Author Archives: J Christian Adams

“Moderate Democrats becoming extinct”

National Journal:  North Carolina Democrat  Mike McIntrye’s retirement combined with the earlier retirement announcement of Utah Democrat Jim Matheson will reduce the Blue Dog Caucus to 13 members.  


North Carolina’s Mike McIntyre will not run for reelection in 2014, he announced on Wednesday. (Politico first reported the news.) He and Utah’s Jim Matheson, who is also retiring, are two of just 15 Blue Dog moderate Democrats left in the House. Two terms back, the Blue Dogs comprised an influential bloc of 54 members. As measured by National Journal’s 2012 vote ratings, McIntyre and Matheson are the two most conservative Democrats left in the House, and Matheson’s retirement also left Democrats with very little chance of retaining his seat.

…McIntyre, a nine-term conservative Democrat, won reelection by fewer than 700 votes in 2012 after his 7th District was redrawn to be more Republican, while Mitt Romney won nearly 60 percent of the district’s votes in the presidential race. Republicans grudgingly praised McIntyre’s cultivation of a conservative image that year, and without him to defend the seat, the GOP is much more likely to win it in November.

“Faced with reports of dead voters, NYC board of elections says investigate the investigators”

New York Daily News: In its probe, DOI investigators who posed as ineligible voters were given ballots in 61 out of 63 tries during last year’s primary, runoff and general elections without being challenged by poll workers.  The DOI report slamming the hapless board, released in the final hours of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, also uncovered nepotism, patronage, waste and political gamesmanship.


But the board’s newly installed president, Gregory Soumas, said “if something was done in an untoward fashion, it was only done by DOI.”

Changes at DOJ Civil Rights

From an email obtained from Acting AAG Jocelyn Samuels:

One DOJ staffer leaves to work for Soros:

“I am writing to inform you of two upcoming staffing changes in the Civil Rights Division’s Front Office. Unfortunately for us, Eric Halperin will be leaving this month for a position as a senior fellow at the Open Society Foundation where he will focus on housing and credit issues.
Anyone who worked Eric during his four years in the Front Office knows of his unfailing commitment to civil rights and tremendous contributions to the work of this Division. To list just one example: under his oversight, the Division’s fair lending unit has obtained more than $775 million in monetary relief for impacted communities. I am incredibly grateful for his leadership in overseeing the work of the Employment Litigation and Housing and Civil Enforcement Sections. It is a loss to see him go, but I know we are all excited to see all that he will accomplish in his new position.”

A new DOJ staffer with a questionable record of scholarship comes to DOJ:

“Second, it is my pleasure to announce that Pamela Karlan will be joining the Division’s Front Office as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General where she will review the Voting Section. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, Pamela has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham
D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She will be starting on January 13; please join me in welcoming her to the Division. “

“Few in NC apply for free voter ID”



Go now – no charge and no waiting:  “Twenty-two people in North Carolina had applied for a free voter identification card as of midday Friday, the second day the card was offered in the state.”


 


Need a ride?  “Although most North Carolinians already have a form of photo identification, for those who don’t, some local Republican parties are already organizing efforts to drive residents to locations to help them get a free identification card,” said Daniel Keylin, spokesman for the state Republican Party. “Those efforts will continue to expand as we head closer to the election.”

Photo IDs won’t be required at the polls until 2016, so North Carolina voters have two years to get those free cards. 


Rise in impersonation voter fraud spurs photo voter ID proposal in UK



To combat a rise in voter fraud, the UK is considering a common-sense solution: requiring voters to show photo identification – a passport or driver’s license – at the polls.


 


“The Electoral Commission’s proposal follows evidence that an increasing number of people are being impersonated at polling stations and their votes being stolen.”