What gets me is the fact that the administration doesn’t even try to hide its disdain for the rule of law.
Obama wants official fired for comments
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Oct 19, 5:50 PM ET
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said Friday the head of the Justice Department’s voting rights division should be fired for saying voter ID laws hurt the elderly but aren’t a problem for minorities because they often die before old age.
John Tanner’s remarks came during an Oct. 5 panel discussion on minority voters before the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles. Tanner addressed state laws that require photo identification for voting, saying that elderly voters disproportionately don’t have the proper IDs.
“That’s a shame, you know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance,” Tanner said, according to video posted on YouTube. “Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.
“There are inequities in health care. There are a variety of inequities in this country, and so anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities. Just the math is such as that,” Tanner said.
Tanner declined a request for an interview Friday to explain his remarks.
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Bush’s Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio
By Paul Kiel - October 12, 2007, 10:32AM
TPMuckraker
In June of 2005, John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section, wrote Columbus, Ohio’s election officials to publicly assure them that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.
Not only was that an unprecedented move, former Department lawyers say, but the letter is another, and particularly galling, example of Tanner using the force of the Department to further Republican aims — in this case, to hamper future lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems in Columbus.
Images: (Tanner) via TPMuckraker.com; (Imus hair) via thesituationist.wordpress.com