What Do We Do About It?

The traitors to America are not just Republicans. What these politicians have in common is hubris, money, arrogance, a certain hard-core devotion to cruelty, and aspirations to—or current membership in—the richest 1%. Neo-Social Darwinists all look alike, have you noticed?

On the other hand, South America is seemingly leading the way in progressive social welfare and putting women into positions of power.

After a lifetime of vaguely pitying the citizens of other countries one senses that just around the corner the world will be pitying the citizens of the once-greatest country on Earth—The United States of America.

These darn Energizer-Bunny-Republicans just won’t give up and accept that Tom Delay is a dead horse and all the whipping in the world won’t get him out of the courts and back to Congress. Good thing. Congress is no place for criminals and extortionists. Right.

This ‘keep on coming’ attitude is obviously the method by which the current administration has managed to propel their agenda into the current evil state of American affairs: Bushies just do not give up, and they rely on the average citizen’s apathetic faith in the inherent goodness of the American politician to triumph over those who do or devise with evil purpose or intent: Wait. Isn’t that the definition of machination? Isn’t that derived from Machiavelli? Hello.

While the misguided and naive Christian right marches to the self-righteous beat of false-prophet drummers and demands that we all join the parade, these Machiavellian politicians continue to blatantly use the ignorance, superstition, and insecurity of Christians to further undermine the very political system that gives Christians the right to demand that everyone join their parade and the rest of us the option to say “No!”.

If the Christian right thinks that political power comes with the option to control the Bush Administration they are more than misguided and wrong. Once all is said and done the Christian right will become simply more grist for the mills of Big Money. One of the facts of life, and one of the most important tenets of Christianity is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Get a clue: one of the most enduring tenets of Machiavellian reasoning is to use religion to control the masses.

Protests loom on the horizon and it will be edifying and more than a little interesting to see how the powers-that-be handle massive protests by American citizens in America. I’m thinking Kent State and Tiananmen Square. If that becomes the case, then what do we do about it?

Since the Bush Administration controls the military, and soldiers historically do what they’re told, America will experience a reality that all the whining in the world won’t change. We are committing to a worst-case-scenario of abject defeat, poverty, suffering, cruelty, and imprisonment and torture that the current administration touts as a political mandate of the People, by the People, and for the People.

What about that Bush drive to put federal troops into the individual states in case Avian Flu breaks out?

Oh. And the Justice Department—where your opinion doesn’t count unless you are a political appointee of the Bush Administration. How does that grab you?

Can our country be saved from the only possible outcome of events reported each and every day by the press? We have to stop this inexorable march toward Fascism. Perhaps the time for effective reporting is finished. This country is in turmoil and whether or not the majority of her citizens awakens in time to safeguard liberty and prevent the state of anarchy that is surely the outcome of current events remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the press debates using the words “Holiday” instead of “Christmas”.

Toss another bone to the press. Watch them snarl and snap at each other. While the press and therefore national attention is focused on non-issues continue to “pass” Congressional bills that rape the environment, strip citizens of their inalienable rights, create Diaspora, and further the misery of the poorest of our citizens.

The beneficiaries of this human misery are the richest 1%. They will get richer. You will not.

The question remains: What do we do about it?

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December 10, 2005

Lieberman's Iraq Stance Brings Widening Split With His Party

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZand WILLIAM YARDLEY

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - Five years after running as the vice-presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket and a year after his own presidential bid, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut has become an increasingly unwelcome figure within his party, with some Democrats seeing him more as a wayward son than a favorite son.

In the last few days, the senator has riled Democratic activists and politicians here and in his home state with his vigorous defense of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war at a time some Democrats are pressuring the administration to begin a withdrawal.

Mr. Lieberman particularly infuriated his colleagues when he pointed out at a conference here that President Bush would be commander in chief for three more years and said that "it's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that."

"We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril," Mr. Lieberman said.

Much of the open criticism has been from liberal groups and House members. But his comments have also rankled Democrats in the Senate. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, phoned Mr. Lieberman this week to express concerns with his views, Mr. Reid's aide said.

