Let's not forget how the Bush Administration politicized DOJ's Civil Rights Division

[journalist3072]

As we continue to focus like a laser-beam (and rightly so) on the firing of the prosecutors for purely political reasons, we must not forget how the Bush Administration politicized another critical entity within the Department of Justice---that being DOJ's Civil Rights Division.

This information about BushCo.'s politization of DOJ's Civil Rights Division first started coming to light last year, but didn't receive the true attention it deserved in the MSM. Maybe now is the time to help get this story back out there.

Last January, we learned how the Bush Administration was politicizing the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.

From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department's voting section, a small and usually obscure unit that enforces the Voting Rights Act and other federal election laws, has been thrust into the center of a growing debate over recent departures and controversial decisions in the Civil Rights Division as a whole.

Many current and former lawyers in the section charge that senior officials have exerted undue political influence in many of the sensitive voting-rights cases the unit handles. Most of the department's major voting-related actions over the past five years have been beneficial to the GOP, they say, including two in Georgia, one in Mississippi and a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) in 2003.

The section also has lost about a third of its three dozen lawyers over the past nine months. Those who remain have been barred from offering recommendations in major voting-rights cases and have little input in the section's decisions on hiring and policy.

-snip-

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides dispute such criticism and defend the department's actions in voting cases. "We're not going to politicize decisions within the department," he told reporters last month after The Washington Post had disclosed staff memoranda recommending objections to a Georgia voter-identification plan and to the Texas redistricting.

The 2005 Georgia case has been particularly controversial within the section. Staff members complain that higher-ranking Justice officials ignored serious problems with data supplied by the state in approving the plan, which would have required voters to carry photo identification.

Georgia provided Justice with information on Aug. 26 suggesting that tens of thousands of voters may not have driver's licenses or other identification required to vote, according to officials and records. That added to the concerns of a team of voting-section employees who had concluded that the Georgia plan would hurt black voters.

But higher-ranking officials disagreed, and approved the plan later that day. They said that as many as 200,000 of those without ID cards were felons and illegal immigrants and that they would not be eligible to vote anyway.

Then last July, we learned that the Bush Administration was busy filling the permanent ranks of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, with lawyers who had strong conservative credentials (read: loyalty to the Republican Party) but with little civil rights experience.

From the Boston Globe:

The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.

Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/22/AR2006012200984_pf.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/23/civil_rights_hiring_shifted_in_bush_era/

Perhaps the MSM can redeem itself and begin to ask questions about the politization DOJ's Civil Rights Division, as they continue to cover the firing of the prosecutors. Even more importantly, the new Congress can bring this into their purview and oversight.