David Kurtz on the influence of the Republican National Lawyer's Association, which has been holding training sessions in advance of the midterms:
You can't understand what's happening in this election cycle without understanding that we're a decade or more into a long-term Republican strategy to plant the seed that voting by minority groups is rife with fraud. At one point that effort led to the sacking of U.S. attorneys in the darkest episode for the U.S. Justice Department since Watergate. But that hasn't stopped it.
Given the continued prominence of the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case, and the likely possibility that it will be given new life in the event of a Republican takeover, we can't even really say that "dark episode" is over. We are still dealing with the repercussions of the people who were hired when Bush appointees were trying to purge the Department of anyone who wasn't a conservative ideologue.
One thing that might have drawn a stark contrast between the Bradley Schlozman era and the baseless allegations of "politicization" from the right now would be if the Justice Department had actually prosecuted him for what the Inspector General's Office and the Office of Professional responsibility said was a violation of civil-service laws. As with torture, the decision to look forward rather than make clear there are consequences to lawbreaking just makes it more likely that the events will repeat themselves. Declining to prosecute sends the message that nothing really wrong was done.
