Voting Rights Act

Obama Justice Department Sued Over Stonewalling and Cover-Up in Black Panther Case

by Hans Bader on May 26, 2010 · 2 comments

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Judicial Watch is suing the Obama administration over its stonewalling in the Black-Panther voter intimidation case, where the administration has flouted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to hide how it protected members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. Although FOIA requires that documents be released within 20 days, the administration has withheld for over a year the records Judicial Watch requested about how the administration dismissed a lawsuit that career Justice Department lawyers had won against Black Panthers who used a nightstick and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place.

Earlier, a career Justice Department lawyer resigned after the Obama administration illegally defied a subpoena from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating the administration’s politicization of the Justice Department and its selective refusal to enforce the Voting Rights Act against the Black Panthers and black political bosses.

A former Justice Department lawyer describes the Obama administration’s stonewalling, cover-up, and deceit at this link. The Black Panthers that the Obama administration sought to protect by dropping the lawsuit included a local Democratic official and Obama poll-watcher.

One of the Panthers, who has been videotaped saying “that he wanted to kill white people,” is shown in a recent documentary talking about “how much he hates and wants to kill white people, including white babies.” He called a terrified black poll watcher a “race traitor,” and told him there would be “hell to pay” if he interfered with the Panthers’ campaign of voter intimidation.

In their campaign of voter intimidation, the Panthers told a white former civil-rights lawyer and former publisher of the liberal Village Voice, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” They called a white poll watcher who lives nine blocks from the polling place a “white devil” and a “cracker,” telling him he would be ruled by the black man the next day, and he would have to get used to “living under his boot.”

The New Black Panther Party, which has a venomous hatred for what it refers to as “bloodsucking Jews,” is designated as a hate-group even by the liberal SPLC, because of its anti-Semitism.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that discrimination against whites is prohibited under federal law (including voting discrimination). The Obama administration seemingly disagrees with those rulings (which include a 9-to-0 Supreme Court decision).

Commission Asks Justice Department Why Pro-Obama Thugs Got Away With Menacing White Voters

by Hans Bader on June 22, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Culture, Economy, Features, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere, Zeitgeist

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is demanding to know why the “Obama Justice Department took the unusual action last month of dismissing a default judgment against the New Black Panther Party in connection with a case of voter intimidation on Election Day on November 4, 2008. Members of the NBPP were caught on film blocking access to the polls and physically and verbally intimidating voters, even going so far as to wield a nightstick in front of voters and poll watchers. The Justice Department’s lawyers gathered evidence, obtained the affidavit of former civil rights advocate Bartle Bull, and filed a complaint. When the defendants did not respond and the court invited the Justice Department to file a default judgment, the case was inexplicably withdrawn.”

By dismissing the case, political appointees in the Obama Justice Department blocked action against a racist, anti-semitic hate group whose members included an Obama poll-watcher and city democratic official, who used racial epithets and physical intimidation to drive white voters away from a polling place in Philadelphia last year.

Even as it engages in costly, unauthorized, illegal auto bailouts, and a monumentally-costly stimulus package that will shrink the economy “in the long run,” the Obama Administration is abdicating core federal responsibilities like enforcing the voting-rights laws.

The Obama Justice Department has also rubberstamped unconstitutional legislation, failed to protect the voting rights of American servicemen, and been deafeningly silent about a liberal black political boss in Mississippi who prevented voters from casting ballots and engaged in vote fraud.

Today, the Supreme Court permitted more local governments to “bail out” of the “preclearance” provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which the Obama Justice Department is using to block states from requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and to force race-based redistricting. (The Obama Justice Department recently blocked Georgia’s attempts to prevent illegal alien voting by requiring voter ID).

Supreme Court Limits Voting Rights Act, But Declines to Strike Down Key Section of the Act

by Hans Bader on June 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The Supreme Court expanded the ability of local governments to “bail out” of a draconian provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires them to get “preclearance” from the Justice Department, or a special court in Washington, D.C., for even trivial decisions like whether to move voting booths across the street. A three-judge district court said even local governments with an undisputed history of non-discrimination could “bail out” of Section 5 of the Act only if they themselves register voters, which most local governments don’t. The Supreme Court just overturned that ruling, which had effectively rendered the bail-out provision meaningless.

(The Justice Department has recently used preclearance requirements to block Georgia’s attempt to keep illegal aliens from voting, saying that voter ID requirements exclude more Hispanics than whites (perhaps true, but only because Hispanics in Georgia are more likely to be non-citizens not entitled to vote than are the state’s white residents). The Supreme Court earlier rejected a constitutional challenge to voter ID in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008)).

By an 8-to-1 vote, the Justices refused to strike down the pre-clearance requirements of the Act as unconstitutional, in the case decided today, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying that Section 5 of the Act violated federalism provisions of the Constitution, since the extraordinary remedy of requiring pre-clearance could only be imposed if state and local governments were engaging in discrimination that was too pervasive to be checked on a case-by-case basis in lawsuits.

In 1966, the Supreme Court, in an 8-to-1 vote, upheld an earlier, less burdensome preclearance requirement, based on rampant, systematic discrimination against black voters, reasoning that its “strong medicine” was a temporary abrogation of constitutional federalism principles necessary for black people to be able to vote. Justice Black partially dissented in that case, South Carolina v. Katzenbach, arguing that Section 5′s “requirement that States come to Washington to have their laws judged is reminiscent of the deeply resented practices used by the English crown in dealing with the American colonies,” which Americans protested in the Declaration of Independence.

But Congress dramatically broadened the Voting Rights Act in 2006, making it more burdensome, even as the discrimination that once justified the Act has become rare.

In cases like Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (2000), the Justice Department had attempted to use its pre-clearance veto power to force local governments to engage in unnecessary race-based districting. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Bossier Parish School Board, with Justice Thomas noting that black people had fared quite well there without any racial gerrymandering (winning 3 of 12 seats on the Board), liberal newspapers and self-proclaimed civil-rights groups attacked the decision, and got Congress to overrule portions of that decision by dramatically expanding the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

Ironically, even as the Justice Department uses Section 5 to force race-based restricting and thwart efforts to combat voter fraud and illegal alien voting, it has turned a blind eye to voter intimidation aimed at white voters, and done little to remedy violations of the voting rights of American soldiers.

I haven’t linked to press coverage of today’s ruling, since most of it is tendentious and ideologically biased. John Rosenberg, an expert on discrimination (and former expert witness in a landmark discrimination case), shows just how biased press coverage was of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in an age-discrimination case was (the case was Gross v. FBL Financial Services (2008)).

Earlier, I discussed how Obama misstated the facts of a landmark Supreme Court ruling, and distorted what the court’s ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear meant for people bringing pay discrimination lawsuits, and how the press (with a few exceptions) let him get away with it.