Consequences

The Supreme Court is lost. Of course, we we fairly certain of that in November 2004. We knew it for sure after the worthless "Gang of 14" made the loss complete. Today, we can see the results of such a momentous failure.

It's hard for DB to decide which is the worst opinion of the term. The "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case is clearly the most illogical. Today's decision on school desegregation is the most dispiriting. The McCain-Feingold and faith-based decisions were disappointing, but unsurprising and based, at least, on a consistent application of the law on the part of the majority.

Chief Justice John Roberts (and Justice Alito) both said they respect stare decisis, but that was clearly a distortion. They respect precedent only in the context of what things were like before cases were settled in ways in which they did not appreciate. President Bush said he wanted judges like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, and he got them.

Thomas, of course, told the Senate that he had never thought about Roe (an unbelievable claim) and then, as a Justice, stated that it was wrongly-decided. Scalia's willingness to violate his own rules in order to reach the decision that pleases him is well-documented.

The Roberts Court is not only failing America; Roberts is failing to meet the expectations he set for himself. Norman Ornstein says it quite well:

He did seem to be someone who would be respectful of stare decisis and would move to change the court in small steps, using a more consensus-driven approach, looking for narrow solutions that could command 9-0 or 8-1 decisions, rather than 5-4 votes. Such narrow decisions ultimately erode the legitimacy of the Supreme Court because they underscore a sense that rulings are not driven by careful adherence to law and precedents but by the political calculus, based on who retires and which president gets to make the replacement.

In his initial service on the court, I was encouraged that Roberts would fit that institution-building mold, working with a like-minded institutionalist on the other side of the philosophical divide, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Now, with the decisions this week, I see that I was wrong. We have fallen into a pattern of key decisions that come down 5-4, with Roberts and the more rigid Samuel Alito joining Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy to throw out precedents established only a few years ago, all driven not by changes in the law or objective deliberations over facts, but by the simple fact that Sandra Day O'Connor left the court and was replaced by a more conservative justice.

The good news is that these 5-4 decisions carry as little weight as possible (I know, that's not much silver lining) and Justice Kennedy's opinion actually does a little bit to protect affirmative action. The bad news is that we're stuck with this court for a long time and it could possibly get worse.

Thanks a lot, Joe Lieberman. The next time this blogger hears you talk about being a Freedom Rider, I hope somebody asks you why you helped destroy Brown v. Board of Education.

Sun don't shine above the ground

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Tomorrow, the Summer Solstice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be delivering a speech on Civil Rights in Oxford, Mississippi. Won't that be special. I wonder if he'll use the phrase "I don't recall" much.

Oxford, of course, is home to the University of Mississippi, where, in the middle of a riot, James Meredith became the first African-American student. Meredith survived after being shot, nearly four years later, as he marched for voting rights.

I've heard that Meredith does not enjoy being considered an important figure in the Civil Rights movement. From the looks of the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice, it would seem Gonzales doesn't, either.

Via McClatchy on Monday:

WASHINGTON — A former Justice Department political appointee blocked career lawyers from filing at least three lawsuits charging local and county governments with violating the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, seven former senior department employees charged Monday.

Hans von Spakovsky also derailed at least two investigations into possible voter discrimination, the former employees of the Voting Rights Section said in interviews and in a letter to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. They urged the panel to reject von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

[...]

In the letter to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel's chairwoman, the former employees said that von Spakovsky acted as the "de facto voting section chief" from early 2003 until late 2005, spending virtually all of his time on voting matters and promoting "partisan political interests."

"We have never seen a political appointee exercise this level of control over the day-to-day operations of the voting section," they said.

It was the second letter in the last eight days in which former employees of the Voting Rights Section, including [Joseph] Rich and former deputy chief Robert Kengle, urged the Senate panel to reject the nomination. Feinstein told von Spakovsky during the hearing that the criticism from former department officials would make it difficult for him to win confirmation.

Monday's letter included the first allegations that von Spakovsky torpedoed suits and investigations over alleged state, county or local laws that diminish the voting strength of African-Americans, Native Americans or other minorities or prevent them from voting altogether.

I'm sure Gonzales' speech will be riveting.

