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AUSTIN, Texas - The body of a missing soldier is believed to have been found about 30 miles from Fort Hood, the Army base in Texas where he was stationed, police said Tuesday. Identification found with the body in Temple, Texas, indicates the man may be missing Fort Hood soldier Sgt. Elder Fernandes, according to a statement from local police. Forensic confirmation is pending. Fernandes is the third soldier from Fort Hood to go missing in the past year, and two have been found dead this summer. Temple police received a medical call at 5:36 p.m. saying a male had...

(Also see: Inspector General Report on Racialist Dysfunction inside DOJ .) It took a few years, but the report issued this week by the DOJ inspector general confirms reporting ( here) by PJ Media: the powerful DOJ Voting Section ran an ideologically charged attorney recruitment and hiring effort that deliberately sought left-leaning lawyers. Sources familiar with the thinking of Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez report that he and others in the department believe the damning inspector general report actually vindicates the attorney hiring decisions over the last few years in the Civil Rights Division. In essence, Perez...

As Pajamas Media has been reporting since July, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is only interested in enforcing some parts of Motor Voter, but not the parts that require states to remove dead and felon voters from the rolls. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes told the voting section she is only interested in enforcing the welfare agency voter registration provisions. As a result of her dereliction of her duties, thousands of illegal aliens may have participated in the 2010 elections in New Mexico and Colorado. I reported on an undercover sting operation in Louisiana targeting welfare agency registration. Now...

The Civil Rights Division has blocked a much-needed reform of a local school board in S.C., once again showing it has no interest in protecting minority voters if they are white. The Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has done it again. Under the supervision of scandal-plagued Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, the Division has blocked a much-needed reform of a local school board in Fairfield County, S.C. It’s the latest example of what happens when you put a civil rights enforcement unit under a political appointee who opposes race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Aided...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. played the race card in congressional testimony on Tuesday, referring to blacks as his “people” while neglecting the rest of Americans. That race-based lens pervades his Justice Department, causing consistently skewed enforcement of the law. Mr. Holder was testifying before the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees his department’s budget. Chairman Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, and Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, pressed Mr. Holder to stop giving evasive answers about scandals growing from the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case. Agitated, Mr. Holder objected to a statement by witness Bartle Bull that Panther behavior was...

Attorney General Eric Holder and his minions, along with some of their slavish apologists in the media, are deliberately trafficking in lies of great note. They prevaricate with great enthusiasm, and they excuse lawlessness with fierce disdain. They -- both the Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and their leftist amanuenses pretending to be journalists -- brazenly ignore the public's right to information, and intentionally distract attention from relevant facts and from their own deep beliefs.These conclusions arise from the accumulated weight of evidence in what should be a broadening scandal emanating from the infamous New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came out in December with a draft of its interim report on the New Black Panthers Party scandal. Earlier today a final report was posted on the commission's website, and with it, a flurry of rebuttals and separate statements from a number of the commissioners. The import of these statements should not be minimized. ~snip~As Gaziano and Heriot do, commissioner Peter Kirsanow (a Republican appointee) goes through the evidence of malfeasance by an Obama political appointee, Julie Fernandes: Mr. [Chris] Coates [who headed the NBPP trial team] came forward and testified to the...

This past weekend, citizens from across Texas held a summit in Houston to help protect the future integrity of the electoral process. Called “True the Vote,” this amalgam of tea party groups and interested citizens met to learn about how they can fight voter fraud when their governments won’t. True the Vote is going nationwide in March with a summit for the rest of the country. Citizens who care about honest elections can, at last, do something about it.At PJM, I’ve covered the corrupt abdication of law enforcement obligations when it comes to fighting voter fraud. Deputy Assistant Attorney...

Justice Department whistle-blower J. Christian Adams says Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. "tampered" with two ongoing investigations into voter-intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party. Tampering or not, Mr. Holder clearly prejudiced the case by publicly misrepresenting it. "There is no 'there' there," Mr. Holder told the New York Times last month about the Black Panther scandal. "The notion that this made-up controversy leads to a belief that this Justice Department is not color-blind in enforcement of civil rights laws is simply not supported by the facts. All I have on my side with regard to that...

Right Turn has obtained the first oversight letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued to the Justice Department. While he was in the minority, Smith labored, largely unsuccessfully, on the committee to convince the Democratic chairman to investigate a range of issues, including detainee policy and New Black Panther Party case. He now has the authority to schedule hearings, call witnesses and subpoena documents. In a five-page letter, Smith notes that there has been "little oversight" as to how the civil rights division has used its budget increases ($22 million in FYI 2010 and $17 million requested...

