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The Richmond Times Dispatch has an editorial today picking up on the story first broken at Pajamas Media on disparate treatment of Freedom of Information Requests inside the Civil Rights Division at Justice.  The editorial concludes:

“The story raises two serious concerns. The first is a pattern of politicization at the Justice Department — witness, e.g., the squelching of an inquiry into possible voter intimidation in Philadelphia in 2008. Where is all the alarm about impartiality that arose when the Bush administration allegedly was dismissing U.S. attorneys for political reasons?

The second concern is the integrity of the FOIA process. If the department has indeed given FOIA requests disparate treatment for ideological reasons, that is despicable — regardless of which direction the favoritism flows. Stonewalling liberal groups would be just as bad as stonewalling conservative ones.”

The Press of Atlantic City has more.

Charles Bullock and Keith Gaddie have an article at Southern Political Report.  It has a dire prediction if jurisdictions avoid submitting redistricting plans (or voter ID laws for that matter) to the Justice Department and go straight to district court instead:

“If hundreds (or thousands) of jurisdictions doubted the fairness of DOJ and went to court, the limited number of judges would quickly become overwhelmed. DOJ’s resources would also be stretched as its attorneys respond to interrogatories, depose opposition witnesses, review expert reports, prepare their own witnesses to testify, and participate in trials. The judicial system could not cope should even a small fraction of the preclearance jurisdictions go to court.”

You don’t say.  That might be one more reason for states to pursue going to court instead, because DOJ will be ill equipped to handle the litigation as much as the Courts will.   The solution proposed in the article.:

“To avoid the potential of a judicial log-jam, DOJ attorneys would be well-served to signal to submitting authorities that they can expect treatment free of partisan overtones if they follow the administrative route to preclearance. “

Are you kidding?  What do you expect them to say, to “signal”?  Of course they will say this, but a scorpion will remain a scorpion no matter what it tells the frog.  Perhaps the frog will remind the scorpion of some cases the scorpion was involved in, including Johnson v. Miller, Hays v. Louisiana, Scott v. Department of Justice and Smith v. Beasley.

The Dispatch.

“To see whether voter fraud exists.”  Boston Herald.  The witness list should be interesting.

More here.

Texas Voter ID “likely to become law.”  Less so if the law is submitted to the Justice Department for approval.  Indeed, any glee about the law’s passage in Texas should be tempered.  If the law is submitted to the Justice Department, instead of going straight to federal court for approval, the act is quite likely NOT to become law, and Texans will have lost a legislative session to pass voter ID.

Two Scottsdale Arizona residents have been indicted for voting twice in the 2008 Presidential election.  They voted both in Arizona and Nevada.  This is also a violation of federal law.  Will the Justice Department act and indict them?  Peter Canova and Gina Thi Canova were charged with 15 counts of voter fraud.  Another example of “nonexistent voter fraud.”  Perhaps Tova Wang could be reached for comment.  More at ABC15.

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