Justice Dept. Politicizing Justice?

Remember the hue and cry when the Bush administration fired about nine percent of the U.S. attorneys (who are, after all, political rather than civil service employees)--that the Justice Department had been politicized and all that. Is the Obama administration engaged in politicization efforts at Justice? Well, you be "the judge."

Exhibit A: voter intimidation:

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

More here.

Exhibit B: partisan prosecution:

The lawyers representing a controversial Arizona sheriff who is under investigation for his treatment of Latino residents accused officials in the Justice and Homeland Security departments yesterday of political motivations in pursuing probes against their client.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio and his office, which have drawn widespread attention for an unorthodox approach to crime and punishment, are the focus of three federal investigations into whether they violated federal rules or civil rights laws in pursuing illegal immigrants...

Yesterday, Arpaio's attorneys wrote to Obama administration officials, questioning whether investigators followed ethics rules in launching the probes this year.

Robert N. Driscoll, a District-based lawyer for Maricopa County who served as a civil rights official at the Justice Department early in the George W. Bush era, said he was seeking "assurances that political rivalries and score settling played no role in the investigations."

Separately, in what is commonly referred as a Friday "document dump (in an attempt avoid scrutiny from the media "watchdogs" who have already skipped town early for their summer homes), it looks like the Obama administration has backtracked on allowing 17 Uigher detainees to come to the U.S.:

The Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to reject a request for a hearing from 17 Chinese Muslims currently being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, arguing they have no right to come to America despite a district judge's orders last Fall that they immediately be brought to the U.S. and released.

"Petitioners are free to return to their home country, but they understandably do not wish to do so, because they fear inhumane treatment there," reads the filing, signed by US Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and other Justice Department officials. "Petitioners are also free to go to any other country that is willing to accept them."

Many European countries are waiting for the US to accept the Uighurs before they agree to accept any more detainees from Guantanamo, but there is strong resistance from Congress, which recently voted to keep any detainees out of the US -- even out of US prisons.

Car Trouble

Contribute to Republican candidates--lose your Chrysler car dealership. That's the allegation currently sweeping through the blogosphere. It seems farfetched, and wholly un-American, doesn't it? But several bloggers are closely examining the evidence. Let's hope this scandal turns out to be unfounded, just an urban political myth, otherwise the Obama administration is engaging in what some are calling economic fascism. For more on this story, see Does Obama have a car dealer enemies list? A further update here.

Update: This just in from the Washington Examiner:

Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Republicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty

The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?

Further update: "A preliminary study by FOXNews.com found that the data do not support the charges."

California Court Validates Traditional Marriage

California's highest court has affirmed Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage that was approved by Golden State voters in a November 4, 2008 statewide referendum:

The California Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, but it also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed...

The 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George rejected an argument by gay rights activists that the ban revised the California Constitution's equal protection clause to such a dramatic degree that it first needed the Legislature's approval.

The court said the Californians have a right, through the ballot box, to change their constitution.

Notwithstanding the fact that in May 2008 the same court found that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violated the privacy, due process, and equal protection provisions of California's founding document, the majority opinion reasoned that "Because the California Constitution explicitly recognizes the right of the people to amend their state Constitution through the initiative process, the people, in exercising that authority, have not in any way impermissibly usurped a power allocated by the Constitution exclusively to the judiciary or some other entity or branch of government."

Carlos Moreno, the lone dissenting justice in today's decision, had been rumored to be on Obama's short list for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Click here for the full-text of the 185-page opinion.

Sotomayor Picked for High Court

The AP is reporting this morning that--as expected--Obama has nominated ultra liberal Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. One might wonder if empathy, rather than ethnicity, was actually the decisive factor in the choice.

The Cato Institute is not enthralled with the selection:

In picking Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama has confirmed that identity politics matter to him more than merit.

Judge Sotomayor is not one of the leading lights of the federal judiciary and would not even have been on the shortlist if she were not Hispanic.

