In 2008 the EAC found itself in need of a General Counsel.  An eminently qualified attorney applied for the position and was in fact selected for the office.  Two EAC Commissioners then started looking into the candidate’s politics, and found that he was a Republican.  These Commissioners then refused to approve his appointment.  It’s pretty clear that Gracia Hillman was one of the Commissioners at fault.  Gracia Hillman continues to serve on the EAC.

With certain narrow exceptions, the federal government has a merit hiring system which requires applicants be judged solely on their qualifications not their political preferences.  The Commissioners who chose to disregard this practice did so to engage in overtly partisan politics.

A complaint was filed with the Office of the Special Counsel.  After a thorough investigation the OSC announced that it “uncovered evidence indicating that the EAC illegally refused to approve the complainant’s appointment because he was a Republican.”

While the OSC was investigating this unlawful discrimination, “the EAC agreed to provide the complainant a substantial monetary settlement to resolve the issues that were the subject of his complaint.”  However bureaucracies, even those newly formed, protect themselves and the EAC refused to admit fault.

That substantial monetary settlement, obviously, would be paid out of our pockets, and represents a bribe to go away.

If one goes to Ms. Hillman's Wiki, one finds that she was nominated to her present position by none other than President Bush 43.  The page itself is a joke.  Here's one of the objective assertions it makes about Ms. Hillman:

Throughout her career, Commissioner Hillman has effectively handled both domestic and international issues. Her areas of expertise include nonprofitmanagement, public policy and program development, political services, the interests and rights of women and minorities, community affairs and election related matters, including voting rights. [emphasis mine]

No mention is made of this scandal, obviously, but the page does repeatedly emphasize the non-partisan and bipartisan nature of Ms. Hillman's performance:

Her work experience includes having served as Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of the U.S., the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation, which sponsored the popular nonpartisan grassroots program, Operation Big Vote.

Throughout the 1980s, Ms. Hillman championed many nonpartisan and bi-partisan efforts to ensure open access to the voting process for all citizens and the continued voting rights of minority Americans, including her work on the historic 25 year extension of the national Voting Rights Act.

The link from Operation Big Vote no longer functions.  Neither, for that matter, does the link to her official page.  Operation Big Vote turns out to be closely affiliated with ACORN, as well, which, despite its free-form tax status stylings isn't exactly a non-partisan operation.

Ms. Hillman's Wiki looks like a puffed up resume of the same old dreary bureaucratized racialism and feminism that one would expect of a partisan hack with ties to the UN and State Department.  Taliban?  So what.  She deserves to be hung out to dry, in a burka.

This seems as good a place as any to dump this:

Baucus Nominated Girlfriend for U.S. Attorney

More at Main Justice, including a link to the girlfriend's resume.

Dan Collins

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

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OK gang, it’s time for your Friday Funneh videos!  Today’s we have two topical selections.  And although the genre of “Hitler rant” videos made from the bunker scene from “Downfall”, both of these are quite topical.

The first is dealing with the ACORN scandal, and is where the screenshot comes from.

The second is about resistance to Obamacare.  I hope that you all enjoy!

(h/t Maggie Katzen from a PW thread)

Rocketman

You would think that after the fallout stemming from the lack of reportage on the Van Jones story, as well as the revelation of falling public trust in their accuracy and objectivity in a recent Pew poll, that the legacy media would be on top of the most recent scandals involving ACORN; especially since they were dropped from participating in the census and the Senate overwhelming voted to cut off their access to public funds.  But that is not the case.

As usual, all we hear “crickets” and deafening silence…

Don Surber points out that the NY Times has one of the largest reporting staffs in the US, but amazingly does not have anyone available to cover the growing ACORN scandal, an organization who counts among their alumnus the current President of the United States, and instead are going with wire stories.  And, in an almost absurd statement, ABC’s Charles Gibson proffered that he didn’t even know about it!

Instead, major media outlets seem to have become obsessed with reporting, and “outing”, the hate-mongering racists that are behind the dissent to Mr. Obama’s legislative agenda.  Speaking about this past weekend’s protest in Washington DC, Howard Kurtz strains to reach for a racist motivation, an exercise which ACE thoroughly destroys.  Conversely, I doubt that Mr. Kurtz or any of his colleagues will see anything wrong with Congressman Johnson’s (D-Ga.) assertion that unless Joe Wilson is censured, and his underlying “ideas” rebuked, then folks will once again don white hoods and go riding through the countryside.  Is the Congressman’s assertion asinine and hyperbolic?  In a word, yes.  Will he be taken to task by the legacy media for inflammatory remarks that demonstrate a racialist outlook?  Somehow, I don’t think so.  Heck, Keith Olbermann will probably crown him as the best person in the world!  It’s just the usual pathetic media double standard, as Mark Salter observes at RCP.

This is a subject that I’ve written a few posts on, and unfortunately will likely have the opportunity to do so in the future.  But the Democrats and their media allies should reconsider the bias in their reportage.  Not only to slow the decline of the legacy media outlets, but to ensure that those charge others of racism, perhaps the most toxic pejorative in America today, does not go the way of the boy that cried wolf in the fable.

Exit Question:  Is Allah Pundit right when he pronounces the much heralded post-racial Presidency dead and buried?

UPDATE (SHOCKAH!):  Boston.com  breaks meta-narrative ranks reporting on how Obama's Kenyan relatives live in ABJECT! poverty.  You'd think he would do them a solid and let them hold a little somethin'...

Considering that Obama often admonishes us on how, "WE are our brothers keeper", and on, "Spreading the wealth around", you'd think that the legacy media would be all over it; as they often say about conservatives, "Because of the Hypocrisy!".  I wonder when MSNBC will tackle this one..?

At POWIP, we report, you decide…

Rocketman

It seems that it was not such a fluke when ACORN employees were caught on film advising folks how to simultaneously run a brothel staffed by under age illegal aliens and dodge the taxes on the revenues of that operation.  The latest episode in the criminal saga is set in Brooklyn.

To which ACORN is responding, Fuhgeddabowdit !; Darleen at PW covers the story where Bertha Lewis invokes a comparison to Willie Horton, all while threatening legal action.

But Ms. Lewis unwittingly makes an excellent analogy when she compares ACORN to Willie Horton; just not the one she intended. Because ACORN is a criminal enterprise, which has already been caught in wrongdoing, that will to violate the law, the rights of people, and defraud the government of money and the right to fair and accurate elections if facilitated by liberals; just like Willie Horton was allowed to continue to brutalize people while on “work” release from his life sentence in prison…

She wants to sound the oft employed dog-whistle of  RAAAAACISM!, but unfortunately for her and ACORN, the proof is in these videos; not to mention that her allies on the left have worn out the race card in the eyes of most Americans with it’s gratuitous use attacking all who oppose Obama’s policy prescriptions…

And sue the filmmaker? I’m afraid there is way too much precedent set for hidden camera sting video operations done by news organizations and whistleblowers. And all the howls of RAAAAAAACISM! in the world won’t change that inconvenient truth.

It’s time that ACORN stopped feeding at the public trough; otherwise the US taxpayer will continue, “doin' big pimpin, spendin' cheese”...

Rocketman