McClatchy, by the way, has a new website with a new slogan, "Truth to Power." Josh Marshall sings the praises they deserve.

No excuses

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Yesterday was Juneteenth, a time to reflect on Civil Rights and progress in America. As I was admonished in comments here for not making clearer, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America. But sub-human conditions for workers still exist, to the everlasting shame of the Congress that has allowed it to continue on American soil.

It's easy sometimes to feel helpless when confronted by crimes against humanity in distant locations, where seemingly little can be done. It is inexcusable for nothing to be done when the outrages occur within the legal jurisdiction of our own representative government.

I'm writing about the exploitation that is hidden away in the Marianas Islands. I'm referring to the women who are tricked into thinking they are buying a chance to work in America, only to learn that they are essentially imprisoned in a filthy den, forced to work for nothing, forced into prostitution, forced to have abortions, and finally shipped back to their homelands, broken and penniless. I'm writing about a man who couldn't "spotlight" a blog post; he lit himself on fire to call attention to the desperation that has been largely ignored.

I know of nobody on the blog-o-sphere who has devoted more energy to this horrible situation than dengre at Daily Kos. I urge you to read dengre's diary detailing how Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff made sure Congress would do nothing but turn a blind eye to these atrocities. You can read dengre's transcripts of the Senate testimony of abused women, some of which fell on deaf ears a decade ago.

You can also see a (somewhat old) video here that shows the working conditions out there.

Again, this is on U.S. soil. Now that the Democrats control Congress, there is no reason this ugliness should remain in the shadows. There is no excuse for allowing this exploitation to continue.

Last week, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) introduced "a bill to implement further the Act approving the Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America, and for other purposes." It remains to be seen what the bill hopes to accomplish, or what it will look like in its final form. Hearings may begin next month.

There is no doubt what the bill ought to do. Slavery is wrong. Rape is wrong. That may be hard for Tom DeLay to comprehend while he smiles to allow people to see Jesus through his mugshot. But it should be obvious to just about everybody else. Please put pressure on Congress to do the right thing.

A reference point

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Today is Juneteenth. Happy Juneteenth!

It's a day to celebrate the abolition of slavery, but also to remember that there remains quite a bit of road ahead on the path to true equality under the law in America. The hard work left to do is especially glaring this year, in light of the fact that the Department of Justice seems hell-bent on making a U-turn.

Nancy Pelosi issued an eloquent statement today about the holiday:

"In his famous Gettysburg address, President Abraham Lincoln promised a new birth of freedom in our nation. And today we commemorate the day of new birth in which all people in America were made free: June 19, 1865.

"Known as Juneteenth, this is the day when Union Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas to issue the President's executive order, known to us as the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, it took almost two and half years for the Proclamation to be enforced throughout all of the United States.

"Juneteenth has evolved into a national day of reflection and celebration for millions of Americans across the country. Juneteenth is America's reminder of a past of inequality, and a future of justice for all citizens. It is a reference point from which to appreciate the progress made in our society, toward the ideal of equality that is America's heritage and hope."

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker published a post last Friday detailing how clearly the DOJ Civil Rights division has been undermined by this administration. Every week, it becomes even more obvious.

I'm going to deviate a bit. It's not the true intention of the holiday, but I can't help thinking also about the way the world has advanced physically since 1865 and how news travels. Of course, part of the reason it took so long for word of the Emancipation to be delivered to the slaves in Texas was the fact that the Confederacy was in control and had no motivation for spreading that particular news item.

But news didn't travel so fast, anyway. Radio was still a generation away. And even sending a person somewhere wasn't that easy. There was no interstate highway system. When the 19th Century began, First Lady Abigail Adams got lost in the woods just trying to get from Baltimore to Washington D.C.

As with equal rights, it often seems that progress is "an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move," to be presumptuous enough to borrow from Tennyson. We just never seem to get there. You might be reading this post 10,000 miles from where it was written within minutes of its publishing. But a police officer still can't reliably tell a firefighter to get out of a collapsing building with an interoperable radio. The federal government couldn't even figure out help was desperately needed at the Superdome after Katrina. And the signal-to-noise ratio is so low these days that information doesn't penetrate even after it arrives, hence the Saddam was behind 9/11 poll results.