She has a mixed reputation, with a questionable temperament and no particularly important opinions in over 10 years on the Second Circuit. Most notably, she was part of the panel that summarily affirmed the dismissal of Ricci v. DeStefano, where the City of New Haven denied firefighter promotions based on an admittedly race-neutral exam whose results did not yield the “correct” racial mix of successful candidates. Sotomayor’s colleague José Cabranes—a liberal Democrat—excoriated the panel’s actions and the Supreme Court will likely reverse the ruling next month.

If this is the kind of “empathy” the president wants from his judges, we are in for a long summer—and more bitter confirmation battles in the future.

And here's the YouTube video making the rounds of the Internet that seems to confirm the judge's activist credentials.

Judging Biden On Judges

When Sen. Joe Biden was named Obama's running mate back in the summer, the very first thing that came to mind was his grandstanding antics during hearings for Supreme Court nominees. We know that Biden, like his boss, got a free ride during the presidential campaign, but in a piece called "How Joe Biden Wrecked the Judicial Confirmation Process," the Wall Street Journal picks up on his Judiciary Committee obstructionism:

By the time Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings came around, Mr. Biden's modus operandi was well known. In his book, "My Grandfather's Son," Justice Thomas recalls that before the Anita Hill inquisition began, Mr. Biden called him and said "Judge, I know you don't believe me but if the allegations come up I will be your biggest defender." "He was right about one thing," Justice Thomas wrote, "I didn't believe him."

More on Biden's "talkative" past and present here.

A Two-State Non-Solution?

We often pondered this question: If the governments in the Middle East are so concerned about the plight of the Palestinians, why do they allow them to languish in refugee camps rather than granting them citizenship and assimilating them into their vast countries?

Global intelligence analysts at Stratfor cut through the fog and oversimplification surrounding the presumed imperative for the creation of a Palestinian state:

The foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for years has been the assumption that there would be a two-state solution. Such a solution has not materialized for a host of reasons…For this reason, the entire peace process — including the two-state solution — is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves U.S. purposes. The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome.

The Jordanians have feared and loathed Fatah in the West Bank ever since the Black September uprisings of 1970. The ruling Hashemites are ethnically different from the Palestinians (who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population), and they fear that a Palestinian state under Fatah would threaten the Jordanian monarchy. For their part, the Egyptians see Hamas as a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the Mubarak government’s ouster — meaning Cairo would hate to see a Hamas-led state. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the other Arab states do not wish to see a radical altering of the status quo, which would likely come about with the rise of a Palestinian polity.

At the same time, whatever the basic strategic interests of the Arab regimes, all pay lip service to the principle of Palestinian statehood. This is hardly a unique situation. States frequently claim to favor various things they actually are either indifferent to or have no intention of doing anything about. Complicating matters for the Arab states is the fact that they have substantial populations that do care about the fate of the Palestinians. These states thus are caught between public passion on behalf of Palestinians and the regimes’ interests that are threatened by the Palestinian cause. The states’ challenge, accordingly, is to appear to be doing something on behalf of the Palestinians while in fact doing nothing...

The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served U.S. and Arab interests quite well. They provide the illusion of activity, with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions — all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again.

Click here for the full report, "An Israeli Prime Minister Comes to Washington Again."

Obama Administration Opposes Phony Lawsuit Over Phony Scandal

With much fanfare, the Bush administration was accused of outing a so-called "covert" CIA operative (the same operative whose face was plastered all over pages of Vanity Fair magazine). Notwithstanding this media-promoted circus, the Obama administration has adopted the Bush legal team's opposition to the self-promoting operative's civil lawsuit:

The Obama administration Wednesday took the side of top Bush administration officials - including most-vocal recent critic, former Vice President Dick Cheney - in the ongoing fight over the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of a lawsuit brought by Mrs. Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, against several top Bush administration officials. The department's move continued the Bush administration's policy to fight the suit, which has already been dismissed by two lower courts.

And remember when the Bush administration was regularly assailed for shredding the Constitution and assaulting civil liberties? This story from the Obama-friendly New York Times is particularly provocative against the backdrop of the current Cheney-Obama rhetorical tussle:

President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a "preventive detention" system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer notices that something fishy is going on:

If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.

And doesn't this practice sound like rendition?

The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.

The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.