When government of, by and for the people . . . isn't

The Washington Times reports that the US Commission on Civil Rights isn't very happy with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

In a 144-page report completed in November and released over the weekend, the commission said its lengthy investigation had uncovered "numerous specific examples of open hostility and opposition" within the department's Civil Rights Division to pursuing cases in which whites were the victims.

The report, posted on the commission's web site, said testimony obtained by the panel during its investigation included allegations that some Justice Department lawyers refused to work on cases involving white victims; that lawyers who worked on such cases were harassed and ostracized; and that some employees, including supervisory attorneys and political appointees, openly opposed race-neutral enforcement of voting rights laws.

Noting that two high-ranking lawyers in the department's Voting Rights Section testified that the hostility to race-neutral enforcement had influenced the decision-making process in the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) case, the report concluded that the Justice Department's failure to cooperate in the commission's investigation left unanswered "these serious accusations."

. . .

J. Christian Adams, lead prosecutor in the New Black Panther case, testified in July that Justice Department officials instructed Civil Rights Division attorneys to ignore cases that involved black defendants and white victims. He said that "over and over and over again" the department showed "hostility" toward those cases.

Mr. Adams, who had left the department after the case was dismissed, said Justice had "abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens."

There's more at the link. It's worth reading in full. If you want the whole nine yards, the complete interim report is available at the USCCR Web site (link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format).

I find this deeply disturbing. If we can't trust our own government to administer the laws impartially and without prejudice, we no longer have, as John Adams famously put it, 'a government of laws and not of men'. Instead, we have an arbitrary, capricious tyranny. Abraham Lincoln's famous hope for 'government of the people, by the people, for the people' becomes instead 'government of, by and at the whim of biased bureaucrats'.

Will the legislative branch do anything to rein in this executive branch malfunction? Will anyone with standing challenge the executive branch through the judicial system? I hope for both . . . but I won't be surprised if nothing happens. Too few of us care any more about the fundamentals, the essentials of what makes us free. That's why the Civil Rights Division has gotten away (at least until now) with this egregious abuse of power. I'm betting they'll pigeonhole the report of the Commission on Civil Rights, and try to pretend the issue was never raised at all.

Bureaucrats! Grrr!





Peter