Posted on 04/30/2012 6:00:37 PM PDT by Kaslin
PJ Media has obtained Facebook postings from Department of Justice Voting Section employees demonstrating contempt for the states for which they have oversight authority under the Voting Rights Act, including for voter ID approval. One such posting demonstrates open contempt for Mississippi, a state which recently passed a photo voter identification law. The same Voting Section employees have the power to approve the law.
On her Facebook page, Voting Section supervisory civil rights analyst Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi says about the people of Mississippi:
“Disgusting and shameful. Hey, that should replace the state motto: ‘Mississippi: Disgusting and Shameful’. . . forget the Magnolia State motto.”
(Hans von Spakovsky also has this PJ Media story about Gyamfi: “The Justice Department Condones Perjury … Again“)
The DOJ inspector general is conducting a wide-ranging investigation of Civil Rights Division employee bias against conservatives and other misconduct, including the perjury matters in von Spakovsky’s article. Sources say no remedial action has yet been taken for any of the employee misconduct in the Civil Rights Division.
Shortly, Mississippi will have to decide whether to submit its photo voter identification law for approval to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice Voting Section where Gyamfi reviews such submissions. Employees of the Voting Section view southern states with, at best, skepticism and, at worst, as demonstrated in this Facebook posting, with contempt. As I write in my book Injustice:
Voting Section visits to the deep South are seen by some as expeditions to alien territory. Anyone who questions this simplistic worldview must be a racist, if not an outright Klansman.
When I worked at the Voting Section, other attorneys openly expressed the view that travels to the South made them uncomfortable, including the white attorneys. They viewed southerners as oppressive and bigoted.
Why do the personal biases or bigotry of DOJ lawyers matter? They matter because states such as Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina are subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This law requires covered states to submit all election changes to either the DOJ or to a federal court for approval.
The contempt that DOJ Civil Rights Division employees have for southerners manifests in public policy — whether skepticism toward legislative motives in enacting voter ID, or, as I experienced firsthand, unwillingness to protect whites in Mississippi who were the victims of racial discrimination by black officials.
If states make the mistake of submitting election changes opposed by the NAACP, such as voter ID, to Gyamfi, these DOJ employees will hunt for evidence that racial bias motivated the change. And they will see racial bias where few do. The biases of the DOJ employees toward southerners, like the one shown in the Facebook posting, will manifest in concrete DOJ decisions. The biases, for example, will view election integrity measures to instead be a sinister scheme to return to Jim Crow.
As former Democratic Congressman Artur Davis said this past weekend at the True the Vote summit, “a driver’s license is not a billy club. A photo ID is not a fire hose.”
Hopefully, this particular Facebook posting will give southern states like Mississippi and Alabama a taste of what they are up against if they submit voter ID to the DOJ. Even if Holder is run out of office in November, career staffers wielding enormous power will do the front-line factual investigations that even Romney political appointees will struggle to overcome.
Speaking of which, truth-challenged Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez is at it again. He recently gave a speech in which he said the Obama administration now allows Voting Section employees like Gyamfi to “express their opinion” about Section 5 submissions. This whopper was used to portray the Bush administration review of voting changes as heavy-handed. Perez refers to the 2005 fight over Georgia voter ID.
The Left has created the myth that fellow PJ Media columnist Hans von Spakovsky, in collusion with then-Voting Section Chief John Tanner, muzzled Voting Section employees, including Gyamfi, and approved Georgia voter ID over the reasoned objections of [leftist] career staff. What Perez fails to mention is that other career staff, including line attorney Joshua Rogers, also recommended preclearance along with Tanner.
Hence, when Perez says that career staff may “again voice their opinion,” he is not telling the truth. They could always voice their opinion. After the inauguration, the Holder Justice Department implemented a new rule on Section 5 submissions when Christopher Coates was the section chief. The new Obama rule permitted multiple written recommendations on any given Section 5 submission to reach the political appointees, instead of a unitary Voting Section recommendation. The new rule was designed in the short-run to circumvent Coates, and in the long run, to foil a future Republican appointed section chief in Voting.
In January, the Romney administration must revoke this policy so as to avoid a constant cackle of leftist obstructionism in the Voting Section, designed to blunt the results of the November election and provide fertile material to be leaked to the media as in the Georgia voter ID fight in 2005. And most of all, unlike the current occupant of the office, the Romney-appointed assistant attorney general for civil rights needs to tell the truth about the policy and why it matters.
