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Rights/Reprints

Conservatives continue to attack Attorney General Eric Holder for dropping a voter-intimidation case against two of three members of the militant Black Panthers. Read Michelle Malkin’s harummpf here.

Also chiming in today was Hans A. Von Spakovsky, the former Voting Section lawyer who was at the center of the storm over Bush-era politicization of the Civil Rights Division. Spakovsky has this piece in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read our previous coverage of the case.

Spakovsky, you may recall, was a sidekick to the controversial former head of the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, who caused an uproar with his partisan hiring practices. President Bush gave Spakovsky a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission, but once the recess appointment expired, the Senate refused to confirm him.

Han Von Spakovsky (courtesy Heritage Foundation)

Career Voting Section lawyers led by Joseph Rich, section chief from 1999 to 2005, wrote to Senate Rules Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and ranking member Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) alleging that Spakovsky “played a major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and into the hiring process, and included repeated efforts to intimidate career staff.”  You can find the letter here.

Spakovsky started off his article today with a few quick paragraphs about Holder’s decision to dismss a voter-intimidation lawsuit against members of the Black Panthers, then went on to spend the next six paragraphs defending the controversial Georgia voter I.D. law that Spakovsky helped bring about, but which the Holder DOJ opposed. The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to the law, letting it stand.

Here’s how Spakovsky concludes his article in the WSJ:

All of these decisions seriously undermine confidence in the rule of law and our election process. Under the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice is charged with protecting voters, no matter what their racial or ethnic background. Under the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act, the department is also charged with securing the integrity of the voter registration process. In just the first five months of this administration Justice seems to be moving as fast as it can to defeat that charge.