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine should finish one major piece of business before his announced retirement next month: the investigation into Justice's Civil Rights Division.On Sept. 12, Mr. Fine announced that while he's precluded by law from investigating a "specific piece of litigation" such as the Black Panther voter-intimidation case, "we do have the authority to conduct [a] broader program review ... regarding the Civil Rights Division's enforcement of voting rights laws." Mr. Fine vowed to review "whether the Voting Section has enforced the civil rights laws in a non-discriminatory manner." Substantial testimony, backed by a record of...

Full article here.  Some parts (Washington Post portions indented): As to the administration’s mindset: Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.“The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around,” said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil...

The Obama Justice Department can put an end to the scandal surrounding the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case. All Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. would have to do is allow members of his Voting Rights Section to answer a few simple questions under oath, without waiving a single legal privilege.On Friday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights approved two letters to Mr. Holder. Both ask, again, for more cooperation than the Justice Department has provided for 16 months. The commission is seeking information about an alleged "broad culture of hostility to race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws;...

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has an obligation to clean house at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. That's clear after explosive new whistle-blower testimony under oath Friday in the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, which triggers a pledge Mr. Perez made under oath on May 14. Failure to fire some officials and to radically revamp practices in the Civil Rights Division would represent clear dereliction of duty by Mr. Perez.Friday's testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came from much-decorated Justice Department veteran Christopher Coates, a hero of the civil rights legal community when he...

The news that Christopher Coates, former chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, is set to testify Friday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is crucial to the panel’s investigation of allegations that the Obama administration has not enforced the nation’s civil rights laws in a race-neutral manner.The testimony by Coates, a career government lawyer, is expected to shed light on whether DOJ: • Discriminated against white voters in dismissing the voter-intimidation case against two members of the New Black Panther Party and the party itself that arose from incidents at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day...

The continuing DOJ refusal to allow attorney Christopher Coates to testify on the case results in a heated Commission hearing. In an explosive and raucous hearing on August 13, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted 5-3 to officially ask Congress to expand its investigatory powers. This action came as a result of U.S. Justice Department stonewalling regarding the dismissal of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.The commission meeting was dominated by discussion of the DOJ’s continued muzzling of career attorney Christopher Coates, who was head of the DOJ Voting Rights section when the...

By now, the default judgment about the Barack Obama-Eric H. Holder Jr. Justice Department is that it discriminates intentionally on the basis of race. By the precise definition used in the American Heritage dictionary, the department is racialist. The Justice Department hasn't seriously contested the accusation of racialism. Recently resigned whistleblowing attorney J. Christian Adams has made credible charges, backed by at least five former colleagues, that the department's Civil Rights Division has adopted a policy of refusing to enforce civil rights laws on behalf of whites victimized by minority perpetrators. Mr. Adams cited an incident from November in which...

Recent testimony before the the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from a former Justice Department lawyer has “raised serious concerns as to whether the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement policies are being pursued in a race-neutral fashion,” the panel’s chairman wrote in a letter to the head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Wednesday.J. Christian Adams, former trial attorney, testifies before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice) In a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez, Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds highlighted several statements by former DOJ lawyer J. Christian Adams, who testified...

Complete title: Lawlessness at the DOJ: Voting Section Told Not To Enforce Purging the Dead or Ineligible from Voting Rolls It's not just the New Black Panther case: in November 2009, political appointee Julie Fernandes told a packed room of Voting Section employees to simply ignore this provision of the "Motor Voter" law. I was at the Voting Section of the Justice Department for over five years. This office is responsible for enforcing most federal election laws which do not involve criminal matters. My previous articles at Pajamas Media have spoken of the DOJ’s lawless abandonment of race-neutral enforcement of...

MANCHESTER -- The best man from Australia who ended up missing his friend's wedding because of his arrest on two charges was fined $99 Monday and ordered to pay $890 to clean up a cell in the South Windsor jail. The quick disposition, approved by Manchester Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Norko, cleared the way for Kersten Fernandes, 29, to catch a plane Monday night to Sydney, Australia. "Now you're going home," Norko told Fernandes. "Stay there for a while." Fernandes was arrested about 3 a.m. Saturday after police said he was highly intoxicated as he returned from a bachelor...