Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Voting Section
Recently released documents — disclosed by the Obama Justice Department only after a court battle — reveal that the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks. Typical Washington behavior, you say? Except the hiring in question is nearly unprecedented in scope and significantly eclipses anything the Bush administration was even accused of doing. And the evidence of the current political activity is far less impeachable than what was behind the libelous attacks leveled at officials from the Bush years.
For nearly a year, the Civil Rights Division rebuffed PJ Media’s Freedom of Information Act request for the resumes of attorneys hired into the Division during the tenure of Eric Holder. PJM was finally forced to file a federal lawsuit earlier this year. Only then did Justice relent and turn over the documents. The result leaves little wonder why PJM’s request was met with such intense resistance.
The Department’s political leadership clearly recognized that the resumes of these new attorneys would expose the hypocrisy of the Obama administration’s polemical attacks on the Bush administration for supposedly engaging in “politicized hiring” — and that everyone would see just how militantly partisan the Obama Civil Rights Division truly is. Holder’s year-long delay before producing these documents — particularly when compared to the almost-instantaneous turnaround by the Bush administration of a virtually identical request by the Boston Globe back in 2006 — also shows how deep politics now runs in the Department.
As Richard Pollock of PJ Media observed in an article, none of this should surprise anyone even remotely familiar with Holder’s highly partisan nature. Indeed, Holder boasted to the American Constitution Society (an organization started as a liberal counterweight to the Federalist Society) back in June 2008 that the Obama Justice Department was “going to be looking for people who share our values,” and that “a substantial number of those people would probably be members of the American Constitution Society.” The hiring records from Holder’s initial thirty months in office underscore how serious he was about this mission.
This is the first in a series of articles by PJ Media about the Civil Rights Division’s hiring practices since President Obama took office. These accounts will put to the test Holder’s repeated (and all-too-rarely scrutinized) statement that ideological considerations play no role in the hiring of career attorneys in his Department — a test that the Department’s practices clearly fail.
The evidence will demonstrate that, in contrast to the Bush administration’s Civil Rights Division — which hired individuals from across the political spectrum — there has been nary a token conservative welcomed into the Division under Holder. More than that, though, this series will show that the ranks of new civil servants arriving in Holder’s civil rights shop in protected civil service slots are some of the most strident ideologues in Washington.
But don’t just take my word for it. Let the resumes speak for themselves.
We start today with the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. This Section is responsible for enforcing, among other things, all aspects of the Voting Rights Act. This includes reviewing redistricting and other pre-clearance submissions under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that covered jurisdictions throughout the country must submit to the Justice Department for approval. Redistricting maps, voter ID statutes, citizenship verification laws, and a host of other politically contentious election issues rest in the hands of these Voting Section bureaucrats.
Long a refuge of partisan activists and ideological crusaders, the Section has been filling its ranks over the last 30 months with like-minded liberals ready to do the bidding of left-wing advocacy organizations. Sixteen attorneys have come on board in this hiring binge. Who are these new radicals?
Bryan Sells: Mr. Sells was recently hired as one of the Voting Section’s new deputy chiefs. He comes to the Department from the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, where he worked for nearly 10 years as a Senior Staff Counsel. During his tenure, his organization strongly opposed all voter ID laws, and challenged the right of states to verify the U.S. citizenship of individuals seeking to register to vote. He also characterized state felon disenfranchisement laws – which are expressly authorized in the Constitution — as a “slap in the face to democracy,” and consistently took the most aggressive (and generally legally unsupportable) positions on redistricting cases throughout the country.
Meredith Bell-Platts: The other new deputy chief hired by the Voting Section, Meredith Bell-Platts, also comes from the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, where she, too, spent nearly 10 years. Much of her time there was devoted to blasting voter ID requirements, which she claimed were motivated by people who do not want to see blacks vote (an issue on which she consistently lost in court). Before arriving at the ACLU, Ms. Bell-Platts was a founding member of the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, a publication whose stated “mission is to explore the impact of gender, sexuality, and race on both the theory and practice of law” and thereby “complement[] a long tradition of feminist scholarship and advocacy at the [Georgetown] Law Center.”
