Marjorie Cohn: U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights - The New Watergate

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http://www.alternet.org/rights/50598

U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights: The New Watergate

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted April 16, 2007.

The attorney scandal is a cover-up revolving around efforts by the Bush administration to disenfranchise African-American voters in communities where the vote is close.

The Bush administration is shocked, shocked, that the firing of a few U.S. attorneys has caused such a stir in Washington. After all, the Oval Office says, the President can choose whomever he wants to prosecute federal cases. But the Supreme Court declared in Berger v. United States that a prosecutor's job is to see that justice is done, not to politicize justice. The mass ouster of the top prosecutors had more to do with keeping a grip on power -- by manipulating voting rights -- than with doing justice. And like the Watergate scandal, the evidence points to a cover-up.

This cover-up revolves around efforts by the Bush administration to disenfranchise African-American voters in communities where the vote would likely be close. George W. Bush came to power in 2000 by a razor- thin margin awarded him by the Supreme Court. During the 2004 election, there were allegations of attempts to disenfranchise African-American voters, especially in Ohio. Yet no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African-American or Native American voters from 2001 to 2006.

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Former staffers in the Justice Department's civil rights division said they were "repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia's voter ID law to Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters," Krugman added.

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Shortly after the Watergate break-in, President Richard Nixon and his loyal chief of staff H.R. Haldeman spoke in the old Executive Office Building. Their conversation was taped, but 18.5 minutes were erased. This gap incriminated Nixon in the cover-up which eventually led to his impeachment and resignation.

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