"Senator Reid has a lot of respect for Senator Lieberman," said Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman. "But he feels that Senator Lieberman's position on Iraq is at odds with many Americans."

An aide to another leading Democratic senator who insisted on anonymity said the feelings toward Mr. Lieberman could be summed up as, "The American people want to hold George Bush accountable for the failed policy in Iraq, and Senator Lieberman doesn't."

Mr. Lieberman, who remains immensely popular in his home state, is aware of the hornet's nest he has stirred.
"Some Democrats said I was being a traitor," he said in an interview on Friday, adding that he was not surprised by the reaction, "given the depth of feeling about the war."

Although some Democrats are upset with Mr. Lieberman, Republicans are embracing him, with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld singling him out, and his support for the war, for praise in speeches this week.

"He is entirely correct," Mr. Cheney said on Tuesday at Fort Drum, N.Y. "On this, both Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree. The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission."

Concerns about Mr. Lieberman's coziness with the administration grew this week when he had breakfast with Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Later, rumors spread that Mr. Bush was considering asking Mr. Lieberman to join the administration to succeed Mr. Rumsfeld next year as defense secretary.

"It's a total fantasy," Mr. Lieberman said. "There's just no truth to it."

In the interview on Friday, he said the two sides were making too much of his comments, and he argued that the overreactions reflected how politically polarized the debate over the war had become.

Mr. Lieberman noted that his positions on Iraq had not changed over the years, dating from 1991, when he supported the first Persian Gulf war. In 1998, he and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, proposed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein official American policy.

"The positive and negative reactions may have less to do with the substance of what I said than with the fact that a Democrat is saying it," Mr. Lieberman said. "It reflects the terribly divisive state of our politics."

He has always been something of a maverick in his party. He was the first prominent Democrat to chastise President Bill Clinton openly for his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

More recently, Mr. Lieberman, a centrist, angered Democratic activists by expressing a willingness to work with President Bush to overhaul Social Security, an effort that ultimately stalled in Congress.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said the breach was deep.

"I completely disagree with Mr. Lieberman," Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference. "I believe that we have a responsibility to speak out if we think that the course of action that our country is on is not making the American people safer."

The question in some quarters now is whether the moderate brand of politics practiced by Mr. Lieberman, who is up for re-election next year, will hurt him when the electorate is so divided, particularly over some of the president's policies.

This week, for example, former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. criticized his continued support of the Iraq war and said that if no candidate challenged the senator on it next year, he would consider running.

In 1988, Mr. Lieberman, who was attorney general of Connecticut, narrowly defeated Mr. Weicker, a Republican senator. Two years later, Mr. Weicker ran for governor as an independent and won. He served one term before retiring in 1995.

Mr. Weicker remains something of a fixture in state politics, well known for his independent streak. In 1999, Reform Party supporters encouraged him to run for president in 2000, but he ultimately decided against that.

Mr. Lieberman faces trouble in other quarters in his home state. Although few elected Democrats would criticize him publicly, several Democratic activists promised retaliation at the polls.

James H. Dean, brother of Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, lives in Connecticut and heads Democracy for America, a group that is gathering signatures on the Internet for a letter that criticizes the senator.

An aide to James Dean said he and others from the group would deliver the letter to Mr. Lieberman's office in Hartford on Tuesday. The aide said the letter had 30,000 signatures.

Other Democratic activists warned that they might try to organize a primary challenge against Mr. Lieberman, specifically because of his position on the war.

Tom Matzzie, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group with 10,000 members in Connecticut, said it would consider a challenge if the right candidate came along.

"It's like a betrayal," Mr. Matzzie said of Mr. Lieberman's stand on the war. "He is cheering the Bush Iraq policy at a time when Republicans are running away from the president."

But for all the criticism that Mr. Lieberman faces, few people say they believe that he is vulnerable to a challenge.

For his part, Mr. Lieberman said he would run hard on his record.