Anna Baldwin: While all of the new trial attorneys hired into the Voting Section have streaks of radicalism, few can match Ms. Baldwin. A financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign, she clerked for two liberal Clinton appointees on the federal bench and then worked briefly at Jenner & Block (a D.C. law firm which has been a major feeder of Democratic political appointees to the Obama administration), where she primarily pursued liberal positions in pro bono litigation. During law school, she interned at the International Labor Rights Fund and Women’s Agenda for Change.
Prior to that, Baldwin served for three years as field coordinator for Equality Florida, where she “coordinated lobbying and state legislative policy work on behalf of Florida’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities.” Meanwhile, in her undergraduate days at Harvard, she was a member of the “Queer Resistance Front” and was frequently covered in the Harvard Crimson for her radical antics. A review of these campus newspaper articles suggests that Ms. Baldwin will have to work very hard to separate her activist politics from her role as an apolitical civil servant. Then again, if she takes her cues from most of her Voting Section colleagues, she won’t even need to attempt such separation. As the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case showed, partisanship and law enforcement are one and the same in Holder’s Civil Rights Division.
Risa Berkower: Ms. Berkower was hired into the Voting Section following a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney, a liberal jurist who President Obama recently nominated to the Second Circuit and whose brother is the former state chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party. During law school at Fordham, she interned in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, a notorious hotbed of left-wing activity. She also worked on the “Student Hurricane Network” with members of the NAACP LDF, the Advancement Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. It was in her undergraduate days at Yale, though, that she really let her left-wing political colors shine. While on the Yale College Council, she wrote an editorial advocating support of unionization of Yale graduate students and advocated “neutrality” in card-check reform (which has become a major Obama initiative as a sop to organized labor).
It is quite ironic that a lawyer who refused to oppose the effort by unions to get rid of the secret ballot, a fundamental mainstay of our democracy, is now charged with protecting voting rights. All of the leadership positions on Berkower’s resume were conspicuously redacted by the Obama administration in its FOIA response to PJM. And lest you think she abandoned her radical ways since arriving in the Civil Rights Division, Ms. Berkower is the same Voting Section attorney who negotiated the outlandish consent decree with the state of Rhode Island earlier this year in a case under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act which, as Christian Adams detailed extensively, ignored the requirements of federal law and represented a gross abuse of federal authority.
Daniel Freeman: Mr. Freeman comes to the Voting Section following a fellowship at the New York Civil Liberties Union. He previously interned at the ACLU, where he assisted the organization with its efforts to attack the Bush administration’s national security policies. He also helped to challenge the “state secrets privilege” and to support the rights of terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay during an internship at Human Rights First.
On his resume, Freeman proudly notes his membership in the liberal American Constitution Society, as well as his service as co-chair of the Yale Law School Democrats. Of course, being a member of the American Constitution Society does not bar you from federal employment. Yet the Bush administration was castigated for hiring lawyers who were members of the Federalist Society. Incidentally, Mr. Freeman is helping lead the Voting Section’s review of redistricting submissions from the state of Alabama.
Jenigh Garrett: Ms. Garrett worked for approximately five years as an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), where she worked on voting-related litigation. She co-drafted the NAACP LDF’s amicus brief in Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections, claiming that voter ID laws are unconstitutional (a position the Supreme Court rejected in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens).
Garrett also was a member of the organization’s litigation team in Hayden v. Paterson, arguing that felon disenfranchisement laws violate the Voting Rights Act (a position the Second Circuit rejected). She is a member of the American Constitution Society and recently gave a presentation at Yale Law School on “The Future of Black Legal Scholarship and Activism.” Although DOJ’s FOIA shop notably redacted her other activities on her resume, perhaps legislators in Virginia can ask her about them: she is the redistricting point of contact for the Commonwealth.
