Author Archives: J Christian Adams

“How Mac-n-Cheese and Water Ice caused a voting war in Southwest Philly”

Over in Southwest Philly’s 40th Ward, not everyone felt that way. I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon visiting polling places with City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, whose job is to oversee elections. At about 7 p.m., we rolled up to Patterson Elementary, where a group of young African-American volunteers were serving chicken wings, water ice, and mac-and-cheese, in hopes of enticing voters to the polls. The goal, said organizer Melissa Gray, who runs a non-profit called Adopt-A-School, was for “this smoke to get you over here.”

While Singer was elated by the concept of the cookout, Brian Keenan, the burly, ruddy-faced Committeeman for 22nd Division of the 40th Ward, didn’t share her enthusiasm. Standing across the school courtyard from the barbecue table, he began kvetching to Singer the instant he realized who she was.    
The rest of the story at PhillyPost

True the Vote Returns the Favor: Sues Federal Employees Personally

Daily Caller’s Caroline May: “True the Vote is not only suing the IRS, but also taking action against the IRS employees who participated in the harassment of the voter education and election monitoring organization. Those employees could personally be held liable to pay damages that would be established in litigation.

True the Votes’ lead counsel, Cleta Mitchell, explained in an email to The Daily Caller that she does not know whether the employees, if found to be liable in the lawsuit True the Vote filed against the IRS and its employees Tuesday, would pay out of pocket or take other avenues such as accessing union funds or homeowners insurance. Either way, she noted, the group will pursue its action.”

“Another Supreme Court Dare”

Tom Perez tries to dodge another housing discrimination case. Wall Street Journal.

“As chief of the Civil Rights Division since 2009, Mr. Perez pioneered the use of this “disparate impact” legal theory to extract big-dollar settlements from banks. His Labor nomination is now in jeopardy because in 2012 he arranged a quid pro quo to induce the City of St. Paul, Minnesota to drop its disparate impact case after the Supreme Court had already accepted it.”

“Obama appoints anti-voter ID Dem to co-lead voter commission”

Daily Caller reports that the Obama appointee to the Commission has already made up his mind on voter ID.  Requiring each voter to provide an photo ID will make any voting lines move more quickly than trying to confirm the identity of a voter by other and sometimes multiple means.

During the 2012 election, the Obama team tapped Bauer to lead the legal teams for the campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Among his initiatives: fighting voter ID laws enacted by a number of states in an effort to combat voter fraud. During his time as the team’s organizer, Bauer told the Associated Press that he believes that the GOP is enlisting these new laws to impede the right to vote.

True the Vote v. Holder, et al, Open Thread

“DOJ’s Witch Hunt against True the Vote,” Town Hall.

Salon.

Washington Times: A Texas group dedicated to combatting voter fraud applied for tax-exempt status in 2010 and has suffered three years of delays, been through four different IRS agents, undergone six FBI inquiries and submitted thousands of pages of documentation — and it still hasn’t been approved.

Houston Chronicle: “Advocacy” Group Sues.  (I doubt they ever list a left leaning litigation shop as an advocacy group. Indeed, they don’t.)

The Blaze.

Washington Times: “Faced with a firestorm of questions about his shifting narrative on the IRS targeting of conservative groups, as well as the White House’s involvement in changing Benghazi talking points and snooping on reporters’ phone records, Mr. Carney abandoned the narrative that the targeting is no longer active. . . .  When asked why she is still employed at the IRS, Mr. Carney said he thinks “it’s important to find the facts before you hold people accountable.”  [Of course we know in this administration, even after the facts are found, people aren’t held accountable.]


Red Alert Politics.  “While the federal government investigates the Internal Revenue Service, one targeted organization isn’t waiting around for the ruling.”

New York Newsday.






“OPINION: Justice Department drags out voter ID”

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal opinion page:

“Whatever one’s perspective on voter ID, this delay – now nearly two full election cycles – is unreasonable. As the front page story in today’s paper notes, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann submitted the required guidelines of how the state planned to administer the law in January 2012. The state should have had an answer, one way or the other, by now.”

What is happening is that DOJ is gathering information, information willingly turned over by Mississippi, on which to base an objection to the law.  If the submission were before the United States District Court instead of the DOJ, the Rules of Evidence would limit what the Justice Department could obtain, and how it could be used.  For example, in the South Carolina voter ID case, the Justice Department used evidence obtained throughout the administrative review process to object to the law.  But the federal court later ruled that the evidence was not relevant to an objection.

This is the fundamental problem states subject to Section 5 face: the lawyers in the Voting Section see the same set of facts differently than does a federal court.  What they consider to be evidence of racial discrimination, courts do not.  That’s why submitting voter identification laws to DOJ are a step best not taken, unless you are simply willing to litigate the case in the end, and with DOJ having a big head start on your evidence.