Chilling, But Not Surprising

The McClatchy Washington Bureau came through with a story, published in today's Sacramento Bee, that hammers the GOP's takeover of the Department of Justice. While bits and pieces of the story's information have appeared elsewhere, this article concentrates a great deal on how DOJ's Civil Rights Division has been completely subverted by the Bush apppointees to the division.

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a mid-term battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won. ...

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins. ...

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

• Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

• Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

• Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

• Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly. [Emphasis added]

The targets of all this activity? The poor, the elderly, the black, the newly enfranchised immigrant, all of whom tend to vote Democratic. The point of all this activity? Total Republican control.

It's going to take a large broom to clean up the mess in DOJ. While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be the first target, the congressional investigations should not stop there. Every single Bush appointee and every White House staffer who counseled on the appointments and who served as liasons to the DOJ need to be investigated and rooted out for malfeasance and then prosecuted for their assualt on democracy.