Hans A. von Spakovsky at a Republican forum on ACORN (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
Former Bush administration Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky lashed out at the Civil Rights Division in a new column for the National Review. He said the Justice Department “exiled Christopher Coates to South Carolina.”
Coates is the ex-chief of the Voting Section who was transferred over Christmas break at his request, according to the Justice Department. He had approved cases against the New Black Panther Party and against black defendants in Noxubee County, Miss.
In the article, von Spakovsky writes that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez called Coates a “remarkably seasoned litigator” at a goodbye lunch last week.
“So why would Perez send a “remarkably seasoned litigator” and “an attorney’s attorney” (as another lawyer said at the farewell) to South Carolina?,” asks von Spakovsky.
Coates has refused to talk to reporters about the NBPP case or his transfer. But several sources at Justice and elsewhere have confirmed what happened in this case. The source of mine who attended Coates’s going away event told me it was clear from Coates’s speech to the assembled staff that the criticism had hurt him greatly. In his rather blunt remarks, Coates emphasized that as a DOJ attorney and enforcer of these laws, it was not his right to create unwritten exceptions or to ignore the plain language of the statute.
The Civil Rights Division, argues von Spakovsky, has set up a system to place liberal ideologues in the bureaucracy.
The new leadership has trumpeted the fact that hiring has been returned to “career attorneys.” But the unspoken and undeniable fact is that every single lawyer on the new hiring panel is a staunch, results-oriented ideologue. These ultra-Leftists will seek to replicate themselves, just as they did prior to the arrival of the Bush administration. They may couch their hiring standards in neutral terms, like “demonstrated commitment to civil rights,” but the upshot is that conservatives (or even fair-minded Democrats who believe in objective legal standards) need not apply. And the handful of fair and objective lawyers who remain will be encouraged (by all sorts of coercive means) to move on.
The full article, “Politicizing the Law” is available on National Review’s Web site.
LEAVE THE NEW BLACK PANTHER THE HECK ALONE THE USCCR HAS NO CASE CONGRESS HAS NO CASE…..THE LAWS AND FACTS WERE APPLIED AND ASSESSED,CASE WAS DISMISSED, THE CASE WAS WEAK…….LET IT GO IT’S BLACK HISTORY ALREADY…………..