Members of the Project 21 black leadership network issue a statement after yesterday’s House Appropriations hearing with Attorney General Holder here.

Mississippi lawmakers are finalizing redistricting plans as discussed in this Gulflive.com story.

The story contains this mistake:

“They will then go to committees in each chamber, then to the full chambers, then to Gov. Haley Barbour. Moffatt said he expects the process to take no longer than a week, at which point — barring any glitches — the plan goes to the Justice Department for approval.”

The plan does not necessarily go to the Justice Department for approval.  Mississippi could, and should for the reasons discussed here, file the plan directly in the United States District Court. 

A Boston Herald story  recounts indictments from the 2000 redistricting in Massachusetts and this claim:  “Moran promised members of the New Democracy Coalition — a group committed to enforcing minority voting rights — over the weekend that he’ll keep at least a 40 percent minority voting bloc in the 8th Congressional District. The district is made up of the north part of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Chelsea.”  He says to do otherwise would violate the Voting Rights Act.

It’s hard to understand how Mr. Moran could be correct after Bartlett v. Strickland was decided requiring a rock solid fifty percent threshold to support a Section 2 vote dilution case, unless he thinks reducing BPOP = intentional discrimination.  Good luck.

“Port Chester voting rights appeals to get lots of scrutiny.”

Here is a headline you don’t see often: Group tries to combat underage voting in Washington state.

The story notes that multiple underage people were improperly registered to vote:

“they found evidence of several individuals who, since 2006, were only 16-years-old when they registered. ‘We found dozens and dozens of illegal voters and underage voters, so clearly there is a problem here; We felt it was a violation of federal election law that says that Sam Reed has to maintain an accurate election data base.’  Even with the written policy in place now, Reitz says the ideas behind the early registration were bologna. ‘The secretary of state’s office literally argued that if we turn these underage applicants away, they will be so devastated and discouraged that they may never vote again.'”

What about the law?

That federal election law in question would be the Help America Vote Act and/or Section 8 of Motor Voter. Will the Department of Justice make any inquiry at all of how bad the problem was in Washington?  Will anyone quantify if any of these people voted?

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be testifying in Austin on the Texas Voter ID legislation. 

Perhaps he will share the success Georgia enjoyed by going to United States District Court with their citizenship verification procedures instead of relying on the Justice Department to preclear them.

“They’re playing games, literally, in the Justice Department.”

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was tapped to revitalize morale and restore integrity to a Justice Department purportedly lacking both.  He is a measured man with a dignified restraint.  Thus, when he decides to hit, his hits land harder.

He is hitting the Justice Department over the dismissal of the New Black Panther case, the racialist scandal that isn’t going away despite the work and wishes of Holder loyalists.

In an interview with Family Security Matters , Mukasey says:

“I think the handling of the New Black Panther Party case is something that seems deeply disturbing, and warrants either a full explanation, or a serious outside inquiry, possibly from Congress, or both.  Two members of the New Black Panther party were seen intimidating voters outside a poll in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, and a case against them resulted in a decision for the government, which the defendants did not contest.  A witness to the intimidation who had served as a highly civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department in the 1960’s, Bartle Bull, said that the defendants’ conduct was the most blatant kind of intimidation he had ever seen, including what he witnessed in Mississippi in the 1960’s.”

Mukasey helped restore integrity to the DOJ once before.   Perhaps he will be available again in 2013?  There is more at the article.

No need to fight a lost battle.

Appeal could erase stigma on village.