{"id":6053,"date":"2005-12-12T09:11:56","date_gmt":"2005-12-12T14:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6053"},"modified":"2005-12-12T09:11:56","modified_gmt":"2005-12-12T14:11:56","slug":"the-quintessential-bush-approach-to-unwelcome-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-quintessential-bush-approach-to-unwelcome-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"The quintessential Bush approach to unwelcome advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The internal conflict between career Justice Department attorneys in the Civil Rights Division and Bush’s political appointees has been getting considerably worse the past few months. When career attorneys reviewed Georgia’s poll-tax law and found that it was discriminatory against minority voters. Bush-appointed higher-ups quickly overruled them<\/a>. Similarly, attorneys in the Civil Rights Division concluded unanimously that Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act. Again, Bush’s political appointees intervened and overruled<\/a> the staff attorneys.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the intra-agency struggle wasn’t going to fade away. Career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division feel like they’ve been ignored, the law is being manipulated for partisan ends, and they’re leaking to the media in retaliation. So, what’s to be done? Perhaps a new policy that would de-politicize the review process? Don’t be silly. Instead there’s a new policy that simply won’t allow<\/a> attorneys in the Civil Rights Division to make recommendations in voting-rights cases anymore.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics, congressional aides and current and former employees familiar with the issue said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The attorneys will still be able to cases to see if they conflict with the Voting Rights Act; they just won’t be able to tell Justice Department higher-ups what their legal research concludes. Not surprisingly, the attorneys recognize why<\/a> the policy has changed.<\/p>\n

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, said lawyers who assess the state submissions — known as requests for pre-clearance — have been told to send their analysis memos to political higher-ups minus the recommendations that have historically been part of the decision-making process.<\/p>\n

“They are supposed to present all sides and not even give an inkling as to where the evidence is leading them,” said a former Civil Rights Division attorney. “Clearly it was done — I don’t think there is any question about this \u2013 so that there would be no paper trail.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a classic example of governing in the Bush years. When experts in civil-rights law make politically-inconvenient recommendations, the appropriate response is stop them from making the recommendations in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The internal conflict between career Justice Department attorneys in the Civil Rights Division and Bush’s political appointees has been getting considerably worse the past few months. When career attorneys reviewed Georgia’s poll-tax law and found that it was discriminatory against minority voters. Bush-appointed higher-ups quickly overruled them. Similarly, attorneys in the Civil Rights Division concluded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}