Abel Gomez: Mr. Gomez initially came to the Voting Section in the waning days of the Clinton administration as part of a wave of hiring engineered by former Acting Assistant Attorney General Bill Yeomans. The intent: stack the Civil Rights Division with left-wing activists before President Bush took office. Gomez had previously served for six years as a public defender in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2007, he left the Civil Rights Division to join another component of the Department of Justice, but was eager to rejoin the Voting Section once Obama and Holder were in charge. In addition to his voting work, FEC records reveal that he is a significant financial contributor to the “Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund” and to organizations opposing California’s Proposition 8 (Marriage Protection Act).
Bradley Heard: Before joining the Voting Section, Mr. Heard worked for a number of years at the Advancement Project, a radical left-wing voting organization. The Advancement Project has worked closely with the ACLU, NAACP LDF, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and other liberal advocates to oppose voter ID statutes, felon disenfranchisement laws, and citizenship verification regulations, and to take myriad other militant positions on state and federal voting rights laws. Mr. Heard fit right in at the Advancement Project, having previously founded the Georgia Voter Empowerment Project, which describes its mission as increasing the “civic participation levels of progressive-minded Georgians.”
Amusingly, before moving to Washington, Mr. Heard had a nasty breakup with his plaintiff’s civil rights firm in Atlanta. He commenced litigation against his partners, who in turn claimed he was engaging in misconduct. Heard then sought criminal arrest warrants against his former partners, charging that they had engaged in false voter registration and voting by an unqualified elector, both felonies. The court declined to issue the warrants. South Carolina officials can ask Mr. Heard about these events during his review of the state’s redistricting submission; after all, he is the point of contact for the Voting Section.
This is stunning! The hypocrisy of Eric Holder knows no bounds. It’s hard to see how the media can ignore this in light of the relentless attacks it hurled at the Bush Administration. Then again, I won’t hold my breath waiting to see this story covered in the Washington Post. Even so, great piece of research, Hans. Kudos to Pajamas Media for uncovering this politicization by the Holder DOJ!!
Don’t worry, the LSM will continue to ignore this
The fact that such overt partisans are responsible for the review of redistricting submissions throughout the country is really quite scary. Just the appearance of impropriety is enough to severely undermine the public’s confidence in their work. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still very disappointing that Eric Holder would allow (let alone encourage) this kind of thing to occur in his Department. A sad day for the Department of Justice.
Eric Holder is not a hypocrite; he is a revanchist racist.
Nice to see that someone knows the Italian word and concept of “Revanche’”. I believe it was written on the wall in a Sherlock Holmes mystery that I read decades ago.
Holder is not only a “revanchist”, but a “reparations racist”. His favorite movie is one called “I Hate White People.”
His mentor for this was one of the fathers of the “black reparations” movement, Harvard law professor Charles Ogltree, who was possibly one of Obama’s teachers.
As for what to do about him, elementary my dear Buzzzsawmonkey:
Our “revanche’” will be Nov. 6, 2012.
Can you or the authors of these articles name one person with 3-5 years of experience litigating civil rights cases who applied for a job in the Civil Rights Division in the last two years and did not get selected … just one… conservative, or otherwise? The fact you seem to be missing is that experience in the relevant field – affirmative civil rights litigation – makes a person qualified, and it seems to me that administration has hired a series of qualified candidates. Unfortunately, I don’t know many conservatives who dedicate their careers to litigating cases on behalf of clients who have been discrimination against, and that is what a career Civil Rights Division attorney is expected to do.
riiiight…the government never hired anyone who needed OJT. and those who defended in civil rights suits couldn’t possibly possess the requisite knowledge/experience.
I believe the cornerstone of American justice is that it is supposed to be ‘blind’ to race, creed, religion, etc. Law isn’t weighted to ideologies. Until now at least. But in the end, I believe, this isn’t about justice for blacks, gays, lesbians, transgenders, illegal aliens, et al, it’s primary goal is to break down and defeat our Constitution, republic, and free market economic system. Attacks on the Constitution are war against the Constitution. According to the laws of war, combatants not clearly uniformed as the opposition are considered spies. During war, spies get captured and shot. How many speeches from this radical left declaring war on this country’s way of life must we tolerate before we take action against these enemies of our Constitution?
