Von Spakovsky to slip through?

by Kagro X

It looks for all the world like former Justice Department evildoer Hans Von Spakovsky will slip through and land his share of Wingnut Welfare: a paycheck from the Federal Election Commission.

Von Spakovsky's nomination has been red-flagged for months, since revelations regarding his role in voter suppression schemes, approval of racially discriminatory redistricting schemes, and other transgressions came to light. Von Spakovsky's reward for permanently perverting the electoral system on behalf of the Bush "administration?" A cushy seat with the nation's elections watchdogs. Brilliantly played!

So, you already know where this is going, right? Senate Democrats aren't going to stop his nomination.

Why not?

Well, one suggestion has been that there's some kind of a deal between Democrats and Republicans -- specifically to accept Von Spakovsky in exchange for a preferred Democratic nominee -- but I believe the reason is much more mundane than that.

In today's Senate Rules committee session, which met to consider the nominations, Republicans were pulling out all the procedural stops to get this done:

During the Rule Committee’s executive meeting Wednesday, Feinstein originally said she wanted to vote on each nominee separately, as opposed to considering all four nominees together in one vote, as the committee has done in the past. Republicans on the panel objected, arguing that the move breaks all known committee precedent on moving FEC nominations.

“The precedent is very clear,” said Sen. Bob Bennett (Utah), the ranking Republican on the panel. “Nominations to the FEC have always been reported en bloc and in pairs.”

But Feinstein said committee rules governing FEC nominations allow only for passing nominations that have unanimous consent, which her objection would prevent. After about a half-hour of negotiation, Feinstein and Bennett agreed to pass all of the nominations without recommendation.

See that? Republicans sought to prevent a separate vote on Von Spakovsky, instead saying that all four pending nominations to the FEC had to be voted on together. FEC nominations are made in equal numbers at the suggestions of both parties. In this case, two Democrats and two Republicans. Feinstein wanted to consider each nominee separately, but Republicans said it was all or none.

Bottom line: the nominations now go to the floor for a full Senate vote. Von Spakovsky has passed the first hurdle.

Now, couldn't Feinstein have forced the issue? Couldn't she have held a vote on whether or not they should consider the nominees together or separately? Sure. But the Rules committee is divided 10-9 in favor of Democrats. And guess what?

You'll never guess!

This morning's result: faced with the defection of a Democrat on the committee, later revealed to be Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chose to agree to send all four nominees, two Democrats and two Republicans, to the floor without recommendation.

Ah, Ben! Ben, Ben, Ben. What are we going to do with you?

So what's next? The floor vote. And how will that be handled?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was on hand to back up Bennett’s assertions about Senate precedent, said he would not tolerate any attempt to separate von Spakovsky’s nomination from the three other FEC nominations on the Senate floor.

“None of these nominees will move across the Senate unless they move together,” he said. “The view has always been that the Democrats pick the Democrat candidates and Republicans pick the Republicans.”

Yes, Republicans will presumably filibuster the nominations -- all of the nominations -- if the Senate tries to take an Upperdownvote^TM on Von Spakovsky.

And why will that work?

Because the failure to roll over for the Republicans will leave us with four vacancies on the FEC heading into a presidential election year. And Democrats don't want to be "responsible" for that. Heavens, no! (Even though the biggest knock going against the FEC is that they don't do anything, anyway.)

So, the reasoning goes, it's better to put Von Spakovsky in cold storage at the FEC and let him live on Wingnut Welfare (at taxpayer expense, as all the best welfare is). After all, it's not like he's still at the Justice Department, where he could do real damage. It's just the FEC. During a presidential election year. Which was important enough five seconds ago, as I recall, to justify this whole thing, but appears to have lost its importance toward the end of this paragraph.

What was I saying, again?

Comments

[phred]

Is there anything, anything at all that the Dems will stand up for??? Guess not.

In the survey sent around by Jane and Matt the other day about what to do about recalcitrant Dems, I suggested they set up a separate page at ActBlue to specifically highlight primary challengers to unreliable Dems. I really really hope they do that. As it is, ActBlue doesn't mention who their candidates are running against. This would be useful for those of us hopelessly unable to commit the national electoral map to memory.

On a day that has brought us both the Lieberman-Kyl amendment and the von Spakovsky nomination, I have no hope at all of anything improving until 2009 at the earliest, and quite possibly 2013. What a grim state of affairs.

