Posted on 12/05/2001 3:00:31 PM PST by Howlin
Brit Hume reports that Mary Frances Berry, chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, is refusing to acknowledge the Bush White House's latest appointment to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Ms. Berry sent a letter to the White House Counsel, Al Gonzales, saying that if they do intend to send the nominee to the meeting tomorrow, they best send along the U.S. Marshalls to seat him, as she will not allow it.
Fox reports that the term of one of the Democrats has expired and President Bush is exercising his right to appoint a member of his choice. The Panel on Hume's show said that this has NEVER been done before; that when someone is appointed to fill a term that hasn't been expired, when the term expires, the person leaves the committe. They also report that the woman who is being removed from the commmittee plans to show up tomorrow with a civil rights attorney and claim that she should get a full six year term, not just complete somebody else's.
Ms. Berry contends that the person leaving the committee was appointed for six years, not just to fulfill the term of a member who either died or left the commission (I can't remember which!)
CAUTION: this is typed from memory. Nothing on the news site yet.
The Civil Rights Commission like sooooooo many other gov't bureuacracies have no term limits. Once installed they go on for ever. Really why do we need the CRC or the BLM or the URRC or HUD or the MMA (milk market administration)etc. The freekin list goes on for 3 blue pages in the phone book.
Dissolve the commission is the answer and save the tax payer 3 or 4 million a year.
Both.
Wilson should be removed, forcibly by the Marshalls if necessary.
Then the White House should take whatever legal steps necessary to remove Berry as she has committed a wonton violation of law contrary to her oath of office.
Can't properly say it if he were to remove both - though the truth has never stood in the way of anything the demonflops might say.
Berry's academic papers, if reviewed, I suspect, would undoubtedly betray the same sorry mental aberrations and debilitations we have witnessed down in her Florida Circus hearings. If this is so, then at least I cannot countenance any of the higher degrees being granted to this woman, as being legitimate...and casts a huge cloud over their other degress issued in the last decades. These affirmative-action-warped academic departments have completely destroyed their credibility by socially-promoting this demonstrably unfit 'scholar.' Her degrees should be rescinded. There is precedent.
Agreed. If you read her report on the Battle of Florida, the Commission concludes that a disproportionate number of ballots cast by blacks were spoiled and, therefore, rejected.
That was an astonishing conclusion in a contest that involved a secret ballot. There is no way, once cast, that a given ballot can be traced back to a given individual. By extension, therefore, a group of ballots cannot be traced back to a group of people (absent fraud - hmmm, maybe something to check?).
Yet that didn't stand in the way of her concluding that Florida intentionally sought to disenfranchise blacks and used this "fact" as evidence.
Astonishing.
And, you're right. If you or I introduced that kind of research on a term paper, we should rightly deserve to fail.
There's more than seating an appointee at play here ... if Bush fails to restore the INTEGRITY and PURPOSE of the Commission, he may as well allow Clinton to appoint someone.
I'm afraid he will, too. Bush doesn't like distractions - he's conducting a war. This story will just go away with Berry having her way.
White House says NAACP address was excessive
A White House spokesman said "there was a certain sense of going too far" in Mr. Bond's remarks comparing some Bush appointees to an Islamic regime that has harbored known terrorists. Kweisi Mfume attacks Bushs judicial nominees, calling them "strange conservative-thinking individuals who want to set back the hands of time." Mary Frances Berry at an NAACP luncheon told of her thrill when she found out that Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont quit the Republican party in May, giving Democrats control of the Senate. "Before that, I was just wondering when Strom Thurmond was gonna die." Miss Berry received a standing ovation when she concluded her 35-minute speech. (Washington Times)
Mary Frances Berry, Chairwoman (Independent)
Cruz Reynoso (Democrat)
Yvonne Lee (Democrat)
Victoria Wilson (Independent)
Christopher Edley Jr. (Democrat)
Elsie Leeks (Democrat)
Russell Redenbaugh (Independent)
What we have here is a mixed bunch of professional race-activists, ranging from the commission chairwoman, a professor of "social thought" no less, who bears impeccable NAACP credentials; to Cruz Reynoso, currently law professor and former California Supreme Court justice whom the good citizens of that state promptly kicked off the court at the first opportunity; to Lakota reservation store owner Elsie Leeks. There's also a handicapped person on the team. (Hillary! has got to love this group; it meets all the diversity quota criteria she wanted to have reflected in all of the outgoing Administration's policy-making bodies, when she--and Bill--took over the White House.) We have one caveat: we can't seem to find out if the membership list is current, because Cruz's resume says he was appointed to a six-year term in April 1993.
The Commission's web page says that it's supposed to be bipartisan and that only four commission members can belong to the same political party. We assume the "independent" designations get around the latter requirement very nicely.
By the way, none of the three black witnesses the Commission called in Tallahassee was able to provide any evidence of voter harassment. All three were able to vote.
WHO'S WHO ON THE COMMISSION
These are the members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:
Mary Frances Berry, a professor of American social thought and history at the University of Pennsylvania, has served since 1980. She served President Carter in Health, Education and Welfare, running the education office. President Clinton named her chairwoman in 1993. Registered as an independent, REMEMBER THIS ONE FROM THE "INDEPENDENT" BERRY?! Berry has contributed money to the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and other congressional Democrats as well as to Vice President Al Gore's failed presidential bid.
Cruz Reynoso, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is vice chairman. A Democrat appointed by Clinton in 1993, he is a former California Supreme Court justice and served the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Yvonne Lee, a Democrat appointed by Clinton in 1995, is a San Francisco-based public-relations consultant. She was director of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance before joining the commission.
Victoria Wilson, a longtime editor and now executive at Alfred A. Knopf in New York, is an independent appointed by Clinton last year.
Christopher Edley, law professor at Harvard, is a founder of the university's Civil Rights Project. A Democrat appointed by the House's party leaders in 1999, he has served Carter and Clinton. As special counsel to Clinton, he led a review of affirmative action resulting in a ``Mend it, don't end it'' policy. He backed Gore and Hillary Clinton.
Elsie Meeks, a Democrat and businesswoman from South Dakota, is director of the Lakota Fund, instrumental in fundraising for American Indian causes. She was appointed in 1999 by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
Russell Redenbaugh, blinded in an explosion as a teenager, is partner in a Philadelphia investment-management firm and runs a software firm. A registered independent, he was appointed by Senate Republicans in 1990.
Abigail Thernstrom is the newest appointee, seated this month by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The panel's only registered Republican, she is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and member of the Massachusetts Board of Education. She contributed to George W. Bush's presidential campaign.
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