@Trevor I don’t think he is a hypocrit. To be a hypocrit one must have been known to be, or made claims of being moral. It is clear from his past actions that Eric Holder has never been accused of being moral. The question is how do the Democrats justify installing some one like Eric Holder as the chief law officer in the land?
This “expose” is ridiculous. These new hirees were hired by career attorneys within the DOJ, not political appointees. The author of the article is just trying to draw a false equivalency because he himself purposefully injected partisanship into the hiring decisions and enforrcement decision of the Civil Rights Division.
http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/06-11-07%20Former%20Voting%20Section%20Staff%20Letter.pdf
And von Spasovsky provides ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE that the DOJ has hired any unqualified attorneys, turned down any qualified conservative applicant or injected partisan politics into the enforecement of the law. (By contrast, the OIG for the DOJ determined that political appointees like SB. Schlozman injected themselves into the hiring process, prevented career section chiefs from reviewing applicant resumes, rejected qualified “liberal” applicants and and hiring only “real Americans” [Shlozman's words, not mine])
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0901/final.pdf
Moreoevr, the author’s methodology for determining whether someone is “far left” is highly subjective and flawed.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201108240010
Maligning the author is an effective way to avoid discussing to topic. Since there are now 12 articles in this series, would you care to discuss the 66% of them that weren’t written by Hans A. von Spakovsky?
Maybe you can attempt to justify the actions of the DoJ and the current administration across all fronts and not limit yourself to “civil rights”. Perhaps you can dig up reasons why people should ignore the other 8 articles too.
Possibly, if you try hard enough, you can dig into the backgrounds of the people that wrote the paper and articles that you linked too? I wonder if they are spotless and non-political. What do you think?
…for instance, using http://www.mediamatters.org as a neutral source of reporting facts is laughable. Here, let me try . . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222414/media-matters-were-not-political/byron-york
One of the people responsible for these illegal actions is voting section boss Chris Herren. His role in this partisan hiring should be investigated. Complaints to the Office of Special Counsel should be made by the public. If Herren isn’t guilty as charged for this disgrace, it will fall on his bosses. Nobody should escape the terrible sweep of justice here. If the inspector general doesn’t do something about it, it will be up to the People to right these wrongs (through Congress). Every day it seems we have new reasons to vote out these gangsters next year. This article provides today’s item.
With all the voter fraud, do you think we can vote these yokels out of office?
“True the Vote” is an organization, an arm of the Tea Party, that is working against the massive fraud.
Thank you Pajamas Media for your persistence in exposing this story.
All well and good but can they — and every other Obama appointee still around in 2013 — be readily fired when saner heads prevail in Washington?
If not, perhaps the House should look into some legislation.
Thank you PJM for making sure this information is available to the people footing the bill. On a more cynical note, I thought Democrats were supposed to be the party of diversity, I don’t see much diverse thought likely to come from this group. Anyone in this group likely to champion the radical idea that current voting laws should be enforced?
The Dems have been steadily and stealthily infiltrated by extremist/Commie/Marxist radicals. Our country is in deep sh*t.
No they haven’t. They have always been this way. They ae the party of dicators and peons; king and subject; lord and serf; master and slave. They just have a great talent for repackaging themselves with pretty sounding words when the times call for it (i.e. when the unwashed masses catch on to the cut of their jib – again).
Clearly,, what Comrade Holder is setting up to do is lay the groundwork not only for massive vote fraud in the millions, but persecuting, prosecuting and silencing all those who try to report on it. And in this, our leftist media will gladly endorse him.
Be ready for a constitutional crisis, and possibly a civil war, in 2012, when the GOP Congress refuses to recognize the re-election of Obama. And when the USSC overturns his election 5-4, the unrest that will occur will make that of 1967-68 pale in comparison. The unrest will quickly descend into all out civil war.
Since some of these lawyers are involved in approving the redistricting that the Republicans will do, after their big win in the last election, you can be sure that this Justice Department is going to do everything in its power to hamper that effort.
why am I not surprised at any thing this regime does. any one with an ounce of live brain cells in their skulls should have known long ago the entire regime is CORRUPT and they all should be in a federal prison or better yet a Ga. chain gang cutting right of way and digging ditche’s like they used to do,
Looks like the faculty of almost any university law school, public or private, in the US.
