Bush's hypocrisy on civil rights...

[marmar]

Published on Saturday, July 29, 2006 by the Boston Globe
Division of Uncivil Rights
by Derrick Z. Jackson

President Bush bragged last week to the NAACP, ``I come from a family committed to civil rights." He said Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. were part of America's ``second founding, the civil rights movement." He talked about his recent tour of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with the prime minister of Japan. ``If you haven't been there, you ought to go," he said.

Three days later, the Globe's Charlie Savage reported that Bush is gutting the civil rights division of the Justice Department. Savage obtained documents under the Freedom of Information act and found that just 19 of 45 lawyers hired for the division's voting rights, employment litigation and appellate sections since 2003 have civil rights backgrounds and of the 19, Savage wrote that ``nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies."

This happened because halfway into Bush's first term, former attorney general and Confederate romanticist John Ashcroft rewrote hiring procedures to eliminate hiring committees composed of veteran civil servant lawyers. Ashcroft replaced the relatively neutral committee with political appointees. Instead of lawyers whose careers demonstrated a commitment to the historically disenfranchised, some of the newer lawyers worked for other romancers of segregation and opponents of affirmative action and voting rights such as Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, retired Judge Charles Pickering, and former attorney general Edwin Meese. According to the Globe, a quarter of the lawyers hired since 2003 are members of the conservative Federalist Society, a group whose board of visitors is littered with civil rights rollback advocates such as Meese, Robert Bork, William Bradford Reynolds, C. Boyden Gray, and Theodore Olson. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch is a cochairman of that board with Bork.

The cynical and cronyistic detour from civil rights was so repulsive to career professionals that 63 attorneys left in 2005 under a buyout program, nearly double the annual number of those who normally left in recent years. Prosecutions of discrimination cases on behalf of people of color and women dropped 40 percent under Bush, according to a Washington Post review last November of Justice Department statistics. ``If anything, a civil rights background is considered a liability," Jon Greenbaum, a former attorney in the voting rights section, told the Globe.

The way things are going, all Americans will share in the liabilities of a government that cannot spell l-a-w if you spot it the ``l" and the ``a." While Bush turns one section of the Justice Department on its historical head, he is completely locking the doors on another. Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted that Bush personally blocked the department's Office of Professional Responsibility from investigating the ethics of the warrantless White House wiretapping program.

The Office for Professional Responsibility's top lawyer complained in one memorandum in the spring, ``Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving executive branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels. In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation." Finally, the American Bar Association issued a bipartisan task force report this week that was sparked by other reporting by the Globe's Savage. The ABA sharply criticized Bush's unprecedented use of ``signing statements" to say he can disregard more than 800 laws passed during his administration -- more than all prior presidents combined. The ABA said that such signing statements -- by any president -- are ``contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers."

The rest is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0729-23.htm

[ixion]

1. He comes from a family of Nazi sympathizers, IMO

who couldn't care less about civil rights.

And it's not just Bush. The majority of the GOP, under the guise of "everything's changed" is parroting the call for more fascism in government.

And some dems, too.

They should all be cast out of government, IMO.

[marmar]

2. "They should all be cast out of government"

Amen to that.

[ms liberty]

3. K&R - very important story n/t

[marmar]

4. Thanks...

:hi:

[givemebackmycountry]

5. Let's face it...he hates americans, all americans. With one exception.

The unelected Monkey hates americans.
All americans.
White ones.
Black ones.
Red ones.
Brown ones.
He hates us all equally.
He has no interest in helping anyone that isn't exactly like him.
There is only one color that he holds dear to his cold, cold heart.
Green.
The color of money.

He is a soulless, empty human being.
He is the worst thing that has ever happened to this country, and his crimes are legion.
The really scary part about this statement is that he is determined to finish what he has started.
The total destruction of everything that we hold dear as a free and open democracy.

He hates us for our freedoms.
He will not rest until he wrenches them away from us forever.

God help us all.
Because he wont.

(edited for my nomination and kick, even though it's not a surprise to most of us, everyone needs to see this)

[marmar]

6. Agreed...

He has contempt for everyone who's not "his base." That includes those lower and working-class "Red State" (as a state of mind) whites who still feel compelled to vote for him, even as this administration puts them through the ringer.

[YankeyMCC]

7. "Confederate romanticist"

that is at the root of so much trouble and BS connected with the struggle for full equal rights under the law in this nation.

All Americans and perhaps in a special way Americans who's families trace back to the American south need to fully accept our history including the Confederacy. But that means acknowledging and understanding it not the Romanticism so many people like Ascroft and Gingrich do.

Forgetting history isn't the worst historical mistake...romantising it the way some do the confederacy is more dangerous to progress IMHO.

[marmar]

8. So true...

And some, like Trent Lott, openly pine for it right on the Senate floor.

[emanymton]

9. Gaming The System.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. "Three days later"--"gutting the civil rights division". SOP for Bu**sh**.

Anytime he praises a program, you know it's going to be cut as soon as the cameras turn around. Everytime he does a PR visit to a veteran's hospital, it presages still *another* cut to veterans' programs. And let's not forget the National Renewable Energy Laboratory visit, where all the people who had been fired 10 days before Bu**sh**'s visit were suddenly rehired to make the visit look good.