Administration protects civil rights … from time to time
While speaking of American values (this time in an admirable way), President Obama said this during his State of the Union speech:
We must continually renew this promise. My administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination.
First, when did the Civil Rights Division stop prosecuting civil rights violations before Obama took office?
And second, his Civil Rights Division is selective about when it prosecutes civil rights violations.
Recall that in April the Justice Department abruptly dropped a case against three members of the Black Panther Party who were accused of intimidating voters in Philadelphia in 2008.
From the Washington Times:
Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the Obama Justice Department, was consulted and ultimately approved a decision in May to reverse course and drop a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party of intimidating voters in Philadelphia during November’s election, according to interviews.
The department’s career lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division who pursued the complaint for five months had recommended that Justice seek sanctions against the party and three of its members after the government had already won a default judgment in federal court against the men.
Front-line lawyers were in the final stages of completing that work when they were unexpectedly told by their superiors in late April to seek a delay after a meeting between political appointees and career supervisors, according to federal records and interviews.
The division was even sanctioned earlier this month for not pursuing the case. Also from the Times:
The latest imbroglio concerns two of the division’s top career lawyers, the ones whom the Obama team chose to run the division until controversial nominees Thomas Perrelli and Thomas Perez could be confirmed. The two officials, Loretta King and Steven H. Rosenbaum, were heavily involved (along with Mr. Perrelli) in dropping an already-won voter-intimidation case against several members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, and both were responsible for other, questionable race-based decisions. On Dec. 30, a federal district court in Kansas sanctioned them for misconduct.
The misconduct involved a failure to be “fully responsive” to earlier court filings. Significantly, the judge – himself a liberal who formerly served as counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union – held the Justice Departmentattorneys personally and “solely responsible for paying the monetary sanctions.”
Why praise the division in the State of the Union when it clearly dropped the ball on prosecuting civil rights violations?
Sources:
The White House, Jan. 27, 2010
Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address
The Washington Times, July 30, 2009
No. 3 at Justice OK’d Panther reversal
The Washington Times, Jan. 10, 2010