I think the good news is that we're close enough technologically that a simple change of leadership might be all it takes to get our nation communicating the way we ought to be. Just getting Ted Stevens away from a gavel was a good start. With enough pressure on the FCC, the Internet just might survive the threat of corporate control.

Equality under the law? Well, electing a president who will reverse some of the damage to the Justice Department will get us back on the road, at a bare minimum. I doubt there will ever be a Juneteenth when we can float out the Mission Accomplished banner. But as Pelosi said, today is a reference point and a chance to evaluate where we've been, where we are and where we are headed.

Department of Injustice

One of these days, the complete record of what the Bush administration has done to minorities will be revealed and the GOP will be broken. Of course, the racists among us will find another vehicle for their warped agenda. But the damage that has been done to the Department of Justice will take a long time to repair.

Here's one thing that the Bush political appointees insisted didn't raise any red flags. The sponsor of the bill, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister told voting section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

Once again, Josh Marshall and his staff are taking the lead on this issue. Please join DB in awarding him the honorary title Chief Justice of the Internet.

Hero

CHIEF JUSTICE JOSH MARSHALL

Before Jon Stewart earned DB's permanent respect for killing Crossfire, that show was on TV here all the time. One of the moments that made it watchable was this:

JAMES CARVILLE: I'll tell you what, that is the best money the government spent in all of 2002.

Trent Lott isn't the only Republican that wants to turn the clock back to the years of segregation. The embattled senator from Mississippi wants to take us back to 1948. Attorney General John Ashcroft, though, would rather return to 1848. Four years ago, Ashcroft gave an interview to "Southern Partisan Magazine," in which he described the importance of "defending southern patriots like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis."

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) to say not only segregation, but (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So tonight, I want to announce the formation of Liberals for Lott. Libs for Lott is dedicated to the American principle of equal justice for all. Leadership based on character and full accountability to those who seek to govern. Libs for Lott demands equality. If Senator Lott stays, so can Ashcroft. But if Lott goes, we insist that the Republican Party send Ashcroft with him.

(APPLAUSE)

Our group...

TUCKER CARLSON: Your group.

CARVILLE: Because I don't know what we're going to tell the children. Because when the little children come home and they say, mommy, why did Senator Lott lose his job? He was just for segregation.

CARLSON: But Senator Byrd...

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... Ashcroft, who spoke out nostalgically about slavery keeps his. I don't understand. We have to be willing to have the courage to teach the little cowboys and cowgirls out there in America the lesson that everybody is responsible for their actions, even the attorney general.

CARLSON: Well, good luck, James. And in the absence of any real ideas, that would probably make a good platform for you. And I hope you do a great job with it.

CARVILLE: Please join Libs for Lott, because we're standing with Trent. Because we say equal justice for all. If it's good for the majority leader, it's good for the attorney general.

CARLSON: If the idea that the attorney general is a racist or a supporter of slavery, someone...

CARVILLE: Well why keep giving interviews to "Southern Partisan Magazine," a magazine that regularly praises the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated? Speak out against it.

CARLSON: This is so insane, that I can't continue this conversation.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... wrong to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

CARLSON: We're going to have to take a commercial break. Insanity demands it.

Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated, Tucker? Comedy gold.

DB is writing this post today for several reasons. First, it is timely. President Lincoln was killed 142 years ago today (and I'm a sucker for anniversaries).

Today is also Jackie Robinson Day at stadiums across America. The same TV stations that have spent the last two weeks hosting debates about racist comments directed at some fantastic young athletes and scholars will spend the afternoon celebrating, quite rightly, an American hero who heard the same and worse when he broke the color barrier in baseball 60 years ago.

Robinson was named Rookie of the Year in September 1947, just five months before President Truman delivered his civil rights agenda to Congress, which led to the segregationist 1948 presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond. The candidacy that Lott romanticized above.

We've come a long way in America, but obviously not far enough. Over at Josh Marshall's TPMmuckraker, we saw this report by Paul Kiel last week:

During the first five years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department's voting section only filed a single case alleging voting discrimination on behalf of African American voters. That's despite the fact that the section, part of the Civil Rights Division, was created mainly to protect African American voters from discrimination.