"I'm not taking anything for granted," he said. "I know there are a lot of people in the party who disagree with me about the war."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company
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Female, Agnostic and the Next Presidente?
Heavy Favorite in Chilean Vote Cuts Against Grain

By Monte ReelWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, December 10, 2005; A01

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Everyone in the audience was dressed in dark blue or black. Some wore clerical collars, and most had heavy silver crosses dangling around their necks. But Michelle Bachelet wore an electric pink jacket that sent a clear message: She was a candidate for president, not sainthood.

"I'm agnostic. . . . I believe in the state," Bachelet told several groups of evangelical ministers last week. "I believe the state has an important role in guaranteeing the diversity of men and women in Chile -- their different spiritualities, philosophies and ways of life."

Bachelet, 54, a socialist running in national elections Sunday, has a strong chance of becoming Chile's first female head of state -- and thus the first woman in South America to be elected to the top national office without replacing a deceased or disabled husband.

As a single mother, Bachelet is a symbol of change in a country so culturally conservative that it legalized divorce only last year. As both the child of a military family and a victim of prison and torture under the former military dictatorship, she is also a symbol of healing in a country long divided by ideology, class and competing versions of a tumultuous recent history.

Running against two conservative male candidates, Bachelet has maintained a commanding lead in the polls, even while openly airing personal details that she believes represent Chile's shifting cultural landscape.
Although a substantial number of Chileans remain opposed to divorce, most voters don't seem bothered by the fact that Bachelet readily acknowledges she split up with her husband and bore two children while unmarried. Although the Catholic Church has long been the country's dominant cultural institution, her avowed lack of interest in religion has not hurt her, either. And even though just 36 percent of Chilean women hold jobs -- the lowest percentage in Latin America -- Bachelet has won support with her promise to choose women for at least half of her cabinet posts.

"My candidacy represents a society that is more progressive and modern, that recognizes both men and women do have talents," said Bachelet, who most recently served as defense minister for President Ricardo Lagos. "People want politicians who are more concerned about citizens, who do things more ethically, and in that sense there is an expectation that women could be different in their way of doing politics."

In a poll released Thursday, Bachelet led the field of candidates with 41 percent support. Sebastian Pinera, a former senator who is one of Chile's wealthiest men, was projected to finish second with 22 percent. Joaquin Lavin, a conservative former mayor of Santiago, received 19 percent support, according to the poll, conducted by the Center for Contemporary Reality Studies here.

If none of the candidates receives 50 percent of votes cast on Sunday, a second and decisive round of voting between the top two finishers will be held Jan. 15. Polls project that Bachelet would win handily in a head-to-head matchup against either of her opponents.

Despite their divergent political histories and views, all three candidates have emphasized the same core goals: battling unemployment, improving the social security system, narrowing the divide between rich and poor and improving public health services. Gender hasn't been an overt campaign theme for anyone, but it is a powerful undercurrent that can be felt everywhere on the campaign trail.

Bachelet's campaign ads and promotional materials carry an understated but unmistakable message of reaching out to those usually excluded from Chile's political life. Her slogan is "I'm With You," and the promotional materials that outline her platform include a variety of photographed faces, every one of them a woman's or a child's.

"She's already doing things in a different way, and people have criticized her harshly for it," said Marta Lagos, a Santiago-based pollster and political analyst, who is not related to the current president. "She has a daughter, and in September they took a few days off and went to the beach in the middle of the campaign. It's unthinkable for any politician to say, 'I'm with my family, and this is my time -- no one else's.' But that's what she has said."

Bachelet's direct political experience is limited to the past five years. She served as health minister from 2000 to 2002 before Lagos named her defense minister. She enjoys the full support of her popular former boss, who cannot seek reelection because of term limits and is leaving office with an approval rating of about 70 percent. From a policy standpoint, Bachelet is closely aligned with Lagos, and her candidacy is widely viewed as a continuation of his administration, which has emphasized the use of free-trade initiatives to finance expanded social programs.

But there is another source of her appeal, one that is rarely mentioned but seems significant in a society that experienced extreme political upheaval and military repression from the 1970s to the 1990s. The trauma split the society into bitter factions, and it remained deeply divided for years after the return of democracy in 1990. Bachelet's history falls on both sides of that divide. Her father, Alberto, was an air force general who served under President Salvador Allende, a socialist. He was thrown into prison after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, along with thousands of other Allende supporters, and died in military custody.

