[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 83 (Thursday, June 4, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H6158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           VOTER INTIMIDATION

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, a recent news story highlights political 
appointees at the Justice Department running roughshod over both their 
civil counterparts and the law itself.
  In November, members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense 
stood in paramilitary uniforms, one of them wielding a nightstick, and 
intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place. The facts are not 
in question. You can see the video on YouTube. Career lawyers at the 
Justice Department rightly pursued the case in order to bring charges. 
They even obtained an affidavit from a prominent civil rights activist 
who was present and described it as ``the most blatant form of voter 
intimidation'' that he had seen, including the voting rights crisis he 
was a part of in Mississippi in the 1960s. The civil suit filed claimed 
the individuals engaged in ``coercion, threats and intimidation, racial 
threats and insults, and menacing and intimidating gestures.''
  Yet now political appointees have stepped in to order the suit 
dropped. Apparently this Justice Department has no problem with voter 
intimidation or politicization of justice.

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