Free Republic

Jay Carney, the president’s new mouthpiece, gives the impression of the “man behind the curtain.” Little to say, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post reports, few tools in the toolbox, tepid and inauthentic, like one of Don Draper’s paste-up artists, stylish and self-effacing. Who’s afraid of Jay Carney? Who’s afraid of Barack Obama? It is all smoke and mirrors. But the perfect spokesman as the president moves to use the Justice Department in a pure and unconscionable strategy of political revenge. It reveals the inner man. Sarko was right: Obama is a weakling. The president’s declaration last night that...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act is a case of a politicized Justice Department picking and choosing which laws to defend, critics said Wednesday. Nevertheless, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday, the administration “had no choice” but to drop its defense, separate from President Barack Obama’s opposition to the law. Jordan Sekulow, attorney and director of policy for the American Center for Law and Justice, said the administration had a choice. “This was political spin,” Sekulow told CNSNews.com. “This is existing federal law. It is getting tougher and tougher...

WASHINGTON — President Obama, in a major legal policy shift, has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — against lawsuits challenging it as unconstitutional. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday saying that the Justice Department will now take the position in court that the Defense of Marriage Act should be struck down as a violation of gay couples’ rights to equal protection under the law. “The President and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual...

Department of Justice: Huntsville schools have too many racial inequitiesPosted: Updated: HUNTSVILE, AL (WAFF) - The US Department of Justice says Huntsville's school system has too many racial inequities.The justice department sent a letter to the school system saying it expects the school board to address district-wide issues.[Click here to read letter (PDF)]The letter also makes it clear the DOJ is closely watching the school system. Some of the issues include course offerings, student discipline and teacher placement.

President Obama and Harry Reid have used their appointment powers to stop the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' investigation into the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case. (Don't miss James Poulos' PJTV interview with von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams from CPAC.) For a while, at least, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was investigating the Justice Department’s race-based decision to dismiss the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case — a case DOJ had effectively won. But now President Obama and Harry Reid have used their appointment powers to stop the investigation. Never mind the incontrovertible (and mounting) evidence that...

The conservative majority of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights today voted to approve what they are now calling an "interim" report on the Justice Department's handling of the voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.Commissioners voted 5-2 along ideological lines to approve the report on their investigation, which started back in the summer of 2009. The vote came after talks between DOJ and the Commission to allow officials to testify on the case broke down because, the Justice Department says, of the "unilateral" terms set up by the Commission.Michael Yaki, a Democrat on the...

The closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and civilian trials for terrorists were more than policy changes proposed by Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. They were presented as a return to constitutional government - a dividing line from an uncivilized past.

Inspector-general’s report criticizes Christie's travel as U.S. attorney Washington (AP) - New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is raising his national political profile as a government cost-cutter, engaged in a pattern of abuse when he was U.S. attorney by billing taxpayers to stay at luxury hotels, the Justice Department's inspector general said . The inspector general found that the Republican governor, who recently killed the construction of a new rail line to New York under the Hudson River, did not comply with federal travel regulations or provide acceptable justification for lodging costs that exceeded the government rate. Christie was one...

The 10th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole on Tuesday conjured up painful memories for the families of the 17 Navy sailors who died in the terrorist attack, but it also revealed simmering anger at the Obama administration over the lack of concrete progress in bringing an alleged perpetrator to justice. In February 2009, less than three weeks after his inauguration, President Barack Obama held an emotional meeting with family members of victims of the Cole bombing and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Families said the new president promised swift action yet pleaded for their patience so his...

Prosecutor: DoJ bias against whites By: Josh Gerstein September 24, 2010 10:52 AM EDT A Justice Department prosecutor, defying his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday into the department’s handling of a voter-intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group, blasted “senior political appointees” at Justice for “gutting” the case. In his opening testimony, prosecutor Christopher Coates also suggested he was working against a dominant Justice Department culture which discouraged enforcement of civil rights laws in a “race-neutral” way that would protect whites as well as blacks. Coates, a 13-year veteran of the civil...

The news that Christopher Coates, former chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, is set to testify Friday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is crucial to the panel’s investigation of allegations that the Obama administration has not enforced the nation’s civil rights laws in a race-neutral manner.The testimony by Coates, a career government lawyer, is expected to shed light on whether DOJ: • Discriminated against white voters in dismissing the voter-intimidation case against two members of the New Black Panther Party and the party itself that arose from incidents at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day...