Bachelet, a medical student at the time of the coup, was kidnapped by government security agents two years later, along with her mother. While detained, both women were blindfolded, beaten and tortured. They later fled into exile in Australia and East Germany. In 1979, Bachelet returned to Chile and worked as a pediatrician.

Today Pinochet, 90, is under house arrest in suburban Santiago, indicted on corruption and human rights abuse charges. The specter of his 17-year dictatorship played a prominent role in the three previous presidential elections since the restoration of civilian rule, but it has rarely been mentioned in this campaign.
Despite her own family's suffering under Pinochet, Bachelet has not used it to gain voter sympathy. Although she has become a leading voice for women's rights, she prefers not to speak about what she and her mother endured in prison except to say generally that they were "physically mistreated."

The poetic justice of Bachelet's likely victory at the polls, in fact, is pointed out far more often by international observers than by Chileans themselves.

"Pinochet's shadow at this point is not even strong enough to be called a shadow," said Andres Velasco, a professor of international finance at Harvard University who has taken a sabbatical to assist Bachelet's campaign. "It's annoying to read so much about Pinochet in the foreign press, because the dictatorship is not even an issue here anymore."

One sign of how much the country has changed since the days when men in uniform dominated political discourse, Bachelet's advisers said, can be seen in the list of candidates for Chile's congressional elections, also slated for Sunday.

"More than 25 percent of our candidates running in these elections are women," said Ricardo Nuez, president of Chile's ruling Socialist Party. "During the last round of elections, that number was 15 percent. Following Bachelet, I am sure the number will just keep rising."

If elected, Bachelet would be the first female president in most of Latin America to be elected strictly on her own merits. Isabel Peron took over as Argentina's president in 1974 when her husband Juan died. Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990, but she was largely known as the widow of Pedro Chamorro, an assassinated newspaper publisher. In Panama, the widow of President Arnulfo Arias became president in 1999. In Guyana, voters in 1997 elected the widow of longtime President Cheddi Jagan. Bolivia, Haiti and Ecuador have all appointed women briefly as caretaker presidents.

A Bachelet presidency might not be unique for long, however. If the polls in Peru are borne out, a former congresswoman, Lourdes Flores Nano, may win its presidency next year. In that case, the neighboring countries, long embroiled in border and maritime disputes, might have a chance to solve them woman-to-woman.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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December 10, 2005

Hugo Chávez and His Helpers

The kind of lucky breaks President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been getting lately could tempt even a modest man - and Mr. Chávez is no modest man - to dream grandiose dreams. High oil prices, a terminally inept opposition and the Bush administration's scandalous neglect of its Western Hemisphere neighbors have left the field wide open for Mr. Chávez to bully people at home, buy friends abroad and annoy Washington at every turn.

Since first taking office in 1999, Mr. Chávez has pushed through a new Constitution that lets him rule as a quasi dictator. He has marginalized Congress, undermined judicial independence and prosecuted political opponents. By tightening control of the national oil company, he has been able to use high world oil prices to increase funds for popular social programs for the poor, making him electorally unassailable. That dangerous concentration of power will most likely worsen after last Sunday's Congressional election, in which parties allied to Mr. Chávez won every one of the 167 seats. The opposition can blame only itself because it boycotted the polls even after its demands for stricter ballot secrecy were met.

That petulant idiocy frustrated regional diplomats who had pressed the secrecy demand on the opposition's behalf, and it mystified and disenfranchised Venezuelan voters who had wanted a choice at the polls. Even without the boycott, pro-Chávez parties would have won a majority. But now not a single opposition voice will be heard in Congress, and Mr. Chávez is free to do whatever he likes.

A month earlier, at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Mr. Chávez cavorted before crowds of anti-Washington protesters and networked with his fellow Latin American presidents. He is hoping that either Argentina or Brazil will sell him a nuclear reactor, a step that would be a very bad idea considering Venezuela's burgeoning friendship with Iran and the excessive indulgence Caracas has shown toward Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Meanwhile, Washington's hemispheric influence continues to dwindle, partly because President Bush has not been attentive enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt restructuring.

