Rising Hegemon
Many current and former lawyers in the section charge that senior officials have exerted undue political influence in many of the sensitive voting-rights cases the unit handles. Most of the department's major voting-related actions over the past five years have been beneficial to the GOP, they say, including two in Georgia, one in Mississippi and a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) in 2003.
The section also has lost about a third of its three dozen lawyers over the past nine months. Those who remain have been barred from offering recommendations in major voting-rights cases and have little input in the section's decisions on hiring and policy.
"If the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division is viewed as political, there is no doubt that credibility is lost," former voting-section chief Joe Rich said at a recent panel discussion in Washington. He added: "The voting section is always subject to political pressure and tension. But I never thought it would come to this."
I love this piece of unmitigated bullshit from Abu Gonzales, the man who directed his Justice Department to come up with 42 pages of mumbo-jumbo to "politically" justify domestic warrantless wiretapping by the NSA:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides dispute such criticism and defend the department's actions in voting cases. "We're not going to politicize decisions within the department," he told reporters last month after The Washington Post had disclosed staff memoranda recommending objections to a Georgia voter-identification plan and to the Texas redistricting.
I didn't know you could put gall, into Gonzales.
Read the rest of it, under the radar, the bigots rule the roost in a key civil rights section of the DOJ. And Alberto Gonzales, who you'd think be at least sensitive to such matters, is just another bigoted wanker.
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