I think everything Hans von Spakovsky writes is great — as an old Criminal Division guy from New York, I can say that no one knows the Civil Division side of DOJ like he does. But even by Hans’s high standards, the article that K-Lo linked to regarding the bare-knuckles partisan politics being played by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stands out. He hits the nail on the head here:

Disturbingly, the Civil Rights Division attorneys’ action [in the Kinston, North Carolina case] rests on the presumption that blacks simply cannot be trusted to make their own decisions as to which individual candidates to support, and will be presumed to vote against their own self-interest unless candidates on the ballot have the “right” party label. This approach to enforcement stands the Voting Rights Act on its head and is anathema to all of our constitutional requirements for fair elections.

Bottom line: A 65 percent African-American district, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama, passed a non-partisanship provision by a two-to-one margin, yet the Civil Rights Division decided it knew better and, using an unconstitutional law, dictated its terms. Like our moralizing Attorney General likes to say, “In things racial, we always have been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentialy a nation of cowards.” If that’s true, then Eric Holder’s own Civil Rights Division is Cowardice Central. It shouldn’t have taken much courage to let Kinston be Kinston.