The latest installment of the Every Single One series is up at Pajamas Media. It relates to the criminal section at the Civil Rights Division. I discuss more about the activities of this section in my forthcoming book, Injustice. But for now, a portion of the Pajamas Media piece today:

As I wrote before, a pretextual hiring standard is being employed. Division leaders, of course, aren’t calling it a “liberal” litmus test; they are instead referring to it as a requirement that all successful candidates have “civil rights experience.” But their definition of “civil rights experience” only includes prior employment, membership, or affiliation with left-wing advocacy organizations.

Worse, Loretta King, while serving as the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the outset of the Obama administration, ordered the resumes of highly qualified applicants to be rejected only because they didn’t have political or left-wing civil rights experience. Multiple DOJ sources with direct knowledge of hiring committee practices have confirmed this to me.

So what does the corrupted hiring mean to the average American? It means if you go to the Wisconsin State Fair and are beaten because you are white, your federal government will do nothing for you, even as it would act if attacker and attacked races were reversed. It means if you are Marty Marshall standing in your front yard watching fireworks with your family, and are attacked  by a mob yelling “this is our world. This is a black world,” don’t expect DOJ to act. It means if you are Dick Retta and are pepper-sprayed by a liberal for praying and exercising federal rights to protest abortion, don’t expect the law to protect you.

What does it mean? It means we have reached that dangerous line crossed in past civilizations where the law appears to apply to some, but not to all. This is un-American, and must stop. Otherwise, Americans will stop it next year at the ballot box.

Tennessee Speaker of the House Beth Harwell defends voter ID laws and turns the tables on U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken.  More at the Tennessean:

“I would suggest to our federal officials that they get their own house in order first. In an era of rising deficits, ballooning debt, and bloated federal government in Washington Dick Durbin and Jim Cooper have chosen to ignore those problems and come to Tennessee to trample on states’ rights. No wonder Congress has an 82 percent disapproval rating. Congressman Cooper has assumed the Washington mentality of not respecting states’ rights.

Pitkin County Colorado has decided to print ballots in Spanish despite having no legal obligation to do so.  Election official Dwight Shellman noted that Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act currently does not require Spanish language ballots in Pitkin Colorado, but that they will print them anyhow for the November election:

The county has ordered about 10,000 ballots, the printing of which will cost about $4,300. In addition, it ordered envelopes for mailing them out, and separate envelopes that voters can use to return their ballot to the Clerk and Recorder’s Office. All of the items would need to be in both languages if the county were to run a dual-language election.

Instead, the county is working on the finishing touches of a dual-language sample ballot that voters can pick up at the clerk’s office or view online. Shellman said his office is also willing to put one in the mail to anyone who requests one. Individuals who are more comfortable reading Spanish can use it as a guide as they fill out their official ballot, he said.

“I think it’s a good service that we can provide,” Shellman said.

Shellman said he doubts that Pitkin County would have to provide dual-language voters under the federal criteria anyway (the census counted 716 county residents who identified themselves as Spanish-speakers), but said getting the ballot translated has been a worthy exercise.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange won’t take a chance on an unfair Department of Justice objection to Alabama’s redistricting plans.  He is going straight to United States District Court. 

Of course the Associated Press misses the bus when it asks: “Officials in the attorney general’s office did not immediately say why the request was made directly to the court.” 

Why?  Here are a few reasons why, and here.

You can’t make this stuff up.  New York has asked the Department of Defense for a waiver from the provisions of federal law protection military voters – for the 2012 election.  The cover letter is here from Robert Brehm, the elections director and the waiver application is here.

The MOVE Act, the law at issue, passed in October 2009.  Two years later, New York still isn’t protecting military voters.

Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Senator Chuck Grassley wants the Department of Justice Inspector General to open an investigation into hiring practices in the DOJ Civil Rights Division, including the Voting Section.  More at Pajamas Tatler.

At the Denver Post:

A 70-year-old Aurora man will be sentenced Thursday for voting twice in county elections in 2008 and again in 2009 — a case he called “the biggest joke in the world.”

Here is link

Rhode Island’s controversial voter-identification legislation was among those hailed by conservatives in testimony last Thursday before a U.S. Senate subcommittee examining new voter laws passed by state legislatures this year.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, quoted from Governor Chafee’s defense of the law, saying “requiring identification at the polling place is a reasonable request to ensure the accuracy and integrity of our elections.”

He also cited a quote from state Sen. Harold Metts, a Providence Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation. He defended the law this way: “[A]s a minority citizen and senior citizen I would not support anything that I thought would represent obstacles or limit protections.

I have more on Tabella’s report over at PJ Tatler on the pending objection by DOJ to Texas redistricting. What should Texas do?  Get that fax machine ready.

Link. “The State of Texas will be filing a motion for summary judgment in the case by Wednesday and the Justice Department is expected to set forth its objections to the maps next Monday, September 19.”   Apparently, someone already knows DoJ will be objecting to the Texas plan.  It must have slipped out at one of the meetings the Voting Section held recently with the parade of plaintiffs intervening in the preclearance process.  So much for the internal and confidential administrative review process of the DoJ Voting Section, a process that is supposed to conduct its analysis without leaks to the media or the interest groups.  Instead we see evidence of Miller v. Johnson violations where Voting Section attorneys maintain a much-too-cozy relationship with these groups and essentially cut and paste from their memorandums to justify DoJ objections.  All the signs and glee of interest groups point to opposition by DoJ.

What is even more remarkable is that it appears that the DoJ Voting Section will focus its attention on coalition districts and rescuing the partisan target of Texas Republicans, Representative Lloyd Doggett.  Doggett is the Anglo Democrat from the Austin area, a seat where there is not even enough of a minority population to create a majority minority seat.  Despite language by the Supreme Court in Bartlett that expressed skepticism with coalition districts in the context of Section 2, the Democrats assert that Austin and eastern Trav­is County together constitutes a “coalition district” where Hispanics and blacks don’t reside in sufficient numbers to elect candidates of their choice on their own, but with crossover white voting, may be able to create an coalition that would elect an Anglo Democrat. 

Will DoJ Voting actually risk the constitutionality of Section 5 over a potential coalition (or crossover) district that is protecting the most partisan white Democrat in Texas?