Justice dept. calls in the big guns to stop voter suppression

[Redfairen]

It’s difficult to exaggerate the prominence Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan enjoys within the progressive legal community. Karlan is one of the most active members of the Supreme Court bar — among other things, she co-authored the brief that convinced the justices to strike down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act last June. She is a former litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and she is among the most widely regarded voting rights experts in the nation. If President Obama had shown more courage in the early years of his presidency, or if Senate Democrats had deployed the nuclear option sooner, she would be a federal appellate judge today. Many Court watchers, including myself, would choose her if we could place only one person on the Supreme Court.

So when the Justice Department revealed on Friday that Karlan would become the nation’s top voting rights attorney, it was as if Marsellus Wallace called up the many voters being disenfranchised in states like Texas and North Carolina, and told them that he’s sending The Wolf.

Karlan will take over as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division’s voting rights section. In this role, she will oversee the Justice Department’s most important challenges to voter suppression laws — including its efforts to restore federal oversight of Texas’ election law and its challenge to the nation’s worst voter suppression law in North Carolina.

As a senior member of the Civil Rights Division, Karlan will work under soon-to-be Assistant Attorney General Debo Adegbile, who President Obama recently nominated as the nation’s top civil rights attorney. Like Karlan, Adegbile is himself a leading expert on voting rights law – indeed, he twice appeared before the Supreme Court to try to save the Voting Rights Act from the Court’s conservative majority.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/12/23/3099181/justice-department-calls-big-guns-stop-voter-suppression/

[daleanime]

1. Good!

[pinto]

2. +1

[Gothmog]

3. AG Holder is doing a great job rebuilding the Voting Rights Section

Under Bush, the Voting Right Sections was essentially dismantled to a large degree. A couple of bush appointees illegally hired idiots like Christian Adams for this section. Adams could have never been hired without the bush appointees using political criteria to hire this idiot. Bush political appointees overruled the DOJ staff on issues such as redistricting and the Georgia voter id law. Here are some excerpts from the Inspector General report http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/03/justice_department_s_inspector_general_report_is_the_voting_rights_section.html

The record of political bias in the Justice Department’s voting section during President George W. Bush’s administration is well-known. (The department’s voting section is charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act and other federal voting laws.) We know from earlier reports that election officials, including Monica Goodling, went on a hiring binge to hire conservative attorneys to work in the section and, in the words of Bush appointee Bradley Schlozman, to “gerrymander all those crazy libs right out of the section.” We know that senior Justice Department officials in the Bush era, including Hans von Spakovsky, overruled the recommendations of career civil-service attorneys in the section to approve Georgia’s controversial voter identification law. And we know that the Justice Department during the Bush era made decisions widely perceived to help Republicans, such as approving Texas’s mid-decade re-redistricting of its congressional seats to create more safe Republican seats, an effort partially overturned by the Supreme Court after finding it violated the Voting Rights Act.

There is no way that an idiot like Christian Adams could have been hired without the aid of von Spakovsky and Schlozman.

I am glad the idiots hired by the bushies are leaving or have left the DOJ. Christian Adams first made a fool of himself on the New Black Panther silliness and is not the counsel for a racist group called True the Vote. Tomas Perez was brought into to run the voting rights section (in part) and was promoted due to his good work. This professor will be a great addition to the voting rights section.

BTW, the Obama voting rights section is doing a good job in the Texas voter id case. This is going to be a difficult case and I am glad that the DOJ is on the side of justice in that case.