[selise]

Kagro X - i listened to the hearing this morning and your quotes from the hill report is just what i heard. very depressing, and it did seem that there may have been a bit of pre-hearing negotiations.

[Mad Dogs]

Rollover Beethoven and tell the Democrats the news.

[JohnLopresti]

Well, I have learned CampaignLegalCenter is libertarian, kind of liberal-lite. For what it is worth, though one of their directors willing has followed a trail of tears confining von Spakovsky's repressive politics. G.Hebert published that last week.

[oldtree]

slip. were that it were only a mistake rather than the installation of a tool that will cause them harm? Or have they a deal to make up for the appearance of utter stupidity? The end of a government and the environment it would create has been recorded before. Those histories are unique and may not be exemplary to our situation today. How do the subjective and the objective see the end of our constitutional form of government? It does appear to have been a done deal now. We that may still remember when Goldwater would have come out of his chair to kill someone suggesting that someone else could not speak their mind openly.
Have we have become accepting of the end of the world as we know it? Would anyone believe me if I told you about 2007 in 1998? or 2001? There is no indication at this time, for a future in a world with law. I think they hit on the final solution yesterday when Greenspan danced around admitting his personal knowledge of war crimes committed by invading and purloining the resources of a sovereign nation.
What surprises me most is those conservatives, the real ones, that aren't joining to call for criminal punishment of our government. there is something quite wrong when such a large segment of the population wakes up to reality, and says nothing.

[drational]

TPM has Obama coming out strong against von Sp. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004303.php
wonder why now rather than before committee decided?
posturing now that his objection is likely meaningless?
I'll give him credit for being the first nominee to recognize it as something to wake up about, but day late, dollar short.

Maybe this is gonna be the big opportunity for Dems to stand up and take down a nominee on the floor....
Maybe Rex Grossman will lead the Bears to the Superbowl this year....

[JohnLopresti]

You may have heard of the Leadership Forum on Civil Rights; link to their two page letter to DiFi last week in opposition to von Spakovsky. Also consider this foreshadowing of the mischief von Spakovsky would get to oversee at FEC, an area which is his expertise, bureaucratic denial of access to vote by low income persons; how to do this? why, by enforcement of HAVA voter list databases. The voter ID ploy sweeping Dixie and a few rockribbed other states operates by a different mechanism in the penumbra of the election: it relies on courts for justification. Every time one of these elections cases gets to the CA supreme court, I shudder, because the chief justice in CA has a record of subtly undermining voter rights when there is leeway in caselaw to tilt the scales temporarily toward the 'conservative' end of the spectrum; fortunately, however, CA has a robust and bright new voting oversight official to ameliorate this pre-election politics. The candidate she defeated in November 2006 was already on the Republican bandwagon to use voter database lists to disqualify anyone who had a typo in their id, like say, if your name is Margaret but your Celtic ancestral traditionalist forebears bequeathed a naming to you whereby your parents simply refer to you as Marcy. Sorry no such numba, no such fone.

[JohnLopresti]

Brad Friedman is predicting Scotus' decision in the IN voter ID case will institutionalize this form of vote suppression. Meanwhile, he links to McClatchy's excellent Gordon's latest report on several states that are institutionalizing voter caging von Spakovsky style.

[drational]

JohnLopresi;
the HAVA voter list purges are actually quite an interesting story.
I am the person who evaluated the voter roles for the caging lists in Jacksonville, Florida for the 2 articles at epluribusmedia in june.
http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070621_supressing_the_vote_2004.html
http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070704_palast_progressives_journalism.html

Duval County purges the lists every 2 years, as required by Florida Law under HAVA. I was concerned that HAVA would just be a federally mandated "caging scheme." In Florida, they use postal forwarding address lists to trim the voter rolls. No vote x 2 cycles plus a hit on the postal list or returned mail gets you removed from Duval County rolls under HAVA.

I have the name, race, voting history and party affiliation of every voter in Jacksonville purged in 2005 and 2007, as well as the current voter list. The purges in 2005 and 2007 were MORE white and LESS democratic than the Duval county voter population, and I suspect this is a middle class bias from people who actually fill out address change cards when they move. At the same time purges for felonies were clearly biased racially and by party affiliation.

