Eric Holder: Racial Preferences Needed for ... National Security

The Eric Holder Justice Department has filed this brief in the United States Supreme Court defending racial preferences at the University of Texas. (Texas, by the way, is also vigorously defending the racial preferences.) Abigail Fisher, who is white, is challenging race preferences that cost her a slot at the University of Texas law school.  Because the racial spoils go to Obama’s most loyal political constituency, people of color, naturally Eric Holder’s Justice Department is defending them by spending your tax dollars paying lawyers to write the brief.

None of that is a surprise. What is surprising is the argument the Justice Department makes in the brief — that racial preferences are vital to national security:

It is a pressing necessity in an era of intense competition in the global economy and ever evolving worldwide national-security threats. The government, moreover, has a vital interest in drawing its personnel — many of whom will eventually become its civilian and military leaders — from a well-qualified and diverse pool of university and service-academy graduates of all backgrounds who possess the understanding of diversity that is necessary to govern and defend the United States.

This might mark the first time the ideologues in the administration have placed national security topmost among their priorities — even if it is a phony argument.

Let’s consider one of the lawyers who signed the brief. Thanks to PJ Media’s Pulitzer-nominated/submitted Every Single One series, we know a great deal about the radical backgrounds of well over 100 new hires in the Justice Department. Sharon McGowan is a new Holder career civil service hire in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division.

Sharon McGowan

Hans von Spakovsky at PJ Media:

Sharon McGowan: Prior to joining the Section, Ms. McGowan spent six years as a staff attorney at the ACLU, working on its Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) & AIDS Project. Her claim to fame there was that she brought a lawsuit against the Library of Congress on behalf of a Special Forces veteran who was denied a job after announcing his/her intention to transition from male to female. The case resulted in a dubious ruling by a hard-core liberal Clinton appointee (James Robertson, who mercifully has since retired from the bench) that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination also protects individuals who are undergoing sex-change operations. Judge Robertson’s decision notwithstanding, I’m fairly confident that’s not what Congress had in mind when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While working at the ACLU, Ms. McGowan co-authored “The Rights of Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals and Transgender People: The Authoritative ACLU Guide.” She also was a contributing author to “Lesbian/Gay Law Notes,” which is published by the Lesbian & Gay Law Association of Greater New York. Earlier in her career, she interned for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. And she remains a frequent speaker on gender identity issues. Here’s a sample of her work.

As I have written many times, people wrongly assume the radical policies of Eric Holder’s Justice Department come from the radicalism of Holder and his top lieutenants. They think once America rids itself of Eric Holder, the problem is solved.

The truth is far more disturbing. Radicals have burrowed throughout the Justice Department, pushing radical policies and outlandish arguments like the one defending race preferences in Texas. These lawyers genuinely believe that classifying people on the basis of race helps defend the nation. Until Congress addresses the hijacking of the bureaucracy through budgetary measures, the echoes of Eric Holder will continue to resonate through a Romney administration.