Free Republic

The cabinet nominee fought to keep the Supreme Court from reviewing his preferred extortion technique. One of the administration’s favorite legal theories, “disparate impact,” may get taken up again by the Supreme Court. Will the administration try to engineer some kind of payoff to take the issue away from the Court — again? In June 2012, the town of Mount Holly, N.J., petitioned the Supreme Court to review the legitimacy of racial discrimination claims premised solely on a disparate impact theory under the Fair Housing Act. Under this theory, a policy — such as requiring high credit scores for loans...

In last night’s Athletics-Indians game, the A’s trailed by one run with two outs in the ninth inning. Up came shortstop Adam Rosales to face Indians closer Chris Perez. On a 1-1 pitch, Rosales blasted a 93 mile per hour fastball to left center field for a game tying home run. Only the umps didn’t see it that way. They ruled the ball had hit the outfield wall, giving Rosales a double. After a brief protest from A’s manager Bob Melvin, the umpire crew headed for the replay room to make sure of their call. Replays definitively showed the ball...

The Department of Justice under Eric Holder can’t seem to help itself. Truth and candor have gone extinct. The latest lie involving the nomination of Thomas Perez to be Labor secretary is found in today’s Washington Post. Naturally, the compliant reporter, Josh Hicks, appears to make no effort to challenge the lie, and probably never will. This latest lie about Perez revolves around his illegal use of his personal Verizon email account to conduct Justice Department business at his Takoma Park, Maryland, home. I testified to the House Judiciary Committee last month that when he was confronted with the question...

Two Mississippi counties have more eligible voters than residents. The American Civil Rights Union wants local election officials to clean up voter rolls in Mississippi. Last Friday, the group filed suit against two counties that have more registered voters than the Census says they have voting-eligible citizens. The ACRU is stepping into the breach left by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. Under Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez (now nominated to head the U.S. Department of Labor), the division has refused to enforce Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, also known as the Motor Voter...

Senate Republicans say Democrats postponed a vote on President Obama's nominee for Labor secretary after they learned that a whistleblower related to a questionable case was invited to testify at a Thursday hearing. Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, a member of the panel, had asked Frederick Newell to discuss the involvement of Thomas Perez and the Justice Department in the disposition of several housing discrimination cases in St. Paul, Minn. Republicans argue that Newell's testimony could have contradicted statements made by Perez, as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, at his confirmation hearing last week, an aide told The...

Labor secretary nominee Thomas Perez cut a "secret deal behind closed doors" with leaders of a Minnesota city, persuading them to drop a contentious lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department staying out of whistleblower cases brought against the city, according to a congressional Republican report. The "quid pro quo," according to the report, potentially cost taxpayers as much as $200 million. ... Both cases involved the city of St. Paul.

A group of congressional Republican lawmakers say the way President Barack Obama's labor secretary nominee handled three housing discrimination lawsuits against the city of St. Paul should be enough to block his confirmation. The central case, Magner v. Gallagher, involved St. Paul landlords who claimed that the city overreached with its strict housing inspections, which had the serious consequence of reducing the amount of affordable housing available to racial minorities. St. Paul officials, congressional Democrats and the Justice Department are dismissing the GOP's latest claims as politics as usual, but a 63-page report issued Sunday is certain to amplify discussions...

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez's nomination by President Obama as labor secretary has been met with criticism from Republicans and widespread concern among current and former Justice Department attorneys who question whether the Civil Rights Division chief is qualified for the post. "People should be raising serious questions about this nomination," said Hans von Spakovsky, a veteran Justice Department lawyer who formerly served as counsel to the division. "This is a man who misled both Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "He was the focus last week of the most devastating indictment of a federal government agency...

President Obama’s labor-secretary nominee Tom Perez has a long association with CASA of Maryland, a group that serves immigrants and runs day-laborer centers. Perez was on CASA’s board from 1995 to 2002, and while it doesn’t appear he’s had any official ties since then, as a Montgomery County Council member Perez promoted a day-laborer site that was ultimately run by CASA. An example of CASA’s attention to illegal immigrants can be found in a booklet that was updated in 2008. The booklet, which can be viewed on CASA’s website here,

No matter what progress Republicans may make in electoral politics over the coming years, it will be difficult to roll back the steady march of liberalism that has taken place inside our cultural, bureaucratic and legal institutions — from academia to regulatory agencies to the Department of Justice — but we have to try. A good place to start would be to oppose Obama's radical appointees, the latest being his appointment for secretary of labor, Thomas Perez. Radical liberals are characteristically activists, strategists and organizers. Their plan to infiltrate and dominate academia was hardly spontaneous, and its effects have hardly...

