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With the vote on the Civil Rights Commission New Black Panther report set for Friday, former DOJ attorney Hans von Spakovsky submits this affidavit rebutting former Deputy Chief of the Voting Section Robert Kengle. Kengle had contested portions of Christopher Coates’ testimony before the Commission, testimony which described Kengle’s hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. The Coates testimony was deeply embarassing to Kengle, and von Spakovsky’s corroboration of Coates’ testimony is even more so.Click here  pdf to download von Spakovsky’s affidavit.

New reports raise stakes on voter-intimidation caseThe U.S. Commission on Civil Rights votes tomorrow on its report regarding the Black Panther voter-intimidation case. The Obama administration's malfeasance in this scandal is becoming impossible to avoid - even for the White House's most reliable defenders. After 17 months of averting its eyes, The Washington Post finally ran a major front-page feature on the controversy on Saturday. Three current Justice Department lawyers told the Post that whistleblowers J. Christian Adams and Christopher Coates are accurate in stating that anybody who tries to enforce civil rights laws in a race-neutral fashion will be...

The Justice Department on Wednesday vowed to thwart any efforts to intimidate voters at the polls on Tuesday and to ensure that the ballots of military voters are counted, as activists on both sides of the political aisle reignite their regular election-time tango over the dangers of voter fraud versus voter suppression. Facing separate investigations in its handling of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and questions over the failure of absentee ballots to be sent to military personnel and their families by the legally required date, the Justice Department moved to assure voters that they will...

Complete title: Top DOJ Official Describes Recent Controversy As "He Said, She Said," Insists Actions Speak Louder Than WordsThe head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on Wednesday strongly disputed accusations by a department colleague that the Obama administration avoids prosecuting minorities in civil rights cases, saying it all amounts to a "'he said, she said' thing" and that he "tends to judge people by their actions," not their words. It's the first time Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has weighed in since Justice Department lawyer Christopher Coates accused Perez's office of being "hostile" toward "race-neutral enforcement" of voting...

  Kristen Clarke of the NAACP LDF has no idea what she is talking about. In a CBS interview she states: "Kristen Clarke, Co-Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Political Participation Group, said in an interview with Hotsheet that 'there doesn't seem to be a color blind approach to many of these so called ballot integrity efforts and poll watching initiatives that are underway.  The reports that we are hearing about are very troubling,' she said, suggesting that poll watchers are being 'largely assigned to monitor African American and Latino voters.'" This is false.  And she should no better.  Sadly,...

Full article here.  Some parts (Washington Post portions indented): As to the administration’s mindset: Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.“The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around,” said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wants Attorney General H. Holder Jr., to allow Justice Department employees to testify in its investigation of "deep-seated and shockingly common attitudes favoring racially-selective enforcement of the law" within the department's Civil Rights Division.The request is outlined in a letter to be delivered Tuesday to Mr. Holder, following a 5-1 vote Friday by the commission, seeking additional testimony and documents in its investigation of the department's handling of the New Black Panther Party case."Since June 2009, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has sought information from the Department of Justice, much of which...

The Obama Justice Department can put an end to the scandal surrounding the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case. All Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. would have to do is allow members of his Voting Rights Section to answer a few simple questions under oath, without waiving a single legal privilege.On Friday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights approved two letters to Mr. Holder. Both ask, again, for more cooperation than the Justice Department has provided for 16 months. The commission is seeking information about an alleged "broad culture of hostility to race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws;...

In my column on Tuesday (see here, with a Corner correction here), I suggested that candidates running for office should pledge to investigate the Obama Justice Department. Today, there is eye-popping new evidence to add to the already disturbing indications that the Department is engaged in racially discriminatory enforcement of the civil rights laws, and that high-ranking Department officials have both obstructed justice and provided intentionally false testimony in the Civil Rights Commission’s investigation of the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case. At the Standard’s blog, Daniel Halper has a must read post, relying on the tireless investigative work...

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) says it's time for answers, and he's tired of the Department of Justice "stonewalling" him. He's referring to allegations from current and former DOJ attorneys that leadership within the department has advised employees that voting rights laws are meant to protect minorities, not whites, and will be enforced accordingly.Wolf says other DOJ employees, who wish to remain anonymous, have made similar allegations. "I made it very clear to Eric Holder he ought not to be pushing these people around, that they should be encouraged to go forward and testify openly," Wolf says.The Virginia Republican says...

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has an obligation to clean house at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. That's clear after explosive new whistle-blower testimony under oath Friday in the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, which triggers a pledge Mr. Perez made under oath on May 14. Failure to fire some officials and to radically revamp practices in the Civil Rights Division would represent clear dereliction of duty by Mr. Perez.Friday's testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came from much-decorated Justice Department veteran Christopher Coates, a hero of the civil rights legal community when he...

We no longer must consult history for a lawyer-hero willing to take personal risk for sacred principles such as the rule of law and racial equality. Our age can claim Christopher Coates. It has been a very bad week for the dwindling number of people defending the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Today might have been the worst day of all. Former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates testified to the United States Civil Rights Commission that Obama political appointees dismissed the case because they are opposed to enforcing...

Click here or on the image below to read Mr. Coates’ testimony:

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...

The editorial boards of The Washington Times and Washington Examiner have previously blasted the Justice Department for its handling of a controversial voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The hypocrisy of the Obama Justice Department has reached staggering proportions on a host of issues stemming from the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case. Such systemic evasion of justice breeds lawlessness. The Justice Department's latest thumb in the eye of its critics came in an Aug. 11 letter from Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Mr. Perez told the commission that he will continue blocking testimony from veteran civil rights attorney Christopher Coates because Mr. Coates' stationing in South Carolina since mid-January means he is not "the appropriate witness to testify regarding current...

The continuing DOJ refusal to allow attorney Christopher Coates to testify on the case results in a heated Commission hearing. In an explosive and raucous hearing on August 13, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted 5-3 to officially ask Congress to expand its investigatory powers. This action came as a result of U.S. Justice Department stonewalling regarding the dismissal of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.The commission meeting was dominated by discussion of the DOJ’s continued muzzling of career attorney Christopher Coates, who was head of the DOJ Voting Rights section when the...

Washington (CNN) -- Members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission shouted at each other Friday over the Justice Department's decision to drop most of the charges in a 2008 incident in which black militants confronted voters at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, polling place, leading to charges of voter intimidation. Conservative commission members accused the Justice Department of "stonewalling" the commission's investigation into the dismissal, and called a Justice Department's response to requests for information "breathtaking and insulting." A liberal commission member, in turn, dismissed those complaints as the "last gasps of a conservative majority of this commission." At the end of...

The Justice Department continues its path towards race-based policymaking. The latest revelation? The Department's Civil Rights Division is using its power "to not just win compensation for victims of alleged discrimination but also to direct large sums of money to activist groups" to undo other lawsuits alleging discrimination. Byron York reports over at the Washington Examiner: In the past, when the Civil Rights Division filed suit against, say, a bank or a landlord, alleging discrimination in lending or rentals, the cases were often settled by the defendant paying a fine to the U.S. Treasury and agreeing to put aside a...

Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, has written what Pete Kirsanow aptly described as a "bewildering" response to my column of a week earlier. I had taken issue with Thernstrom's absurd claim that the Justice Department's dismissal of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case is "small potatoes." I haven't gotten around to replying yet, but Pete (Thernstrom's fellow commmissioner) and former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky (Thernstrom's friend) have both demolished Thernstrom's response.There remain a few more things to say, but for now, I have a pressing question for Dr. Thernstrom: Are you serious?In her NRO...