Obama Resurrects DOJ's Civil Rights Division
As the Washington Post detailed Friday, the devastation of the Civil Right Division in George W. Bush's wake was staggering:
Nearly 70 percent of the lawyers had left between 2003 and 2007, a mass exodus that came during allegations the Bush administration was politicizing hiring. Internal watchdogs concluded that the division's former head had refused to hire lawyers he labeled "commies" and had transferred one for allegedly writing in "ebonics," allegations the official denied. Civil rights groups said the unit had lost its traditional civil rights focus.
But now, the Obama administration is resurrecting the agency created in 1957 to protect the Freedom Riders and students trying to integrate public schools. The division has a renewed new focus on the enforcement of employment, disability rights and other anti-discrimination laws, and the resources to go along with it:
Hate crimes and police misconduct are a renewed focus, and several section chiefs from the George W. Bush era have left. More than 30 people have been or are about to be hired as part of an 18 percent budget increase this year, the largest in the division's history. It will bring in 102 new people.
And in recent weeks, the division has taken a leading role in preparing for a possible Obama administration lawsuit against Arizona over the state's new immigration law.
As division chief Thomas E. Perez put it, "We had some healing to do." Perez added:
"We had to restore the partnership between the career staff and the political leadership. And frankly, certain civil rights laws were not being enforced."
Among those laws was something called the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Under President Bush, the Justice Department became an essential tool in the Republican strategy to suppress minority (read "Democratic") voter turnout through unprecedented redistricting, onerous registration hurdles, hyper-partisan prosecutors, polling place chicanery and draconian voter identification laws.
More details at the link. Conservatives only like freedom when it's their narrowly defined brand and even than freedom is only for the chosen few.
Helen Thomas Has Apologized; When Will Huckabee?
Hearst reporter Helen Thomas has rightly received criticism for her offensive comment that Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home [to] Poland and Germany and America.” Though Thomas quickly apologized, issuing a written statement that said “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians,” some conservatives are still calling for her to be fired.
Sam Stein reports that one of those critics is former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who said in an email that Thomas “should lose her job over this“:
“As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling,” [Fleischer said.]
“She is advocating religious cleansing. How can Hearst stand by her? If a journalist, or a columnist, said the same thing about blacks or Hispanics, they would already have lost their jobs.”
But are conservatives applying the religious cleansing standard equally? Consider Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has on numerous occasions voiced his opposition to a Palestinian state in Palestine, saying that “the Palestinians can create their homeland in many other places in the Middle East, outside Israel.” Like the most radical right-wing elements in Israel, Huckabee’s conception of Israel includes Palestinian lands occupied by Israeli forces in 1967.
Huckabee has never apologized for any of this, for the simple reason that this is what he really thinks: The Palestinians should be transferred out of Palestine. As far as I know, no conservatives have ever criticized Huckabee for these comments, let alone called on Fox News to fire him. I look forward to Ari Fleischer doing that very soon.