The United States should not further feed Mr. Chávez's ego and give him more excuses for demagogy by treating him as clumsily as it has treated his hero and role model, Fidel Castro, for the past four and a half decades. Instead, Washington needs to compete more deftly and actively with Mr. Chávez for regional influence, and look for ways to work with the hemisphere's other democracies to revive the multiparty competitive democracy that has now just about ceased to exist in Venezuela.

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company
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December 10, 2005

A Republican Tom DeLay Problem

It may be dawning on House Republicans that Representative Tom DeLay's time as their majority leader is truly over, despite the bold Texan's resolve to regain his grip on Congress. Whatever the outcome of his trial on felony charges of laundering political money, Mr. DeLay's root problem has been laid bare. It is outsized hubris, which is ever clearer to the public and ever more a G.O.P. millstone.

The question for the Republicans - many of them entangled in Mr. DeLay's bountiful network of fund-raising riches - is how fast they can learn from all this. When, if ever, will they enact believable reforms of Congress's big-money wallow?

Mr. DeLay's downfall came by his own hand, with a successful scheme to bankroll Texas election victories so a Statehouse majority would gerrymander five more G.O.P. seats for him in Congress. The partisan map was faulted as illegal by civil rights staff members at the Justice Department, but they were overruled by Republican appointees. This is political hubris on a national scale, directed at the heart of democracy.

Mr. DeLay's brazenness was clear long before his Texas indictment, as he ignored the normal post-census redistricting schedule and bulldozed the gerrymandering through the Statehouse. His money-raising machine, dubbed DeLay Inc. by his court of donors and lobbyists in Washington, funneled funds through Austin in ways that Mr. DeLay insists will eventually be judged legal. Regardless of what happens in court, the operation was a political scandal.

Mr. DeLay punctuated one day in court this week with another signature fund-raiser, packed with favor-seeking donors, and a guest appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney. Any sense of scandal seemed checked at the door. But the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, propped up in power by the DeLay machine, cannot afford to ignore reality with such impunity. He has every reason, including self-survival, to embrace long-resisted ethics reforms. Meanwhile, Republicans had better begin searching for fresh faces outside the encrusted inner circle of power before their majority fades in tandem with Mr. DeLay.


Copyright 2005The New York Times Company
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Congress Seeks To Reconcile Divergent Bills
Taxes, Spending at Issue

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; A05

House and Senate negotiators will try to reach a compromise next week on their vastly different tax cuts and budget-cutting bills, against the backdrop of a last-ditch push by religious activists, labor unions and liberal groups to scuttle the legislation.

On Monday, a coalition opposing the budget proposals will unveil television ads targeting half a dozen Republicans for their support of a House bill that would save $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, trimming food stamp rosters, squeezing student lenders and cutting child-support enforcement. That bill was followed last week by a $56 billion tax cut, the centerpiece of which extends cuts to the tax rate on dividends and capital gains passed in 2003.

Reps. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio), Gerald C. Weller (R-Ill.), Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), Michael N. Castle (R-Del.) and John J.H. "Joe" Schwarz (R-Mich.) "voted to cut health care for [their state's] families struggling to make ends meet," says the ad, bankrolled largely by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Is it to give billions in tax breaks to the super-rich?"

GOP leaders say the policy changes in the budget bill are necessary to begin gaining control of burgeoning entitlement programs that otherwise could collapse. Boehlert and other moderate Republicans say their pressure mitigated the cuts to food stamps, school lunch support and other programs.

On Tuesday, church groups plan to rally near Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, religious activists plan to kneel in prayer and be arrested at the Capitol, chanting a phrase from Isaiah, "Woe to you legislators of infamous laws . . . who refuse justice to the unfortunate."

"On this budget, we have the starkest choice we've had in a long time -- tax cuts for the wealthiest versus food stamps and Medicaid," said Jim Wallis of the Christian activist group Sojourners.

