Gonzales/Bush Justice Dept. accuses someone of suppressing vote, you'll never guess who:
MACON, Miss., Oct. 5 -- The Justice Department has chosen this no-stoplight, courthouse town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.
The action represents a sharp shift, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is charging blacks with voting fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks' right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.
This is from
The New York Times(if this has been diaried already, please let me know, I did check):
The Justice Department's main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles to the southwest. Mr. Brown, tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating -- with the help of others -- "relentless voting-related racial discrimination" against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.
I am not denying the possibility that some of the Justice Department's claims against Mr. Ike Brown are true. I live in New Jersey - we have political characters like Mr. Brown of every shade, ethnicity and nationality.
But how dare this administration accuse Blacks, a group whose votes they clearly suppressed in Florida, Ohio, and who knows where or how else, of voting-based racial discrimination.
That the Bush Justice Department would go to Mississippi and accuse Blacks of discrimination blatantly and purposely reveals shows what they think of the Voting Rights Act and civil rights movement at large -- quaint.
They laugh at the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act is a nuisance, a joke.
To summarize the Times article:
The U.S. Justice Department accuses Ike Brown, like segregationists decades ago, of controlling Democratic primaries through methods such as publishing all-White voters lists, bringing in Black voters from out of town, manipulating voter rolls and falsifying absentee ballots.
Brown allegedly brought in a Black lawyer to run against the county prosecutor, a White man named Roderick Walker. Walker is quoted saying Brown plays dirty. Other Whites in the town are taciturn, but suggest there's funny business going on in the local elections. Whites make up just under 30 percent of the population of Noxubee County. Blacks there love Ike Brown and supported him through a one- or two-year prison bid he did for tax fraud.
The chair of the poli sci department at UNC-Charlotte says there is a multitude of example of voting funny business and discrimination. The chair wrote a report filed with the Justice Department lawsuit.
Brown sits out in front of the county courthouse and greets people there; he has no office there, however. He says he is not a "vital orchestrator" and that politics went on without him while he was in jail.
White politicians simply feel disenfranchised and are bitter, Brown says. He denies any racial discrimination and says that White candidates will only get elected if Blacks choose to support them -- so why should he have to resort to fraud?
Lots of Dems in the area are wary of him; less than fond perhaps. Brown is being defended by a "maverick Republican lawyer who sees the suit as an example of undue interference in the affairs of a political party." The lawyer calls Brown a "Karl Rove genius" on the county level. The Mississippi Secy. of State refused to endorse Brown.
Last two grafs:
Back in Macon, in the shadow of the courthouse green's standard-issue Confederate monument, Mr. Brown spoke of history: "They had their way all the time. They no longer have their way. That's what it's all about." The case is "all about politics," he said, "all about them trying to keep me from picking the lock."
But Mr. Walker, the county prosecutor, insisted the past had nothing to do with the case against Mr. Brown. "I wouldn't sit here and pretend black people haven't been mistreated," he said. "I hate what happened in the past. But I can't do anything about it."
I am not commenting on whether the case has legal merit -- I would have to see the suit filed and do some research on Ike Brown and MS county politics. Not going to happen as it is 2:52 a.m. and I have more pressing things to do anyway.
But it's clear, the Bush administration DOES care about minority voting rights -- only when the minority is White.