Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Voting Section
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.
