Here's a better one:
Posted on 12/06/2004 9:25:45 AM PST by xsysmgr
Mary Frances Berry's term as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ended at midnight Sunday, but as of this writing she maintains that her term doesn't end until January 21, 2005, and imperiously refuses to step down.
Her claim is nonsense. Her primary commission documents, signed by President Bill Clinton when he appointed her to her now-expired term, show that her term ended on December 5, 2004. If that alone wasn't enough, the Congressional Research Service issued an opinion to the House Oversight Committee to the same effect. Finally, the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals in U.S. ex rel. Kirsanow v. Wilson involving the specific issue of commissioner terms, uncontrovertibly instructs that her term ended Sunday.
Unimpressed, Berry clings to the seat she's held for almost 25 years, the last 12 as chairman. She's summarily cancelled this coming Friday's commission meeting in violation of federal regulations and over the strenuous objections of Republican commissioners. The action deflects a face-to-face confrontation between Berry and the newly appointed commissioners — at least momentarily.
None of this is particularly surprising to anyone who's followed the commission over the last dozen years. A culture of unaccountability has become an entrenched feature of the commission's administrative character. Numerous governmental reviews of the commission have concluded that the agency is wholly dysfunctional.
In 1997, a Government Accountability Office report noted that management is in disarray, projects are poorly managed and take years to complete, spending data isn't maintained by office, program, or function and the agency's policies and procedures are unclear. GAO couldn't even verify project spending because of the commission's indecipherable record keeping.
The Office of Personnel Management conducted two reviews of the commission in the 1990s. Yet despite evidence of pervasive management problems, the civil-rights commission failed to implement five of six substantive OPM recommendations.
The GAO's 2003 review of the commission showed that the commission had also failed to comply with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. The civil-rights commission has not updated its strategic plan since 1997.
Moreover, the commission has not had a full independent audit in at least 12 years. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution is currently investigating the commission's finances, management, and contracting practices. Good luck. Many commissioners have found the agency to be financially inscrutable.
The commission that was once known as "the conscience of the nation" has become a theater of the absurd. Anyone reading a transcript of a commission meeting might well believe it was authored by Lewis G. Carroll. Berry habitually releases to the public statements, reports, and press releases (usually critical of Republicans or at least consistent with her positions) that have been voted down previously by the commission as a whole.
Just last week she released a deeply flawed and biased report critical of the Bush administration's civil-rights record, despite the fact that such report had been rejected by the commission at its November 12 meeting (the report was originally scheduled for release just days before the presidential election but Republican commissioners succeeded in tabling it, noting that the report on the Clinton civil-rights record wasn't released until after his second term, expressly to avoid politicization). Why even vote on reports if the chairman will simply issue them as she sees fit?
The commission's mounting problems have caused the chorus of those who contend that the agency has outlived its usefulness to become larger and louder. I don't agree with them. While it becomes increasingly difficult to defend the commission's usefulness, it could function as the nation's conscience if its deliberative processes were rational, open, and fair; its findings objective, unbiased, and unimpeachable; and its membership fully engaged in framing, shaping, and drafting its reports. As the Washington Post recently editorialized, "a serious, rigorous commission could create breathing space for creative civil rights dialogue unbeholden to the orthodoxies of either the left or the right."
By engaging an independent audit, implementing structural forms, and adopting sound GAO recommendations, the commission would be taking the first steps toward becoming the kind of agency described by the Washington Post. But not before Ms. Berry observes the rule of law and steps down.
— Peter Kirsanow is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
When this happens in business, you hire extra security to take away her building pass, then escort her out, change all the locks on the office doors and the access codes to the business computer systems.
Who, BTW, is now a newly elected DC councilman..
Read the Townhall link in post 53.
This woman was locked out before in 1983.
President Reagan fired her and Linda Chavez, who was on the Reagan staff had the locks on Berry's former office changed to keep her out.
Of course Berry sued.
The law concerning appointments by the Executive were changed by Congress....because of this creature.
I hate to say it but looks like Dr. Thomas Sowell.
You must hate Bush, you racist! /sarcasm
Here's a better one:
I like your ideas better than mine. Just so long as her office stuff gets thrown into storage where she has to pay the moving and storage bills.
Mary Frances Berry has been feeding at the Federal trough for far too long.
Unless this lady is that 800 pound gorrila that sits where it damn well pleases, I suggest the seat of the britches and shirt collar, hold, by the inhouse, rules enforcement official, with the realease on three count, for her exit.
Butts are meant to be broken for those who presume that rules are meant to be broken.
I expect she will be removed physically by US Marshals.
1) Is the US Commission on Human Rights really needed?
2) Why can't meetings through the end of January be cancelled?
3) MF Berry isn't worth any attention...it just feeds her ego.
In case you skipped wholesale through the article just to get a swipe in at Bush, it read that two new appointees have already been named. But such witicisms, devoid of factual accuracy, are still quite amusing to those with a Democrat-level IQ.
That's a man, baby!
She qualifies for the most vile term I can think of.
Free At Last, Free At Last
The appalling Mary Frances Berry, Chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and one of the worst public servants in American history, is finally on her way out. The Bush administration has appointed replacements for the awful Ms. Berry and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso, whose terms are finally ending:
President Bush on Monday moved to replace Mary Frances Berry, the outspoken chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission who has argued with every president since Jimmy Carter appointed her to the panel a quarter century ago.
But Berry balked at leaving now, arguing through a spokesman that she and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso, who also is being replaced, have terms that run until midnight Jan. 21, 2005. The White House maintained that their six-year terms expired Sunday and that Berry and Reynoso had been replaced.
This grasping effort to hang on to "power" for a few more days is typical. Ms. Berry has been an embarrassment for twenty-five years, as has the Civil Rights Commission. Only the magic phrase "civil rights" has prevented the Commission from being a laughingstock. That phrase, thankfully, is no longer enough. Mary Frances Berry, one of the most biased and partisan figures in American public life, RIP.
Berry was first appointed to the commission in 1980, largely to get rid of her at the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare, where she served as an assistant secretary. Berry had embarrassed the Carter administration by returning from a trip to China extolling the Maoist education system there, including its use of ethnic quotas in higher education. So President Carter passed over Berry when he created the new Department of Education, shipping her off to the Civil Rights Commission instead. She's been getting even with presidents ever since.
How bad is she if she managed to embarass the Carter administration?
It exists because Congress deems it exist. Oh, you meant a GOOD reason? (crickets chirping....)
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