BOOK REVIEW: ‘Injustice’

OPINION:

INJUSTICE: EXPOSING THE RACIAL AGENDA OF THE OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
By J. Christian Adams
Regnery, $27.95, 252 pages

As Christian Adams chronicles in his powerful book, “Injustice,” President Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., have mounted an alarming assault on the rule of law in this country. Across federal agencies, evenhanded law enforcement has given way to our president’s explicitly stated goal of “punishing” enemies and “rewarding” friends. It is sad that disdain for equality under the law is perhaps greatest in the very enforcement organization for which that principle should be the touchstone: the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

In “Injustice,” Mr. Adams presents extensive and well-documented evidence in support of his case. His analysis and his advocacy are persuasive. The information he conveys raises serious concerns about the integrity of our country’s law enforcement.

As a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, Mr. Adams and his dedicated colleagues pursued many cases aimed at discrimination against blacks, but ran into roadblocks when advocating actions that targeted discrimination against whites. Although internal differences on such issues have spanned several administrations, under Mr. Obama there has been a sea change in favor of racially discriminatory enforcement.

Mr. Adams recounts the egregious conduct of local officials in places such as Noxubee and Wilkinson Counties in Mississippi, and Hale and Perry Counties in Alabama, where white voters were systematically disenfranchised by black authorities through a variety of illegal practices. Enforcement against these practices was haphazard at the best of times. Today, under the Obama administration, a resurgence of “fraud, forced assistance and lawlessness” is simply being ignored.

The axiom “personnel is policy” has helped drive this discriminatory agenda. In the Civil Rights Division, an Obama administration hiring blitz has led to the addition of some 130 new lawyers. FOIA requests for copies of their resumes were stonewalled, the resumes ultimately produced only after the DOJ was sued for its failure to comply. And no wonder this not-so-transparent administration resisted, for the results show that all - as in, every one - of the Civil Rights Division’s new hires have radical and far-left activist credentials.

The Voting Section within the division is “a key target” of DOJ’s “politicized hiring campaign.” Mr. Adams lists many new hires and their credentials, which show that the division generally and its Voting Section in particular are essentially now an adjunct organization for a variety of left-wing advocacy groups. As the author explains, “The bottom line is this: in the Voting Section, lawyers whose main career experience was in subverting voting laws will be standing watch over America’s voting system during the 2012 presidential election.”

“Injustice” recounts the shameful saga of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, over which Mr. Adams resigned. He reminds us that the New Black Panthers are “a far-left hate group,” called by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center a “virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.” National media played video footage of “a blatant act of voter intimidation by a race-hate group.” And then, after securing a default judgment in the lawsuit it had filed during the Bush administration, Obama cronies pushed the Civil Rights Division to dismiss the case.

The decision to give the New Black Panthers a pass was paralleled by growing evidence that in this administration, law enforcement has an important racial component. “Injustice” details the disclosure of the new regime’s policies in a variety of internal meetings and enforcement decisions. In brief, enforcement will be very color-conscious.

With major budget increases fostering “job creation” for a large cadre of radical lawyers, the Civil Rights Division’s mischief has not been limited to enforcement skewed by racial considerations. Mr. Adams gives us a cook’s tour of some other strange concoctions being served up of late. For example, the division took action against a New York high school whose “dress code” was applied to prohibit a 15-year-old boy from wearing stiletto heels and pink wigs to class - sex discrimination against “gender nonconforming” behavior.

Also, the division came down hard on a plan to use Amazon Kindles to replace textbooks because the Kindle’s “talking-book function failed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Of course, the paper books the Kindles would replace didn’t talk at all.

And there is much more. The division’s broad legal assault on Arizona is clearly intended to deter other states contemplating actions that would impede the administration’s open-borders agenda. Likewise, attacks on any sort of ballot integrity measures such as voter identification requirements are leading indicators of our president’s 2012 campaign strategy.

Because the DOJ’s agenda goes well beyond the law, Mr. Adams offers this sound advice: If the Civil Rights Division comes calling, don’t assume they have a strong case. Push back.

My own advice: Read this book and spread it around.

Ray Hartwell is a Washington lawyer and a Navy veteran.