It’s rare to reach a point in our national sense of humor that a sitting Supreme Court justice emerges as the butt of popular jokes for comments he made during an oral argument. That’s what happened last week, however, after Justice Antonin Scalia asked lawyers defending Congress’s extension of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act whether maintaining the pre-clearance formula for nine “covered” states, which are subject to federal oversight, was really just a “racial entitlement” program and not a constitutional necessity.

If Occupy Wall Street protesters and tea partiers agree on anything, it’s the loss of a stable middle class. Yet while the public debate has focused on overarching federal policies, neither group has pointed to the threat right here on the ground: the inequity of place. Real estate agents and home buyers have long known that location — where we live, learn, shop and join in community — determines most of the opportunities available to Americans. Opportunity is the touchstone to becoming a member of the middle class. As much as brains, pluck or work ethic, geography is destiny …