Injustice at the Justice Department

Something smells rotten at the Justice Department. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should not permit the odor from his office to spread. Last week, we learned that political appointees at the department overruled staff legal experts when the department approved a controversial Texas redistricting plan. The staff experts had unanimously ruled that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act.

We smelled the stench two years ago when Texas Republican legislators pushed through a redistricting plan by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, that treads on the voting rights of minority voters and shoved Austin voters into three hideously drawn congressional districts. DeLay aimed to send more Republicans to Congress, which he succeeded in doing. But the plan caused Democrats to lose congressional seats and disenfranchised minority voters. Democrats and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit, which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

State Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, was among those who called on the nation's top cop in such matters — the Justice Department — to intervene. DeLay's mid-decade redistricting plan seemed a clear violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Raymond and other civil rights leaders knew that Texas and other states with a history of discriminatory elections are required to submit changes in their voting systems or election maps for approval by the Justice Departments' Civil Rights Division. So when the department approved Texas' congressional plan, it sent shock waves through the civil rights community and raised questions about the future of the Voting Rights Act in protecting minorities.

Folks were stunned because it had been the Justice Department that acted as the primary enforcer when people, institutions or governments abused voting rights of citizens. The act might have barred literacy tests as a requirement for voting, but it was also our cop on the beat that made sure no one found other ways to disenfranchise voters, either by making them show special identification cards or by drawing illegal districts. The system has worked for 40 years, ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the act into law. Until now.


http://www.statesman.com/hp/content/editorial/stories/12/6justice_edit.html

at least while they are under neocon control,you know for truth in advertising purposes and all that.

on NPR talked about how the ranks of the civil rights attorneys at Injustice were shrinking rapidly--like way below what they used to be. "Nothing" to do--boy, that's peculiar. Oh, that's right. We don't have an civil rights left.