The civil rights division of the Department of Justice got a well-deserved reputation as a partisan cesspool during the presidency of George W. Bush. Career veterans left in droves out of disgust or from being pushed out and new people were hired whose commitment to fighting discrimination was, to say the least, suspect. Under the Obama administration, the division's reputation has been somewhat repaired. Not, of course, in the view of Republicans. They say that the division's voting rights section discriminates against conservatives and whites. Adam Serwer at Mother Jones writes that they:have accused the division's voting section of engaging in partisan gamesmanship by screening hires for ideology, trying to block Freedom of Information Act requests from conservative organizations, and choosing which civil rights laws to enforce based on racial and political preferences.A new 258-page report released Tuesday by the department's Office of the Inspector General demolishes or undermines most of those accusations. It concludes, however, that deep partisan division has hampered the effectiveness of the voter section's operations and led to some questionable decisions. There's more about the report below the fold.
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