The Debate Link: Stinking Water

Here's a link to The Debate Link's blogger David Schraub's response to an AP story about Mississippi local leader Ike Brown's fight with the Justice Department that I read about on the Redding News Review. The story goes: "For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites. The federal case against Brown is scheduled for trial this fall.
Brown, head of the Democratic Party in Mississippi's rural Noxubee County, is accused of waging a campaign to defeat white voters and candidates with tactics including intimidation and coercion. Also named in the lawsuit is Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens, who has agreed to refrain from rejecting white voters' absentee ballots considered defective while accepting similar ballots from black voters. Brown, 52, shakes off the allegations. "They've been trying to target me for years, the attorney general and all them, because we're so successful."....

Schraub says: I really detest racial appeals in voting, but as David Bernstein points out, I have no idea if they're illegal (or even if they are, whether such a legal interpretation would be consistent with the First Amendment). Also, of course, in cases like this there is always the question of whether or not the target is being selected for his political skill, rather than any violation of the law. And of course, there is serious concern that similar acts by white political operatives get the ol' wink and nod from the DOJ:
"The main concern we have in the civil rights community isn't necessarily that that DOJ brought this case," [Jack] Greenbaum says. "It's that the department is not bringing meritorious cases on behalf of African-American and Native American voters."Justice Department records show the department's last voting-rights case alleging discrimination against black voters was filed in 2001. Since then, six cases have been brought on behalf of voters of Hispanic or Asian descent in five states -- plus the case involving white voters in Mississippi.

The Debate Link: Stinking Water