Fixing the Game (NY Times ED calls GOP action like the "Bolsheviks")

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/opinion/05mon1.html

December 5, 2005
Editorial
Fixing the Game

The rules of American democracy say every president may install his own team of like-minded people in the government - even at a place like the Justice Department, which is at its root a law-enforcement agency and not a campaign branch office. But the Bush administration seems to be losing sight of the fact that the rules also say the majority party of the moment may not use its powers to strip citizens of their rights, politicize the judicial system or rig the election process to keep itself in office. <snip>

But The Washington Post's Dan Eggen reported last week that the Justice Department has been suppressing for nearly two years a 73-page memo in which six lawyers and two analysts in the voting rights section, including the group's chief lawyer, unanimously concluded that the Texas redistricting plan of 2003 illegally diluted the votes of blacks and Hispanics in order to ensure a Republican majority in the state's Congressional delegation. That plan was shoved through the Texas State Legislature by Representative Tom DeLay, who abused his federal position in doing so and is now facing criminal charges over how money was raised to support the redistricting.
<snip>


This outrageous case is only one way in which the Justice Department under John Ashcroft and now Alberto Gonzales has abused its law-enforcement mandate in the service of the Republican majority. Last month, the Post reported that political appointees also overruled voting rights lawyers who rejected a Georgia law requiring that voters without a picture ID buy one for $20 - at offices that were set up in only 59 of the state's 159 counties. The Justice Department falsely claimed that the decision to O.K. the law - which was little more than a modern-day version of a poll tax aimed at reducing turnout among poor minorities - was made with the concurrence of the career lawyers. A federal court later struck down the law, properly.
<snip>


Mr. Bush and his team don't understand that they merely hold the current majority in a system designed to bring periodic changes in the governing party and to protect the rights and values of the minority party. The idea that the winners should trash the system to make sure the democratic process ended with them was discredited back around the time of the Bolsheviks.

[FormerRepublican]

1. People are starting to wake up to the truth.

[papau]

2. I look forward to a network saying Bush actions "like the "Bolsheviks" "

:-)

[ladjf]

4. Oh, how I hope that you are correct.

[JohnWxy]

8. Not gonna happen - not on the Corporate Network News

[Zenlitened]

3. Republicans: More dangerous than terrorists.

No foreign terrorist has ever subverted American democracy the way the republicans have.

[IndianaGreen]

5. Typical NY Times cheap shot! The Bolsheviks believed in democracy

whereas the GOP believes in Fascism.

Even when writing about DeLay's shenanigans, they can't resist a bit of socialist bashing.

[papau]

6. We need to be nice - The Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party

did indeed believe in democracy - but only until they took power and Lenin changed the name to the Communist Party (indeed the Communist Party did not remove "Bolshevik" from the offical stationary until 1952).

I think the New York Times was on our side this time!

:-)

[JohnWxy]

7. A very important post -

I'm very pleased to see the NY Times printing such a frank and accurate portrayal of this administration. Thanks for alerting us to this article.