I want to thank you Pajamas Media – exposing corruption at every level.
Holder and the DOJ are witnessing the noose tightening slowly on their betrayal … their plans will not succeed; they are mocking our Constitution and getting drunk on their own power at our expense. Throw the bums out !!!!!
“Looks like the faculty of almost any university law school, public or private, in the US.”
That’s funny right there!!! Gotta laugh at something eh?!
Anyone who finds this surprising has really not been paying attention. Either that or the haze from their latest drug of choice has not yet worn off.
Holder and the rest of the coven at the Department of Treachery should spend the rest of their natural lives in Gitmo, with their terrorist co-horts. No phones, no computers, no way to contact anyone in the real, rational world.
These people are truly dangerous to the country and to every single citizen. It’s time for them to go. I respectfully suggest to Congress that they do something about this in short order. Pitchfork and torch sales are going to occur before long and unless they want the rabble to storm the castle, they’d better get their houses in order.
Just the view for flyover country.
It appears to me that the next Republican President is going to have to undertake a massive house cleaning at DOJ. These new lawyers can be accurately labelled subversives. It is obvious from their resumes, that they have no allegiance to the Constitution, and the oath they will be required to swear to it, will have no meaning for them. Since job #1 at DOJ is to protect and defend the rights spelled out in that document, for ALL Americans, these lawyers are unqualified to serve.
These new lawyers can be accurately labelled subversives
They are clearly in violation of their oaths of office. That rises beyond subversion. None of them are fit to live in a free society. None.
Yes, and this is exactly why we cannot afford to elect a “moderate” Republican in 2012.
This is one of many places where GW failed. He did NOT clean house when he took office. He even continued one of Clinton’s cabinet appointees – Leon Panetta.
We need to hunt these subversives out and remove them from the federal payroll.
It appears to me that the next Republican President is going to have to undertake a massive house cleaning at DOJ.
You say this as if the problem is confined to the DOJ. I have a lot of trouble believing that practices of this kind are confined to a single department of the federal government. It would seem much more likely that it is rampant across all departments. We simply don’t know as much about the other departments because we don’t have a Hans Spakovsky or Christian Adams from those departments.
Of course my suspecting widespread subversion doesn’t make it true. But it bears investigation lest we clean up only the DOJ after the next Republican president is elected and overlook equally radical subversives in other departments.
wow. you people are insane. this is so awesome to read. i wanted to know more about right-wing crackpots, so i came on here to read up about you. oh my god, it’s a goldmine! you people are so awesomely nuts!
@wow, it appears that you are the one that is nuts if you cannot at least acknowledge the corruption that is rampant in the Obama regime.
Then again, sticking your collective (pun intended) heads in the sand is what libs do best.
Thanks, PjM, for your valuable investigating and reporting.
This packing of the Justice Dept looks like 2012 is going to look like 2008 on steroids, as Houston was one example of voter fraud on a big scale. Unfortunately, by the time anyone investigated, it was too late to do anything. How many other large cities did the same thing?
To those of us who read “Dupes”, based on the Verona Papers, which revealed the Kremlin’s funding of the Communist Party in the US, know the ACLU was their legal arm of destruction aimed at traditional moral values. If you research the lawsuits that destroyed public prayer, every one was represented by the ACLU. They are still pursuing their destruction of capitalism and freedom, as they have continually filed suits to force the Boy Scouts to allow homosexual counselors. Gov. Perry wrote a book about the scouts, with proceeds to fund their continuing efforts to keep all sex out of the scouts. It’s no surprise that the ACLU is after Perry, and that they filed a lawsuit to stop the prayer service last Saturday. The local TV news, all local newspapers, and talking heads referred to the service as ‘controversial’. There is no tolerance for traditional values. Yet, as Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit” shows, civilization as we know it is based on traditional moral principles, going back thousands of years.
Just wanted to mention that Anthony Herman, former senior partner and head of the pro-bono committee of Covington & Burling ( Holders law firm and the largest legal aid resource for GITMO detainees ), has been appointed General Counsel of the Federal Election Commission. If it works at the DOJ why not the FEC?
