This Should Have Been On The Front Page Of Every Major Newspaper In The Country

This article is based on three articles–one from Power Line on Saturday, one from Hot Air on Friday, and one from Big Government on Saturday.  The articles deal with the testimony given to the Civil Rights Commission by former Department of Justice voting rights section chief Christopher Coates on Friday. 

According to the Power Line article:

“A Justice Department prosecutor defied his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday, where he leveled an explosive allegation: top officials in the department gutted a voter intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group because the suspects were black and their alleged victims were white.

“The prosecutor, Christopher Coates, also said the downgrading of the case against the New Black Panther Party was evidence of a Justice Department culture which discouraged “race neutral” enforcement of civil rights laws, frowned on prosecuting minority perpetrators and folded under pressure from black and Latino rights groups. After President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder took office, the culture intensified, Coates told the panel, ultimately leading to his departure as chief of the voting rights section early this year.”

Part of Mr. Coates testimony is posted at Hot Air:

“In the spring of 2009, Ms. King, who had by then been appointed Acting AAG for Civil Rights by the Obama Administration, called me to her office and specifically instructed me that I was not to ask any other applicants whether they would be willing to, in effect, race-neutrally enforce the VRA.  Ms. King took offense that I was asking such a question of job applicants and directed me not to ask it because she does not support equal enforcement of the provisions of the VRA and had been highly critical of the filing and prosecution of the Ike Brown case.”

The article at Big Government reports:

“Coates hoped for a change in attitude when Julie Fernandez was appointed by the President to become assistant AG for Civil Rights, but those hopes were dashed when Ms Fernandez held a staff luncheon for the Voting Rights Division and declared that the Obama Administration was only interested in bringing the “traditional” types of section 2 cases that would provide political equality for racial and language minority voters. That, she said, is what we are all about.

“One of the most sacred rights and responsibilities of American citizenship is voting. We are supposed to be guaranteed that every person’s vote is worth as much as every other person’s vote. That guarantee has never been perfect, Blacks weren’t allowed to vote until the 15th amendment in 1870, and women until 1920’s 19th Amendment, but the tradition of the United States has been to aspire toward the concept of “one man, one vote.”

“This past election we took a major step backwards, ACORN, perpetuated voter fraud in at least 14 states to the point where some districts had MORE than 100% of registered voters casting ballots. Ultimately this had little effect on the national results. But it was wide-spread enough to cause concern was enough to erode confidence in the system.”

The politicization of the Justice Department is simply wrong.  It totally undermines the U. S. Constutition.  It defies the concept of “equal justice under the law.”  To prosecute or not prosecute a case based on the race of the people involved is racism, regardless of the race of the people.  I would very much like to see justice in this case, but I would also like to see some reporting of the case by the major media.  You will notice that I easily found three different articles on the case.  The artice at Power LIne details what papers ackowledged the testimony and how much attention they paid to it.  The fact that the testimony was generally ignored by the major media should give all of us pause.