs she will not play down how being a woman distinguishes her from the 44 men who have served as U.S. president. 
 
 She has filled speeches with paeans to the moral and economic importance of gender equality and women's rights, arguing that economic growth, the health of the middle class and the stability of foreign peace treaties all hinge on reducing gender discrimination. 
 
 "Just think about all the hard-working families that depend on two incomes to make ends meet," Clinton said in a paid speech at a conference for women technology executives in California's Silicon Valley, citing her own experience of raising a young daughter while working as a partner at an Arkansas law firm in the 1980s. "When one is short-changed, the entire family suffers." 
 
 What this might mean in terms of policy proposals is vague, although Clinton said in the same speech she was "embarrassed" that the United States remained one of the few countries where there is no national right to paid family leave. 
 
 There are a dozen or so likely Republican contenders vying for the presidency, many still relatively unknown. Clinton has a different task: reassuring voters who already like her and wooing those who do not. 
 
 Only 2 percent of Americans say they have never heard of her, according to a Gallup poll last month, a level of name recognition exceeding that of Vice President Joe Biden, a name unknown to a 10th of Americans. 
 
 Her nearest likely rivals for the Democratic nomination, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb, the former U.S. senator from Virginia, struggle to get a fraction of Clinton's media coverage, favorable poll numbers and donations. 
 
 Clinton's use of social media to announce her White House run amounts to the adoption of tactics deployed by Obama in 2008 to raise large sums through small donations and appeal to young voters. 
 
 Also on Friday, Clinton released an update to her memoir, "Hard Choices," in which she described her final days as secretary of state and her feelings about her first grandchild. 
 
 CONTROVERSY AND CRITICISM 
 
 Clinton has been a target for Republican criticism since Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. He promised voters then that they would get "two for one" by putting them both in the White House, but quickly dropped that claim when it proved unpopular. 
 
 Hillary Clinton's biggest initiative while her husband was president, national healthcare reform, fell apart without coming to a vote in Congress. 
 
 She became a figure of public fascination, and admiration in some quarters, for standing by her husband when allegations of his sexual infidelities first surfaced during his 1992 presidential campaign, and again in 1998 when his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced. 
 
 Both the Clintons have been investigated repeatedly by Republican lawmakers and the then United States Office of the Independent Counsel. 
 
 As Hillary Clinton prepared to start her campaign, she faced criticism from Republicans for using only a personal email account while secretary of state, and for the Clinton Foundation's reliance on donations and payments from foreign governments for its philanthropy work abroad, even as she served as the country's top diplomat. 
 
 Clinton has said she should have used a government email account as secretary of state while insisting that she had violated no rules. 
 
 During the campaign, Clinton will be expected to say whether she will more closely align with the centrist economic policies of her husband's administration or the populist policies championed by the progressive wing of her party. 
 
 Some Democrats have urged Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a leader of the party's liberal wing and a critic of Wall Street and big banks, to challenge her, but Warren has declined. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Amanda Becker; Editing by Grant McCool and Leslie Adler)
– The first speech by Hillary the 2016 candidate? The former secretary of state yesterday lit into voter ID laws springing up across the nation as well as the Supreme Court's decision in June to defang the Voting Rights Act, reports NBC News. The big quote in her speech to the American Bar Association: "Now, not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," she said, calling on Congress to step forward. It sure sounded like a candidate's speech, writes Sean Sullivan in the Washington Post, who says Clinton must "get in the game" on key issues if she does indeed plan to run. On this issue in particular, Clinton can "make her case as the heir apparent to Obama and try to persuade parts of his coalition—minorities and liberals in particular—to back her." (She spoke on the same day that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into place a law requiring voters to have a photo ID, reports the News & Observer.) Over at CBS, Anthony Weiner offers up a maybe-hint that Clinton will run when asked last night if he knows what wife Huma Abedin's role would be in a campaign. "I do," he said. But, "I'm not telling you." In the coming months, Clinton plans speeches on national security and America's standing in the world. Much of her public presence in this "next phase of life" will come through the family foundation she is co-running with Bill and Chelsea Clinton, notes Politico. It's the first time since the 1992 campaign that she and Bill are essentially working together.