The caveat is that this is one county's lists which I was able to get for free. Other Florida counties charge a fee.
Other states might use different list maintenance criteria, but at least for Duval County Florida, where I was convinced the GOP would be scheming to use HAVA, there was no race or party bias that was clearly evident with the GOP 2004 caging list.

I would like to write up the analysis, but since it doesn't really show a bias that would stir up progressives, I have not yet.

[orionATL]

KX

thanks for raising this issue here.

spakovsky's nomination

is an abomination

of the first magnitude.

here is my (slightly) earlier comment at TPM in brackets:

[orionATL wrote on September 26, 2007 8:49 PM:

this is simply a fix,

las vegas style, harry reid style.

nelson agreed to act for reid.

feinstein oked "whatever",

being the doddering old fool she is.

spakovsky gets thru

because

reid has a hand picked member among spakovsky's cohort of four. a person he (reid) wants on the commission.

when reid appeared, unnecessarily, before the feinstein subcommittee, he fulsomely praised his nevada opposite, sen. engle(?).

he remarked how sen engle had placed his (reid's) nominee's name in play.

and he remarked how he and sen engle now had a very amicable relationship.

harry reid, the new joe lieberman.

so?

so reid fixed the whole deal so his personal nominee would be on the commission, even if spakovsky was there too.

and he had the help of ben nelson and diane feinstein.

it's time to clean the augean stables of the u.s. congress -

of democrats as well as republicans

to whom personal deals are more important than this country's future.

all old farts in the game way too long!!]

and here is my comment - connected to the above -

on an e'wheel column about justice clarence thomas,

a comment made with thoughts of the very courageous justice thurgood marshall in my mind:

[my god,

the man has a heart and a soul.

who would have guessed?

i like carroll county, va., one of my son played football against kids there. it's quiet and rural and the kkk there would almost certainly have been the lowest of the low in income and (lack of) education in the county - the attention seeking skinheads of the south.

but,

with respect to both past and contemporary american history

and

the sophistical arguments virgina put before scotus which lithwick reported,

does anyone who knows american southern history doubt that the kkk is, and has always been,

a terrorist organization?

besides the multitude of terrorized blacks,

those "others" thomas was talking about?

they were the whites in any community who were raised with, worked with, and trusted blacks,

but who would have been shunned, beaten, or had their homes, barns, or stores burned down if they had challenged the rural thugs of the KKK,

the south's anticipation of the south african state security police that dogged, tortured, and killed the anc.

there's a lesson here for this country about terrorism and how to deal with it.

unfortunately for our society,

the national republican party has learned and taken what it wants from that history -

intimidation, sly legal exclusions, systematic abuse of state power, histrionic patriotism, empty respect for home and marriage, and exuberant militarism.

a government for middle-class skinheads.

we can't fight these home-grown terrorists -

the american right wing/republican party -

until we confront them openly and confront them en masse,

with the support of the government.

that's what happened in the mid- to late-1960's

and that's what needs to happen when the next president takes office in january, 2009.

but no reconciliation commission.

just charges, trials, and jail terms for the guilty.

i'd start with hans von spakovsky, brad schlossman, and k-k-karl rove.]

Posted by: orionATL | September 21, 2007 at 20:39

[randiego]

jesus christ this is fucking depressing. It just doesn't get better than this - a majority in both houses, 65% of the country strongly backing you, a 28% - worse than nixon - president pushing a VERY unpopular war... we should be getting everything we want. We should be running the table, and still, we're getting our ass kicked! amazing.

fucking depressing.

[bmaz]

Hey, and in case you forget us getting our ass kicked yesterday; you can have a brand new reminder tomorrow! Aren't we fortunate?

[katie Jensen]

I am so angry at Ben Nelson. I called and wrote to him on this. So freakin' depressing.

[Phoenix Woman]

Here's some good news, for a change of pace:

-- The Dems did get enough Republicans to back both the college-money bill (which Bush has signed already) and the Matthew Shepard bill (which has a filibuster-proof margin) to get them passed.

-- The Dems passed SCHIP and while Bush will of course veto it, he's getting massive flak therefor, flak that will stick to the GOPers wanting to get re-elected next year.

-- Oh, and there's been another ruling from a Federal Court judge declaring the "PATRIOT" Act unconstitutional, three weeks after the ACLU won a ruling that deep-sixes "National Security Letters".