In a move that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who closely follows the modus operandi of this administration, or any Democrat administration for that matter, Obama's AG, Eric Holder, has decided to dismiss a civil lawsuit over alleged voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party.
~~John Cronin~~
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451552193396877.html
By HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY
When Eric Holder became U.S. attorney general, he promised to administer the law in an objective, nonpolitical manner. So it's disappointing that the Justice Department had spent the last several months misinterpreting key voting rights laws for nakedly political reasons.
Exhibit A: Justice's inexplicable dismissal of a civil lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers weren't content to endorse Barack Obama. They sent their members to the polls last November to "patrol election sites." Fox News aired a video of two Black Panthers in military-style uniforms in a Philadelphia precinct. One of them was carrying a nightstick.
The complaint the Justice Department filed in January (before Messrs. Obama and Holder took over) says the Panthers made "racial threats and racial insults" to voters and "menacing and intimidating, gestures, statements and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters." One witness, Bartle Bull, a civil-rights lawyer who worked with Charles Evers in Mississippi in the 1960s, called it the worst voter intimidation he had ever seen.
Justice won the suit by default when the Black Panthers and three individual defendants didn't show up in court to deny the allegations. But instead of following through and getting an injunction to prevent this behavior in future elections, the department, now under Mr. Holder, dismissed the lawsuit against all but one of the defendants (the nightstick holder). Even then, Justice requested only a watered-down penalty: an injunction to prevent him from carrying a weapon in a polling place. But only in Philadelphia and only until 2012!
Exhibit B: Justice recently stopped Georgia from implementing a key provision of the Help America Vote Act. Passed in 2002, the act requires states to verify the accuracy of information voters provide on their registration forms by comparing it with state driver's license and Social Security records -- a sensible requirement. With input from Justice Department lawyers in 2008, Georgia implemented this verification process, including checking the citizenship status of applicants. It is a violation of federal and state law for a noncitizen to register and vote in federal and state elections.
Under Georgia's program, anyone flagged as a potential noncitizen would still be registered if he could confirm to local election officials that he was indeed a citizen. Georgia sent letters to over 4,000 potential noncitizens. More than 2,000 failed to confirm their citizenship, strong evidence that noncitizens were prevented from illegally registering and voting.
Has this verification process depressed minority voter turnout, as some claim? Hardly. There has been a 140% increase in Hispanic turnout and a 42% increase in black turnout since the 2004 election.
Read more at WSJ.com.....
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