The White House has finally appointed two new members to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, restoring the partisan balance that was disrupted when President Bush gamed the law requiring that no more than four commissioners be members of the same party by appointing two conservative "independents" who had only recently left the GOP.
For the past two years, the conservative-dominated commission has been a driving force keeping the controversy over the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case alive. One of the Republican appointments, Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom, said the investigation was merely an effort by the other conservatives on the commission to "topple" the Obama administration. What these appointments mean is that the number of commissioners who want to move on from the NBPP investigation will probably have a 4-3 majority on Friday to do so. The focus then shifts to the internal investigations by the Department of Justice, which apparently aren't going the way conservatives want them to, and the one likely to be initiated by new House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith of Texas.
One of the new commissioners, Roberta Achtenberg, has an extensive background as an activist on LGBT rights issues as the former director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. She was also the first openly lesbian person to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1990. Achtenberg is a former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who served during the Clinton administration, the first openly gay person to be appointed to a Senate-confirmed position. Her nomination in 1993 faced opposition from conservatives -- Sen. Jesse Helms called her a "damned lesbian" and the Washington Times fretted that she would "use her office to expand the scope and definition of gay rights." Even before Achtenberg, Obama had appointed more openly gay officials than any previous president in history.
The other appointment, Marty R. Castro is an attorney who has worked on Latino community issues and was appointed head of the Illinois Human Rights Commission in 2009. He also served on the Illinois Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights -- the state advisory committees are meant to be the "eyes and ears" of the national commission. Most recently, he was part of the mayoral campaign of Gery Chico in Chicago, where former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is also running for mayor.
The commissioners being replaced are Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds, who dismissively acknowledged that Bush gamed the system with his appointments and whose civil-rights experience was basically limited to opposing affirmative action, and Ashley J. Taylor, who was a counsel to the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain.