I stopped doing business with Covington & Burling because of Eric Holder. The partner that I used billed at $700 per hour. The return on investment was awful and then add in Holder … just the excuse I needed.
I’m sure all these left wing radical appointments to the voting section of DOJ are set and ready to go for the 2012 election. How convenient considering Obama is expected to have a very difficult time winning reelection. With these left wing activists lawyers at Eric Holder’s disposal, any and all voting irregularities that end up in in favor of Obama will *never* be investigated, while all voting irregularities in favor of his opponent certainly will be. And if there aren’t any voting irregularities in favor of Obama’s opponent, these overzealous left wing radical lawyers in DOJ’s voting section can just make up irregularities and throw out as many votes for Obama’s opponent as is required. After all, when you’ve got left wing ideologues filling civil career DOJ positions, there’s no one left to investigate the investigators.
“High crimes and misdemeanors is a phrase from Section 4 of Article Two of the United States Constitution: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“High” in the legal parlance of the 18th century means “against the State”. A high crime is one which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit of an individual or group. In democracies and similar societies it also includes crimes which attempt to alter the outcome of elections.”
It’s pretty apparent that Holder and friends are using every aspect of the machinery of government to effect the boss’ “fundamental transformation” of America.
And one of their prime strategies is to use the department of justice in service to promoting illegal voters and illegal voting practices.
When will the ax fall on this subversive’s head ?
He seems to keep getting away with stuff, from the outrageous dropping of the voter intimidation case against the new black panthers to deniability of knowledge and planning in fast & furious.
What, Billy Clinton’s favored bag-man indulging in partisan folderol?
No surprise there. The guy is crookeder than a dog’s hind leg.
it is hard to say
How much are they paying these people?
Wow. Just WOW. PJM hits another one out of the park!
But will anything be done about this?
This is absolutely despicable.
To paraphrase Livy, we have reached that “dark modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them”. This situation is indeed undendurable if we wish to retain any semblance of a free republic. The remedies needed to cure our Republic of its statist/totalitarian ills will require a sacrifice such as we have not seen for generations.
The worse thing is that this same plan is playing itself out over every single growing bureaucratic office under the executive branch. You think Clinton left W a hornet’s nest just wait until the next conservative president takes a seat in the oval office.
WHAT CAN BE DONE? I’m glad the lawsuit was won but the next step should be getting something done. This country is being run the way Chavez runs Venezuela.
What can be done? Not much if they are political appointees…for obvious reasons. But if they are civil service employees and were hired in violation of federal hiring statutes…then someone with standing (applied for the same job and were not hired) could sue the government. Happens quite often by the way.
PJM should FOIA OPM’s files on each of the job openings that were filled by these subversives. If there are irregularities, then the person not hired should be encouraged to sue.
It would be interesting to pull that string.
Question:”How do you know Eric Holder is lying?”
Answer: ” His lips are moving.”
I think the article misses the point, to an extent. You speak of outrage when the Bush administration hired *some* conservatives for these positions. That’s because conservatives are by definition “extremists” who should never be considered for *any* position in government. Reasonable people (most very very liberal by any objective standards) are “mainstream” as far as Holder is concerned, so there shouldn’t be any objections to his hiring them in droves. It all comes down to what I refer to as “framing the pitch.” This is a baseball term, referring to the catcher’s practice of holding his glove awaiting the pitch from the pitcher. If he does a good job, the umpire is looking at the catcher’s glove and not Home Plate, and as a result if the pitch hits the glove the umpire calls it a strike, even if the pitch isn’t over the plate. Same thing here…if you don’t look at things objectively, Holder has managed to move the *center* of ideology further left, and I’m sure he would take that statement as a compliment.
The fun part is that the media has ignored this, and ignored the differences in transparency between the two administrations. Though people on the left are beginning to get buyer’s remorse (see the article on Pajamas referencing the calls for Hillary to run against Obama in 2012) it’s almost as if they don’t want to know the extent of the disaster and the depth of the deception. After all, Hillary’s a liberal too, and it’s doubtful she’d have a much different approach to attorney hirings at the Justice Department. Knowing what we do of her past, they’d all pretty much have to recount episodes of cronyism with Hillary or Bill to get hired.