But during that same time period, the section managed to file the first ever "reverse" discrimination case under the Voting Rights Act.

[...]

A similar shift has occurred in the division's employment litigation section, which is tasked with preventing discrimination in employment. That section has managed to file two "reverse" discrimination cases alleging discrimination against whites under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, while filing only one alleging discrimination against African Americans in the past six years.

Shameless.

All of this is of course compounded by the examples of misconduct emerging from the U.S. Attorneys scandal, which is breaking open in large part because of the persistence of Marshall and TPM.

Which brings DB to the main point of this post and also to the reason this it begins with that ridiculous exchange on Crossfire.

While Marshall and TPM have been appropriately receiving accolades for their work in "PurgeGate," the truth is that Marshall has been an online hero for justice for a long time. Here's Ashcroft praising that racist southern magazine:

"Your magazine helps set the record straight," said Ashcroft. "You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Who do you think broke that story for Slate in 2000? That's right, Josh Marshall. And here's what he humbly wrote at TPM:

And finally, why hasn't more been said about Ashcroft's interview with the Southern Partisan magazine? I'd like to take heaps of credit for being the first to mention this story late on the evening of December 22nd. But, honestly, a few Nexis searches are all that's required to get all the details. But a quick search on the self-same Nexis reveals that only one article (that by Tom Edsall in the Washington Post) has even mentioned the Southern Partisan interview since Ashcroft's nomination (and even then only in passing).

Isn't this sort of a big deal? Is it really too much to ask that nominees for Attorney General not give interviews to crypto- (or not-so-crypto) racist publications like the Southern Partisan?

The media did, finally, begin to notice and Marshall kept the questions rolling:

More on point is the fact, reported in the AP story, that George Bush, Sr. appointed Ashcroft to his commission on race and minorities in America. And Ashcroft was one of only two of the forty commission members who refused to sign the final report. Ashcroft said the report's "generalizations about setbacks in progress are overly broad and counterproductive."

Hmmm.

Talking Points hasn't seen the report. But he imagines that since it was sponsored by President Bush it probably wasn't a particularly afro-centric document, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the point isn't that Ashcroft's a racist. But then that's not the standard, is it? Given all the evidence, let's just say that civil rights enforcement just doesn't really seem like John Ashcroft's cup of tea.

And since the AG is the head civil rights enforcer. Maybe he just ain't the right guy for the job.

So here we are, seven years later, and the results are in. The Department of Justice has not just abandoned its Civil Rights responsibilities. It has deceptively and deliberately worked to undermine its own mission.

Josh Marshall saw it coming and rang the alarm bell. Too bad it's taken seven years for him to make it to prime time cable news shows and to get some notice in the "Paper of Record."

DB thinks America is a better country when people are paying attention to Josh Marshall and I'd like to keep him in the spotlight.

Therefore, I nominate JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE INTERNET

Who's with me?

Voter fraud

75,000 Voter Registration Cards Found in Trash Bin in Atlanta:

ATLANTA (AP) -- The Georgia Secretary of State's office has begun an investigation into who threw more than 75,000 Fulton County voter registration cards into a trash bin.

The cards contained a voter's full name, address and Social Security number. The office says a random sampling showed many of the cards were for active voters.

In a statement, Secretary of State Karen Handel said the finding "represents a significant and serious breach of the personal information of Fulton County voters and an outrageous violation of the trust and integrity of Fulton County's elections."

After getting a call from a resident, officials with Handel's office found more than 30 boxes of voter registration application cards, precinct cards and other documents Monday in a construction trash bin at Atlanta Technical College in southwest Atlanta.

Gee, I wonder what the student body at Atlanta Technical College looks like:

Student Body Size and Diversity

In Fall 2002, the school had 2,135 (full-time equivalent) students.

Minority enrollment included African-American (85)%, Hispanic (1)%, and Asian (3)%.

Atlanta Technical College is a Minority Serving Institution as defined by the Office of Civil Rights.

I'm sure Karl Rove's Department of Justice will be sprinting to the scene to find a remedy.