Monday’s NY Times had an editorial about Attorney General Eric Holder’s determination to act as if the DOJ’s Civil Rights division ought to actually concern itself with…you know….civil rights.
Here’s the opening.
Few parts of the federal government veered more radically off course in the Bush years than the Justice Department, including its vital civil rights division. Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that he intends to put the division back on track. That will not be easy, but restoring the nation’s commitment to fairness in voting, employment, housing and other areas is one of the new administration’s most important challenges.
The Bush administration declared war on the whole idea of civil rights, in a way that no administration of either party had since the passage of the nation’s civil rights laws in the 1960s. It put a far-right ideologue in a top position at the civil rights division and, as the department’s inspector general said in a scathing report, he screened out job applicants with civil rights sympathies.
The division abandoned its “historic mission,” notes John Payton, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund — enforcing civil rights laws, in areas from housing to employment. In some cases, like voting rights, it aggressively fought on the anti-civil-rights side.
It is heartening that the Obama administration has proposed substantially increasing the number of lawyers in the division. They will have plenty of work.
No kidding.
Civil rights lawyer, Tom Perez, is the Obama administration’s pick to head up the division. The NYT urges that he be confirmed right away.
Read the rest.
Yeah, we have a serious problem with civil rights even though a black man was elected president.
Holder is a sham, or maybe the Black Panthers getting away with voter intimidation wasn’t a slap in the face to civil rights?
What have we learned today?
1) Civil rights violations can not be possible now that we have a black president.
2) The Black Panther Party is powerful enough to sway an election.
The commenters on this blog are on a mission to lower America’s collective IQ.
What we have learned is the Gust takes comments and tries to make them into something that they aren’t.
What I’m implying is that we are not having a serious problem with civil rights. Holder should leave the race pimping up to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Those racist politicians in Atlanta are at it again. All Politics Is Racial
Woody, as an admitted opponent of desegregation, have you ever voted for a black person when there was a white candidate you choose?
What we need is what was promised with the election of Obama – the end of racial politics.
Instead, we get more and more, with Obama leading the charge.
It’s time to end most civil rights commissions, legislation and lawsuits. They are counter-productive and creating more racism than they prevent.
Yeh, guys, black people are taking over the planet. You can see it everywhere.
They’ve already taken over Africa! And, there’s a reason that truckers refer to Atlanta’s perimeter highway as the “ring around the Congo.”
Those truckers are the exact reason AG Holder does what he does, because it obviously doesn’t stop at truckers.
Hey, guys. You know that civil rights isn’t limited to race, right? You do know that, right. Right???
I have been trying to get attention brought to the injustice in the state of Georgia that’s not only perpetrated by the state courts but also the federal court system that,s housed in that state whose job it is to protect the constitutional rights of citizen within it,s district.Instead of protecting those rights these Federal courts IE U.S.District and Court of Appeals.These Courts are taking part in this injustice in the state courts by taking the phrase;rule most favorable to the Prosecution to a new level by up holding and in many cases helping to cover up for this injustice.I believe Columbus Ga. ranks #1 when it comes to putting people in prison where the evidence doesn’t warrant a conviction or in some cases there isn’t any evidence. It has been known for years that it is a family that runs the court system in Columbus.To receive justice is an impossibility if you have been convicted, if you are poor or of the Negro race.The kin folk are going to stick together.I was convicted in Carroll County December 11 2003 for defending myself against a young white 25 years my junior when he attempted to kill me with a 4ft. steel rod after communicating that threat and just as I attempted to retreat.False reports by Pathologist and Coroner that I have proved beyond a doubt to be fabricated and is an impossibility according to scientific documented evidence.Such evidence caused a jury to acquit me of felony murder but in the same trial convicted me of aggravated assault.I have presented all of this and more to both state and Federal Courts.The Federal Courts stated I have no constitutional claim. You are right that civil rights are not limited to race but it is people of color that suffers the most.Most people can not comprehend what it’s like to be put in prison when you know you have been rail road by a Punch that only wants revenge and not justice.I spent 5 years in a Georgia prison in the southwest corner of the state.I am still serving time even though I have been paroled.