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Justice Department Attacks Prayerful Protests:
“. . . Even if the DOJ is able to prove these facts, it nakedly exposes the rotten priorities of the Eric Holder regime. The allegations in the complaint are less than what New Black Panther Jerry Jackson did in Philadelphia seeking to help elect Barack Obama, but the case against Jackson was dismissed. . . .
Retta is sued by Eric Holder for causing purported ‘course adjustments,’ while New Black Panthers find the suit against them voluntarily thrown out by Holder despite having brandished a nightstick in uniform and aggressively blocked the entrance to a polling place.
Retta’s unnamed pro-life conspirators are sued, while the New Black Panther Party and party officials were dismissed because DOJ bureaucrat Steve Rosenbaum thought an internet posting by the panthers disclaiming the events in Philadelphia bought absolution.
What sordid, tawdry and politicized hypocrisy the case against Retta reveals.
Dick Retta was even sprayed with pepper spray by an abortion advocate. No DOJ action was taken against the person who attacked Retta for exercising his protected federal free speech rights under 18 U.S.C. section 245. After all, Eric Holder has his priorities. Abortion and the New Black Panthers rank high on the list.”
More on DOJ and DOD and military voting
The Fox article today by Eric Eversole and Hans von Spakovsky has some interesting hard numbers:
“Nor should there be any doubt that DOD is the worst offender of Motor Voter. In 2010, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) reported that military recruitment offices submitted only 31,712 registration applications to election officials nationwide from approximately 5,000 offices that recruited 281,233 military personnel.
In other words, these military recruitment offices averaged approximately 6 applications per office for the entire year. Compare this to the 1.1 million registration applications from public assistance offices
On the individual state level, the EAC data is more alarming. The data shows that 14 states received fewer than 100 total registration applications from their recruitment offices, even though many of these states have hundreds of military recruiting offices and sign up thousands of military recruits each year.
For example, state officials in Georgia received only 35 applications from recruitment offices in 2010. Similarly, Maryland, Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina all received fewer than 50 applications from their recruitment offices. Florida received only 241 registration applications, even though military recruitment offices see tens of thousands of potential recruits each year.
DOJ sued Rhode Island because it was concerned that only 707 applications had been received from public assistance offices. But zero applications were received from military recruitment offices in Rhode Island. Similarly, DOJ sued Louisiana, where more than 7,200 applications were received from public assistance and disability services offices. Yet the Department seems unconcerned that only 1,500 applications were received from recruitment offices.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/07/disfranchisement-our-military-voters/#ixzz1XNguOlvL
Senate Judiciary Hearing at 2pm (EDT) on Voter ID
The hearing begins at 2pm EDT and can be seen by clicking here and finding the stream.
Eric Eversole and Hans von Spakovsky at FOX: military voter disenfranchisement
Fox:
“Time and again, Eric Holder’s Justice Department and its Civil Rights Division has shown how highly partisan it is. From its dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, to its harassment of jurisdictions with voter ID laws, the Division has proven that its far-left liberal ideology determines whether it will enforce (or not enforce) the law. Now it is ignoring the plight of military voters.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/07/disfranchisement-our-military-voters/#ixzz1XJdmYAau
Loretta King: “Eric Holder’s Luca Brasi”
North Carolina voter ID “still has life”
Law Professor Garret Epps swings and misses
University of Baltimore Law Professor Garret Epps has this piece in the Atlantic (yes Virginia, people really pay for it) characterizing Arizona’s lawsuit challenging the continued constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as “weird.”
“Arizona’s new Republican Attorney General, Tom Horne, filed a suit last month asking a federal court to declare that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is unconstitutional. Arizona–in some ways the Mississippi of the 21st Century–is a weird plaintiff, and its claims are even weirder; but weirder claims have succeeded in the past. The Supreme Court signaled in 2009 that it was a bit weary of all this right-to-vote business.”
This is typical of the tactics used by the civil rights industry – claim that the entire right to vote is under attack, and demonize good faith legal efforts to test the limits of federal power. First the exaggeration: the Supreme Court has never signaled that it is “weary of all this right to vote business.” Nice way to stoke the mob professor. In reality, the Court questioned whether the federal government has the power to approve or reject election laws in 16 states based on events that happened almost 50 years ago. Nobody, particularly the Supreme Court, is questioning the viability of right to vote statutes like Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as the article concedes once the mob is sufficiently stoked.
Second, the complaint is neither bizarre nor weird. It firmly and credibly tests the limits of federal power using a theory some of the zealous defenders of Section 5 think will prevail. Worse for Professor Epps, the people charged with defending Section 5 don’t view the complaint as weird or outlandish. They understand the serious vulnerabilities of the provision and have adjusted their preclearance policies to help preserve this constitutionally vulnerable statute.
Washington Times: “Disgraced vote-fraudster affiliate lobbying the Obama administration”
Watchdog group Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department, demanding copies of all correspondence between department officials and Ms. Rogers, a former attorney for ACORN. Judicial Watch said it is investigating the extent to which the department and Project Vote “are partnering on a national campaign to use the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) to register more individuals on public assistance, widely considered a key voting demographic for the Obama 2012 campaign.”
According to Project Vote’s website Ms. Rogers represented Project Vote “at meetings and legislative hearings, preparing a voting rights agenda for submission to the Presidential Transition Team in 2008-2009.”
The Judicial Watch FOIA is seeking also all communications with Project Vote and the attorneys in the Voting Section and Civil Rights Division. Judicial Watch has displayed the fortitude to litigate in federal court when DOJ documents aren’t forthcoming. This story promises to be quite a ride.
Double registration for Maine college students
An interesting description of facts from Maine. College students there are registered in more than one state. In 2008, they voted at their Maine college campus for President; in 2010, they voted back home in Massachusetts. From Patch:
“I’m surprised to be on this list and I’m surprised that it’s an issue that I voted in Maine at all,” he said. “We were encouraged to vote when we were on campus, and we were told that voting on campus was legal. I think this unfairly targets out-of-state students, as it’s much harder for those of us who are out of state to vote via absentee,” he said in the Daily News.
Who “encouraged” them to register and vote in Maine?? The article is silent.
I recently saw a presentation in Cincinnati by a noted election attorney who walked step by step through the voter registration portion of the Obama for President campaign website. The website, when encouraging students to participate in the 2008 election, was also encouraging them to register and vote in the state where they attend school – depending on which states are involved.
For example, a New York resident attending school in Virginia was encouraged to also register to vote in Virginia and vote in Virginia for President. A Virginia resident attending school in New York, however, was encouraged to vote in Virginia. The presentation ran through the matrix of several geographic fact patterns. What became clear was that the Obama campaign was encouraging students to reorient their residence and register to vote in new location, regardless of parental tax status for dependants, tax status, car registration, or any other indicia of residency. Some states, such as the Virginia Secretary of the State Board of Elections (a partisan appointee) was compliant with this political strategy by dissolving state regulations involving tests of actual domicile. Election Law Center has previously covered this potentially racially discriminatory practice.
There is evidence that some of the students in Virginia may have voted twice in the Presidential election – both in Virginia and in their home state. If so, that is a federal crime and this story hasn’t finished. Stay tuned.