Trumps Election Commission Is a Reunion for Controversial Bush Justice Division

[deminks]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/trumps-election-commission-is-a-reunion-for-controversial-bush-justice-division/

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush was mired in scandal over illegal politically motivated hiring practices and controversial enforcement of voting rights laws. The key figures behind these moves went their separate ways at the end of the Bush administration. But now some of them, along with other Bush Justice officials, are enjoying a reunion—on President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity, which is holding its first public meeting on Wednesday.

Much of the chaos in the Civil Rights Division took place in its Voting Section. In 2002, Hans von Spakovsky, an outspoken proponent of voter ID requirements whom Trump appointed to his commission last month, became a top attorney there. He later described the atmosphere in the Voting Section to the New York Times as “a clash between folks like me who really believe that the Voting Rights Act needs to be applied in a race-neutral manner and the folks who had been there a long time who saw it, frankly, as a way of helping only minority voters, and in particular, helping one political party.”

In 2003, Alexander Acosta, whom Trump appointed this year as secretary of labor, became the head of the Civil Rights Division, and a Republican attorney named Bradley Schlozman was placed charge of hiring for the Voting Section. Schlozman, the Justice Department’s inspector general later found, favored candidates with conservative political beliefs, in violation of civil service laws. In a 2003 email, Schlozman explained his hiring philosophy: “My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs rights out of the section.” Von Spakovsky participated in the hiring process. Among their hires was J. Christian Adams, a Voting Section attorney who went on to file—and win—the first case in which the Voting Rights Act was used to fight discrimination against white voters. Trump named Adams to the voting commission last week.

After leaving the Justice Department, these officials continued to work together. Adams became general counsel for a conservative nonprofit called the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), where he threatened and filed lawsuits to force counties across the country to remove people from their voter rolls. He left in 2015 to run another conservative group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which does similar work. He and von Spakovsky, who joined the conservative Heritage Foundation after the Senate failed to confirm him to a Federal Election Commission post in 2008, sit on the boards of both groups. Another member of the ACRU’s board is Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio, whose eight-year tenure was marked by chaotic elections and attempts to restrict voter registration. In 2004, he ordered clerks to strictly enforce an antiquated law that required voter registration forms to be turned in on card stock of 80-pound thickness, the type of paper used for wedding invitations. Blackwell retracted the order after coming under intense criticism. He is now on Trump’s voting commission.

(end snip)

OMG, Kenneth Blackwell is on this fake commission?

[Gothmog]

1. Bush did his best to destroy the voting rights and civil rights sections of the DOJ

Now these idiots are all getting back together. Christian Adams was far too stupid and was from a tier three law school when he was hired by the bushies. Adams was not qualified to be in the DOJ