So instead of condemning her outrageous comments, you play the race card to justify your racism. Sure sounds like a familiar tactic.
Tell me seriously, are you having a love affair with some of the gal lawyers in DOJ or what?
here’s a news flash for Northern Government types who visit the South.
Act like an a**, we treat you like an a**.
Act decent, we treat ya decent.
Period.
So once again the mailman resorts to personal attacks. big shocker there
Hopefully the Republican Party will emphasize the common values of self-discipline, hard work and self-sufficiency which Republicans share with Asians.
It is simply not possible for them to understand the impact of changes in voting laws unless they understand what's going on in the South, and if they are that anti-social they simply don't belong there.
Did you get the feeling, once you knew Perez the Clown was their big boss, that this is the shop where DOJ sends its losers?
(NOTE ON PEREZ ~ he's the guy who tried to prevent universities from using electronic books)
She apparently needs to do a vanJones.
That is intolerable ~ it is prohibited by the FR rules AND, it is untrue.
God will throw you into the Outer Darkness for that sort of thing.
Republicans. I remember them. A quarter century ago they were worthy of support.
I think you have the Mississippi ping list?
Anyway, ping.
Same old same old, and why I look forward to Soviet style dissolution. Soon or late, it will come.
No, racism is prohibited on FR, I was calling you on the racism you demonstrated and openly admitted too.
This could actually be a lucky break for those states, as they could approach a federal judge to ask that the DOJ supervision of their state over the Voting Rights Act be lifted.
The “preclearance” provision in the VRA is, in effect, the last remnant of post Civil War reconstruction, in which the federal government could treat states differently, based on events that had happened in the past, not what is happening in the present.
While congress has consistently renewed the VRA without changes, retaining “preclearance”, it makes it none the less unconstitutional, especially given that perpetual “mass punishment” of a state based on what its representatives, none of which are still in office, did in the past, is just patently unfair.
A POS will do what a POS does.
Ooops! This’ll happen when one doesn’t read all prior postings
You're the one who cried 'racism', so you're the one who put it on the agenda.
Now, back to my question on whether you would ignore race in selecting a neighborhood or school. Is your answer 'YES' or 'NO'?
It’s on WKB’s home page. Go ahead and ping the list or wait for him.
If he doesn’t see this ping, I can come back in a little while.
I suspect you live in a community that has only a couple of shades ~ last time we looked they speak over 100 different languages around here. Everything else is as diverse.
Living in your traditional 'integrated' American neighborhood with just whites and blacks is considered rather 'segregated' from the general perspective of most everybody in my zip code.
BTW look the woman up on the net. The question was what did the picture show, and it showed the route to finding out who she was and where she lived, and it included identifying where her husband was from. I believe I know the man. We have mutual friends.
Let me add that your comment was not the first one you've belched up along that line ~ and you've been wrong every single time.
A DOJ employee? How many Mexicans did she kill today?
Why do we all have to endorse jungle fever?
ok I get it...let’s tolerate everybody..hugs
it’s your business ..and it is
but what’s wrong with preferring your own race or even ethnicity or religion or maybe even if you dig Orientals?...isn’t that my business too?
when did having to applaud white women sleeping with black me or not define “racism”...that is now the benchmark pretty much
btw is that girl a freeper?
she’d fit right in on the I Hate Dixie threads
I despise this new culture which anyone under 50 embraces...at least the racial narrative
we had some candor here after Trayvon...sorta like after Katrina
i see that window has closed again
*hat tip to a fellow Magnolia stater
Why do we all have to endorse jungle fever?
ok I get it...let’s tolerate everybody..hugs
it’s your business ..and it is
but what’s wrong with preferring your own race or even ethnicity or religion or maybe even if you dig Orientals?...isn’t that my business too?
when did having to applaud white women sleeping with black men or not define “racism”...that is now the benchmark pretty much
btw is that girl a freeper?
she’d fit right in on the I Hate Dixie threads
I despise this new culture which anyone under 50 embraces...at least the racial narrative
we had some candor here after Trayvon...sorta like after Katrina
i see that window has closed again
*hat tip to a fellow Magnolia stater
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