Report Examines Civil Rights During Bush Years

[alp227]

Source: Charlie Savage, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When the Bush administration ran the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, career lawyers wanted to look into accusations that officials in one state had illegally intimidated blacks during a voter-fraud investigation.

But division supervisors refused to “approve further contact with state authorities on this matter,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office auditing the activities of the division from 2001 to 2007.

Congress is set to release that report, which did not identify the state in question, on Thursday as the House of Representatives takes up its first oversight hearing of the Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration.

The 180-page report, obtained by The New York Times, is densely packed with statistics about civil rights enforcement by the division’s sections. The accountability office also examined a sampling of matters that were closed without further action, finding several cases — including the curtailed voter intimidation inquiry — in which supervisors rejected the recommendations of career lawyers to go forward.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/us/politics/03rights.html

[defendandprotect]

1. Good to see some of this wrongdoing isn't entirely beng ignored . . .

[nosmokes]

2. An 'examination'or 'investigation' is govspeak for the first shovel load of the

the hole to bury 'IT' in.

[maglatinavi]

3. NOSMOKES

Gee! Have some faith, will'ya???

[nosmokes]

9. Why? what sign has been given that prompt me to have faith?

At every opportunity to look into the egregious and felonious activities of the previous administration Obama has simply shrugged and said it's time to move forward. I say HORSESHIT to that noise and as the popular chant goes NO JUSTICE,NO PEACE. He puts corporate lackeys in charge of the very oversight agencies and bureaus they are tasked with overseeing, just like the war criminal he replaced. He's continuing a failed and idiotic foreign/war policy started by the worst president in modern times if not history and he renominated Bernanke. So WTF is one sposed to find hope other than he ain't a member of th GOPosse? Sorry, but that just dont cut the mustard anymore. Not when the XtianRight is foaming t the mouth and willing to resort to murder of medical personnel w/ the implicit approval of so called men of god and statesmen.

[defendandprotect]

8. Traditionally, that's been true - sadly . . .

[mstinamotorcity]

4. We saw what Dubya's

answer to civil rights was. Two words. Hurricane Katrina

[Solly Mack]

5. k/r

[Hubert Flottz]

6. Bush was too busy cooking up civil wrongs that he could whip on

the planet, to worry about anyone's civil rights, but his own.

People who go around torturing other people and smirking about it, don't give a fuck about civility, period.

[trusty elf]

7. "the division, in recent years, was not doing all that it could

to fulfill our responsibility to enforce all the civil rights laws fairly and aggressively.”

That's for damn sure. It's more like they actively stymied efforts to do so. :eyes: