Career lawyers overruled on voting case

To refresh your memory...



Let's be clear.

Political appointees are allowed to over-rule career civil servants in government departments. It’s part of the job description. Political appointees are superior to career civil servants. So it is not a crime if political appointees change the direction of the government. It’s what they are supposed to do.

But it can be a scandal.

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

What's interesting is that the court had already rendered a verdict because the defendants refused to show up. It wasn't that the Justice Department was going to lose this case.

The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.

During the Bush administration, Democrats in government and out (read the media) did their best to turn policy making into crime. Now that Team Obama is in charge, the usual suspects are silent. Not only has the decision to withdraw charges of voter intimidation against the New Black Panthers been stuffed down the media’s memory hole, but as we can expect, the Democrats in congress are also silent since it’s white voters subject to intimidation.

Not a word in the Virginian Pilot online, nothing on the NY Times online. Apparently political influence in the justice department it only happens during Republican administrations. Otherwise we have to depend on the Washington Times and the Internet.