Outpost Restrepo, military voting, and movie time at DOJ


My latest at Pajamas Media is here. 

Anyone who has not seen the Sundance award winning documentary Restrepo, should.  It is a genuine and stark look at the brave Army soldiers who spent a year in no-man’s-land fighting Islamic militants almost every single day.  Outpost Restrepo doesn’t have fax machines or internet connections.  Soldiers there get ballots by mail, if they get them at all.  They live with dust, smoke from burning latrines, swinging pick-axes to burrow into the rock, and firefights as regular as the sunrise. 

The documentary provides a vivid account of why the Department of Justice cannot rely on technological solutions such as internet access and fax machines to cut corners in protecting military voters like they did in 2010.  Instead of the ridiculous and useless field trip the Voting Section chief encouraged to watch a court hearing, he should mandate every staff member watch this movie.  Sources with direct knowledge tell me that the attorneys supervising military voting rights protection explicitly cut corners and negotiated settlements with states allowing ballots to mail late, simply because these states offered internet and email access to ballots.  This is shameful and disgraceful, and frankly, after seeing Restrepo, sad. 

“No computers. No fax machines. No time to relax at O.P. Restrepo. Firefights are almost a daily event here. Ballots here come by mail, if they come at all. And rough men standing ready in the night occupy so many other O.P. Restrepos.

Their dust-choked and primitive existence renders pathetic and naive their government’s reliance on computer technology to help them vote.

So when DOJ officials try to explain their half-hearted efforts to protect military voters, Congressmen should ask the witness, ‘have you seen Restrepo?”'”

The full article on Restrepo and the DOJ is here.

Kansas Secretary of State Kobach featured

In the Washington Times.

“The specter of illegal immigrants casting votes in U.S. elections has long frustrated Republicans, and Mr. Kobach is now poised to do something about it. Even before he’s sworn in, he’s already hard at work drafting voter-fraud legislation that he says will be most the comprehensive in the nation.

“This will be head and shoulders above anything any state has ever done to secure the voting process,” he said. “My hope is to create a model with regard to stopping voter fraud that can be used in other states, like we did in Arizona” with immigration.”

Thursday Washington Examiner: 2 Year Coffee Break at DOJ

I have a piece at the Washington Examiner on the phony “reopening” of the DOJ Voting Section.  Stay tuned to Pajamas Media for more on this story about rank hypocrisy and broken campaign promises:

“One thing worse than a hypocrite is a hypocrite in government office. The Obama Department of Justice has plenty of hypocrites. Nowhere are they more apparent than when they attack the voting rights record of the Bush Justice Department.



Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has become the Department’s lead bamboozler. “During the prior administration, civil rights was closed for business,” he told a Pittsburgh crowd last week. The Obama presidential campaign elevated the purported inactivity of the Bush DOJ voting section to a priority campaign issue, promising to “reinvigorate the enforcement activities” of the section.


Attorney General Eric Holder now travels the country trumpeting a phony “reopening” of civil rights enforcement. Perez speaks dreamily of “restoration and transformation” of the Civil Rights Division. Compliant news reporters publish this spin without a whiff of skepticism.


But after two years in power, the Obama administration has been pitifully inactive enforcing voting rights. Numbers don’t lie.”

Full story at the Washington Examiner.





 

Tom Perez makes false statement to Mike Levine

Tom Perez told Mike Levine at Fox News this:

“You look at our enforcement actions in the Obama administration in the voting context, and you see cases where we’ve had African-American defendants and white victims, and you see cases that involve white defendants and African-American victims,” Perez said.

This is entirely false and Mike Levine should know better.  (Lets guess the excuse – 2:1 “misspoke”;  5:1 “misunderstood”;  20:1 “reporters got the quote wrong.”)  Contact information on the left of this page, if interested.  There isn’t a single case the Obama DOJ filed with “African American defendants and white victims.”  This is totally false.  The Ike Brown case was filed by the Bush Administration.   The motion filed (which incidently still hasn’t been granted 6 months later, and probably never will) was filed in an active case brought by the Bush Adminstration.

And whether or not the phony motion filed in the Ike Brown case qualifies, see here.   In fact, I have multiple sources in Mississippi that tell me not a single call was made by the DOJ into Mississippi on this issue until after my columns appeared on the topic.  It was a reaction to sunlight, not a pre-existing policy.  Hopefully Mike Levine won’t be duped again by Perez the next time he speaks to him.  Until then, contact info on the left.

New Jersey voter fraud issues entangle prosecutor reappointment

The New Jersey Senate has the power to appoint county prosecutors.  The Cape May County Herald reports:

“Some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Cape May County Prosecutor Robert Taylor about several high-profile cases during a Thur., Dec. 9 reappointment hearing in the Capitol.  On Mon., Dec. 13, despite a motion by Sen. Gerald Cardinale to table the vote, which was defeated 23-15, for more examination of the nominee, Taylor was reappointed by a vote of 25-12.”

Here is where the story takes a strange turn:
 
“Pressed on prosecuting voter fraud, Sen. Gerald Cardinale asked Taylor, ‘Do you believe it is part of the function of your office to protect the public from those who would commit voter fraud action?’


‘Yes,’ replied Taylor, “It is the job of my office to look for any crime or prosecute any crime. The Attorney General’s office has done most of the investigation of voter fraud in Cape May County and other places.


‘Voter fraud is a tragedy that needs to be prosecuted where it’s found,’ added Taylor.


After Cardinale read a list of names who allegedly lived in Florida and voted in Wildwood, or who voted from empty lots or commercial establishments, Van Drew interjected, ‘So the committee is aware, Cape May County has about 100,000 people year round, and a million in the summer. A lot declare residency. Folks are clearly summer folks yet want to vote in Cape May County. It’s been an ongoing problem that occurs. This is a debate that goes on endlessly in Cape May County,’ said the senator.”

No federal charges in chili for votes scam

First the South Dakota Attorney General announced no charges in the chili for votes scam on South Dakota Indian reservations.  Now the Department of Justice has decided  not to bring federal charges.  It is a federal crime to offer anything of value in exchange for a vote, even a bowl of chili.  “U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson announced Tuesday he will not file charges over allegations of vote-buying due to early voting rallies during the 2010 election.”

Here is the curious part of the article:  “Johnson said he consulted with voting rights experts at the U.S. Department of Justice in making his decision not to file charges.”

Huh?  “Voting Rights Experts?”  The only “Voting Rights Experts” in the DOJ are the lawyers inside the Voting Rights Section in the Civil Rights Division.  The problem with consulting them regarding chili-for-votes is that they are not criminal lawyers.  In fact, whether or not the federal criminal laws are being violated has absolutely nothing to do with “voting rights.”  To the contrary, the folks in that part of the Justice Department usually act as advocates for native populations.  It is difficult to imagine why voting rights experts were consulted on this purely criminal election law question.  The Election Crimes Branch of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division was the proper place to turn for answers inside Justice, not the Voting Section in the Civil Rights Division.  Perhaps the Rapid City Journal has the terminology wrong.  Perhaps not.