Racialism from the "Post-racial President"

There are two good reads today about the U.S. Commision on Civil Rights noting that the Obama Administration sure has race on its mind a lot.

The first is an excellent letter from the USCCR to Attorney General Holder about the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and the non-answers it has been getting from Obama's political appointees at DOJ:

We regret that the reply from Portia Roberson, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison, is largely non-responsive to our questions. To the extent it is responsive, it paints the Department in a poor light. We also reviewed correspondence between DOJ and Members of Congress who raised similar questions about the case. The July 13 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith is also non-responsive and includes what we believe to be factual errors and asserts novel and questionable legal claims. As we explain below, the DOJ’s replies thus far raise new and serious questions about its civil rights enforcement decisions, which we believe we are obligated to investigate.

[...]

The letter from Ms. Roberson to us repeats some of the vague conclusions sent to Members of Congress. Yet, the Roberson letter provides none of the facts we need to determine whether the NBPP voter intimidation case was handled consistently with others the Department has investigated. Ms. Roberson provided no response as to whether there are “any similar cases in which the CRD has dismissed charges against a defendant” charged with voter intimidation. Nor did she respond to our request for the Department’s “evidentiary and legal standards for dismissing such charges in cases of alleged voter intimidation.” If the Department has no such standards, we would like to know that.

There's much more at the link.

The second read comes from the Washington Times. The USCCR calls attention to a part of the Democrats' healthcare proposal which would award billions in contracts, scholarships and grants based on the race of the recipient. It's affirmative action for physicians and medical schools.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 03:10 PM

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