Ronald D. Bonjean Jr., spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), responded: "More people are working today than ever before due to our tax relief and deficit-reduction efforts. . . . It is morally wrong for these liberal groups to suggest that we raise taxes and increase spending which would destroy jobs and pile up mountains of debt."

Student groups will also be active, protesting proposed cuts to the federal student loan program.
The activism only complicates a difficult process.

Moderate Republicans in the Senate already have written to negotiators, protesting the House's proposed cuts in child-support enforcement and Medicaid along with broad changes to the welfare program.

House moderates have vowed to oppose any compromise that includes the Senate's provision to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. And the White House has threatened a veto over a Senate measure that would save billions of dollars by doing away with federal incentives to lure private insurers into the Medicare prescription drug program.

A senior Senate GOP aide said the White House has softened on that threat. But the oil-drilling issue is far from being resolved because two negotiators, Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), have vowed to reject any compromise. Although the activists may be protesting the cuts to social programs, "it all revolves about ANWR," the aide said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Staff Opinions Banned In Voting Rights Cases
Criticism of Justice Dept.'s Rights Division Grows

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; A03

The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics, congressional aides and current and former employees familiar with the issue said.

Disclosure of the change comes amid growing public criticism of Justice Department decisions to approve Republican-engineered plans in Texas and Georgia that were found to hurt minority voters by career staff attorneys who analyzed the plans. Political appointees overruled staff findings in both cases.

The policy was implemented in the Georgia case, said a Justice employee who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation. A staff memo urged rejecting the state's plan to require photo identification at the polls because it would harm black voters.

But under the new policy, the recommendation was stripped out of that document and was not forwarded to higher officials in the Civil Rights Division, several sources familiar with the incident said.

The policy helps explain why the Justice Department has portrayed an Aug. 25 staff memo obtained by The Washington Post as an "early draft," even though it was dated one day before the department gave "preclearance," or approval, to the Georgia plan. The state's plan has since been halted on constitutional grounds by a federal judge who likened it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

The policy shift's outlines were first reported by the Dallas Morning News. Sources familiar with the change said it was implemented by John K. Tanner, the voting section chief, who is a career employee.
In response to a request to comment yesterday, Justice Department spokesman Eric Holland wrote in an e-mail: "The opinions and expertise of the career lawyers are valued and respected and continue to be an integral part of the internal deliberation process upon which the department heavily relies when making litigation decisions." He declined to elaborate.

Tensions within the voting section have been rising dramatically, culminating in an emotionally charged meeting last week in which Tanner criticized the quality of work done by staff members analyzing voting rights cases, numerous sources inside and outside the section said. Many employees were so angered that they boycotted the staff holiday party later in the week, the sources said.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Georgia, Texas and other states with a history of discriminatory election practices are required to receive approval from the Justice Department or a federal court for any changes to their voting systems. Section 5 prohibits changes that would be "retrogressive," or bring harm to, minority voters.

For decades, staff attorneys have made recommendations in Section 5 cases that have carried great weight within the department and that have been passed along to senior officials who make a final determination, former and current employees say.

Preventing staff members from making such recommendations is a significant departure and runs the risk of making the process appear more political, experts said.

"It's an attempt by the political hierarchy to insulate themselves from any accountability by essentially leaving it up to a chief, who's there at their whim," said Jon Greenbaum, who worked in the voting section from 1997 to 2003, and who is now director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "To me, it shows a fear of dealing with the legal issues in these cases."

Many congressional Democrats have sharply criticized the Civil Rights Division's performance, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said this week that he is considering holding hearings on the Texas redistricting case. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a statement yesterday: "America deserves better than a Civil Rights Division that puts the political agenda of those in power over the interests of the people its serves."

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other Justice officials have disputed such criticism, saying that politics play no role in civil rights decisions. In a letter to Specter this week, Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella criticized The Post's coverage and said the department is aggressively enforcing a range of civil rights laws.

"From fair housing opportunities, equal access to the ballot box and criminal civil rights prosecutions to desegregation in America's schools and protection of the rights of the disabled, the division continues its noble mission with vigor," Moschella wrote.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company