DWNicolas said- “it’s almost as if they don’t want to know the extent of the disaster and the depth of the deception.”-out of context here- but, saying people who are having doubts about Obama that voted for him in past-but, they will not have a choice -on the Democratside of things. And, most likely will
-unless strongly persuaded-probably vote for Obama again.
Yes-they are in denial now- but what would it take -if they haven’t already awakened?
As Julian Sanchez points out in post #36 and someone Anonymous observes in the thread under #1, there’s much outrage here but nothing actually outrageous. The career backgrounds the article painstakingly details are in no way radical, corrupt, or subversive. All we have here are a bunch of professional attorneys with training and experience in enforcing civil rights laws, which is after all their job. (The contrast with many of the Bush appointees, who covertly and sometimes overtly sought to undermine the very legislation and precedents they were supposed to uphold, does not work in the article’s favor.)
I realize I’m swimming against the tide of opinion here, of course, defying the articles of faith of many devotees of this site. But there are certain facts you really need to understand in order to put this in proper perspective.
Among them: the ACLU and the American Constitution Society are completely, solidly within the mainstream of American jurisprudence and constitutional interpretation, and have sterling reputations for defending the rights of ordinary people against abuses of power from any and all points on the political spectrum. The Federalist Society, by contrast, is not mainstream: it is a radical reactionary organization dedicated to an agenda that involves rolling back at least 75 years of hard-won legal progress in this country.
Also among them: amongst voting rights violations in this country, almost *all* of them involve figures in authority attempting to restrict access to the ballot by people who are, in fact, legitimate citizens entitled to vote. Cases in which people *not* entitled to vote do so fraudulently are vanishingly rare by comparison, and have not swung the results of any election in recent times.
These are not points of opinion; these are facts. I ask readers to consider that if your inclination is to reject these facts; if your views of how things should be find you rejecting the majority of legal scholars, judges, and working lawyers involved with Constitutional issues in this country; if your sympathies lie with the Federalist Society; if you think that most of the civil rights laws and precedents of the last three generations were steps in the wrong direction; then it is *you* who are out of step with mainstream America, not your opponents. And no offense, but if you honestly believe that today’s Democratic Party — limp, centrist, and compromising as it is — somehow represents a devious conspiracy by “communists” or “terrorists” to damage this country, then you might be just a little bit paranoid.
Spoken like a true socialist.
The thought that most of America is “left”, “center left”, or even “far left” is not backed up by any objective evidence or observations, let alone actual polling data. Since that’s not true, in a “politically neutral” hiring practice, it’s statistically impossible to have 100% come from the minority of people.
Additionally, why would you malign people who have a concern about people being in charge of elections that have aligned themselves with the only political party to come out openly against voter identification requirements? There are numerous instances of voter fraud in favor of the Democrat party and liberal candidates.
…and yet you “preach” to those that would like some explanation about why political affiliation is being used as a qualification, contrary to not only common sense but the law.
… and you call people that see socialism as a 100% failure-rate approach to government “paranoid”?
Shame on you, sir.
Screw all the financial nonsense going on in Congress. It’s going nowhere anyway. Start with impeaching all the bastards Obama appointed, then impeach big-ears himself. Clean out the corruption, and the economy will explode back to life.
JC on a Crutch! I wouldn’t spend 5 minutes in a room with any of these SOBs. Not only are they radicalized to the extent that they cannot be ‘saved’ in any sense of the word, they appear to have mostly very nasty views against us, the people of this country. We MUST work to ensure all branches of government are in our hands so we may proceed with the largest housecleaning ever undertaken in DC, and TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY! This just makes me want to scream!!! thanks PJM and Hans AvS for kicking the rock off these truly dangerous TERRORISTS. yes, they are.
Is there anything the this Department of Justice is not either mishandling or in fact encouraging that is counter to moral and conservative principles?
This man needs impeachment proceedings held against him ASAP from Congress. hopefully that is in progress, if not get on the phone to start it going!
