Reply #13: NYT Op Ed: Another Sorry Ascension [View All]

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Thanks to MCM for finding this one:

EDITORIAL
Another Sorry Ascension


Published: June 14, 2007
It apparently wasn’t enough for the Bush administration to pack the Department of Justice with political operatives. The White House has now nominated one of the most meddlesome of those partisans, Hans von Spakovsky, to a powerful post on the Federal Election Commission.

This is the agency charged with making sure elections are fair — an especially ludicrous perch for Mr. Spakovsky. As a voting-rights appointee in the Justice Department, he promoted Republican initiatives to crimp the ballot power of minorities and the poor who typically favor Democrats.

In one of his party missions, Mr. Spakovsky overrode the recommendations of the department’s staff professionals and approved a regressive law in Georgia that required voters to provide photo identification. The law, a voter suppression tool worthy of the Jim Crow era, was later blocked by the courts. A former G.O.P. county chairman in Georgia, Mr. Spakovsky failed to recuse himself from such an obvious conflict of interest. He also pushed for department approval of Tom DeLay’s Texas gerrymandering plan — the plan that the Supreme Court ruled violated the Voting Rights Act.

Feverish for the Republican edge, Mr. Spakovsky drove career lawyers from the Justice department and constantly parroted the (Karl) Rovian line that voter fraud is rampant, though studies have found otherwise.

-snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/opinion/14thu2.html?ex=1339473600&en=0bb6368e42c72954&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

LET'S HOPE THAT ANY SENATOR WITH INTEGRITY VOTES AGAINST CONFIRMATION OF THIS GUY!