President Barack Obama’s nominee for Labor Secretary has already been exposed for his connections with pro-abortion liberal billionaire George Soros, but he also has another pro-abortion skeleton in his closet. The Obama administration, in 2011, posted a new document to the White House web site touting its efforts to combat sex trafficking in the United States. But the document ignored Planned Parenthood — the abortion business where undercover investigations revealed staff willing to arrange for abortions for sex traffickers. Tom Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice and Obama’s selection for Labor Secretary,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The man President Obama has nominated to become the next Secretary of Labor has been accused of filing baseless lawsuits against pro-life protesters in order to chill their right to free speech. On Monday, Obama named Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to replace outgoing Secretary Hilda Solis. Last September Perez boasted, “We have opened 20 civil investigations under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and filed eight complaints under the Act – compared to just one civil FACE Act case in the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The man President Obama has nominated to become the next Secretary of Labor has been accused of filing baseless lawsuits against pro-life protesters in order to chill their right to free speech. On Monday, Obama named Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to replace outgoing Secretary Hilda Solis. Last September Perez boasted, “We have opened 20 civil investigations under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and filed eight complaints under the Act – compared to just one civil FACE Act case in the...

Thomas Perez embodies ethnic identity radicalism. Whether the U.S. Senate has courage to challenge him is yet unknown. President Obama today nominated Perez for Secretary of Labor. As the Department of Justice's assistant attorney general for civil rights since October 2009, Perez has promoted a hard-charging egalitarianism that goes even beyond that of first-term Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who resigned in January. His "Third World First, America Last" worldview comes with hefty baggage. He's persuaded the Justice Department to dismiss its case against Black Panther members accused of menacing white voters and poll watchers in Philadelphia on Election Day...

President Obama nominated Justice Department official Thomas Perez for Labor secretary Monday -- but the candidate could be haunted by a newly released report that found he gave incomplete testimony on the controversial decision to drop charges against members of the New Black Panther Party. Perez, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department´s Civil Rights Division, would replace Hilda Solis at Labor if confirmed. Obama, touting Perez´ personal story as the son of immigrants who became the first lawyer in his family, urged the Senate to act quickly on the nomination.

President Obama nominated Justice Department official Thomas Perez for Labor secretary Monday -- but the candidate could be haunted by a newly released report that found he gave incomplete testimony on the controversial decision to drop charges against members of the New Black Panther Party. Perez, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, would replace Hilda Solis at Labor if confirmed. Obama, touting Perez' personal story as the son of immigrants who became the first lawyer in his family, urged the Senate to act quickly on the nomination. *snip* Separately, the wide-ranging IG report...

Today, President Obama issues a challenge to Republican Senators: in nominating Tom Perez as Labor secretary, he implies that Senate Republicans don’t have either the guts or organizational skill to stop what would become perhaps the most radical left-wing cabinet member in history. Whether the president is right about GOP senators remains to be seen. As they say, I wrote the book on Tom Perez. My New York Times bestseller Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department is largely a catalog of the rancid racialism over which Perez has presided. The New Black Panther case is one...

(Also see: Inspector General Report on Racialist Dysfunction inside DOJ .) It took a few years, but the report issued this week by the DOJ inspector general confirms reporting ( here) by PJ Media: the powerful DOJ Voting Section ran an ideologically charged attorney recruitment and hiring effort that deliberately sought left-leaning lawyers. Sources familiar with the thinking of Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez report that he and others in the department believe the damning inspector general report actually vindicates the attorney hiring decisions over the last few years in the Civil Rights Division. In essence, Perez...

Truth and revolution can appear suddenly, and darken the brightest of times. Consider yesterday’s Department of Justice inspector general’s report documenting the rancid racialist attitudes of the Voting Section staff. (See: “ Inspector General Report of Racialist Dysfunction Inside DOJ .”) The Justice Department should hope that Justice Antonin Scalia — or his clerks — don’t catch wind of the IG report before Shelby v. Holder is decided. If he or they do, they will find a particularly interesting discussion regarding what Justice Scalia called “racial entitlements” in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The left has been apoplectic...

Today the Department of Justice inspector general released a report on potential Labor secretary nominee Tom Perez’s DOJ Civil Rights Division. The timing of the release to coincide with his nomination was certainly accidental, because the report paints a damning portrait of the DOJ unit he managed. The full report is here. The 250-page report offers an inside glimpse of systemic racialist dysfunction inside one of the most powerful federal government agencies. The report was prepared in response to Representative Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) outrage over the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal. Former Voting Section ChiefChris Coates and I both...