Choosing Your Fights
Posted by Lex, on July 8, 2010
There’s only so much Department of Justice to go around. It isn’t like you can fight every battle. Voter fraud and intimidation at the polls?
Nothing much can be done:
Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation in an incident I detailed here yesterday. But Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case. He testified that last year Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice’s Voting Rights section. She said she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal “Motor Voter” law — Section 8, which requires states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.
According to Mr. Adams, Justice lawyers were told by Ms. Fernandes: “We’re not interested in those kind of cases. What do they have to do with helping increase minority access and turnout? We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it.”
A state having the temerity to enforce its own border when the federal will not?
The US government on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Arizona for a controversial immigration law which has been sharply criticized by America’s neighbors and by the US administration.
A Justice Department statement said it was challenging the new state law in the courts because it hampered the authority of the administration of President Barack Obama to enforce national immigration policy.
It also placed significant “burdens” on federal agencies and law enforcement, the department argued.
Border security. Such a bother. Tedious, really.
Why can’t Arizona be more like Rhode Island, and “(check) the immigration status of people stopped for traffic violations where there is a reasonable suspicion, and reporting all illegals to federal authorities for deportation” without getting all racist about it by using the democratic process and passing a law?
Red necks.