They are setting up to steal the election .We are in deep deep trouble unless God changes things and that is the change we can beleve in not Obama’s change.
PRAY AMERICA like we have never prayed before.
This just makes me sick…
“Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy was right.
Let’s see the big picture: how many total hires? And, did ANY hires have any conservative credentials?
Political scientists say the law is created when it is enforced not when it is legislated. But most of the costs to legislate the laws are born by low net worth taxpayers while it is only enforced for high net worth taxpayers. When I joined USMC in the Korean War I was told it was to protect the American way of life which was about freedom and justice but now days it’s not about justice anymore, i.e. because, low net worth folks don’t have access to the federal courts only high net worth people do. The fact General Holder is recruiting low net worth attorneys to enforce the law is a good thing To all of you dissenters out there it’s like your daddy said: “A hit dog will always holler.”
Look into the hiring of foreign doctors at the VA too.
let’s do that. you are so insane. it’s really incredible.
von spakovsky… seriously? you’re a hack, my friend. and a scoundrel. your tactics are dirty, and you have no spine. you’re weak, and you prey on those weaker than you. you attack hardworking people and pretend to be a man. it’s quite pitiful to watch actually. quite pitiful.
You forgot to accuse him of eating human baby livers with fava beans and Chianti. Are you drunk or just off your meds?
Well, this series is now in 12 parts. Would you like to discuss the 67% of them that were not written by this author yet say the same thing? No, you just want to throw stones at someone because you read some liberal talking points on your daily marching order websites.
Let independent thought begin and free yourself!
I appreciate the effort that went into identifying and tracking down all of this information. Based on the liberal reaction to alleged Bush-era hiring practices, it is relevant to the national conversation.
However, I am disappointed to see “Bay Area Legal Aid” listed as an example of far-left politics. Some of the work done by legal aid organizations aligns with traditional liberal talking points, that’s true, but legal aid offices do address problems of actual injustice. As a conservative attorney, I feel it is my duty to volunteer with my local legal aid organization (which is a private charity rather than a government-sponsored organization) to stop government harrassment of innocent citizens. As a Christian attorney, it is also my duty to volunteer and help people who are truly victimized by other citizens, victims whom the government is simply not helping.
Despite my commitment to our legal system, it is obvious that a lot of people are suffering and not getting the help they need without the intervention of private citizens. For example, I work to help victims of domestic violence get divorces from men who clearly do not deserve to be called “men” (“thugs” or “bruts” would be more appropriate). I am always horrified when I hear that protecting victims of domestic violence, whom the almighty government clearly cannot protect, is an example of leftism. Private citizens taking up the slack left by a failed government in the protection of fellow citizens is conservative through and through.
*brutes
Is anyone really surprized at all these lawyers being appointed, its just another step to destroy our country into either Socialism or Communism. Every thing Obama has done while in office has been the same steps that Hilter made in Germany, Don’t believe it, then check it out.
There is nothing surprising here. It will take time and effort to clean out all government departments after 2012. Having had this administration for four years will be like having rented a house to a marijuana grow-op which fills the walls with fungi and dramatically devalues the house.
These seem like some awfully watered down standards for “radical.” A tepid editorial written back in college? Donations to an anti-Prop8 campaign? Most of these folks just sound like (yawn) Democrats. How scandalous. Not seeing any evidence of actual hiring impropriety, unless it’s supposed to be inherently suspicious that lots of Democrats apply to work under a Democratic administration.
I forwarded this article to the State Reps in PA who recently introduced legislation that would require voter ID, as well as to those on my mailing list.
I would suggest everyone who reads this article do the same, as the MSM is complicit in covering up Vs covering the facts.
You can certainly see your enthusiasm in the work you write. The sector hopes for even more passionate writers like you who are not afraid to mention how they believe. Always follow your heart.
Well it looks like the Department of Justice needs to be put on the chopping block, along with the Department of Education and Department of Energy, when we throw the ObamaNation out on its ear in November 2012. Once that’s done, we can reform the DOJ and bring it back – sans the Civil Rights division.