POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

It’s the Cover-Up

Last week, the [US Civl Rights] Commission’s General Counsel contacted the Justice Department to inquire if a response would be forthcoming and to advise the Justice Department that on Friday the Commission would meet to decide an issue left open at its meeting last month, namely whether to designate its already expanding investigation into the New Black Panther case as an issue for a year-long study and special report. (By statute the Commission must complete at least one such study and report each year on a matter of federal civil rights enforcement.) Later that day the Justice Department sent a one paragraph letter to the Commission advising that an OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility] investigation would be opened and “accordingly” no answer would be forthcoming until OPR concluded its investigation.

A source familiar with the Commission’s deliberations tells Pajamas Media that a number of the commissioners were aghast by the response. An OPR investigation is, of course, no basis for declining to co-operate with the Commission in its statutorily authorized obligation to investigate enforcement of civil rights laws. Moreover, during the Bush administration many controversial issues were the subject of investigation and litigation on multiple “tracks” (e.g., the firing of nine U.S. attorneys triggered both congressional inquiries and an inspector general’s report, investigations of embattled former Voting Rights Section chief Jack Tanner were conducted by both Congress and OPR).

Moreover, the Commission’s concerns, including whether the dismissal marks a deviation from past policy and whether the underlying case did concern a serious civil rights violation, are beyond the ordinary purview of OPR. OPR, in contrast to the Commission, will examine the narrower issue of whether politics or other improper considerations played any role in overriding the decision of the career attorneys who opposed the dismissal.

As one Commissioner described it, the DOJ’s excuse would be analogous to a corporation charged with employment discrimination which instituted an internal investigation — and then claimed that a civil lawsuit couldn’t proceed until the corporation investigated itself.

Read the whole thing.

And while we're grappling with issues of raaaaacism, here are the remembrances of a racist who went to New Orleans to help after Katrina.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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