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  • 01-29-08 CREW-Civil Rights Groups Call On Mukasey To Rescind

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    Mark Welkie
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    Civil rights groups called on Attorney General Mukasey to rescind a Bush administration legal memo that authorized deceptive partisan appointments to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The memo allowed Republican commission members to falsely label themselves as "independent" in order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act's requirement that no more than four members of any party serve on the bipartisan eight-person commission. During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey had pledged to review significant Office of Legal Counsel decisions to ensure they were sound, reasoned, and based, but the groups argued this memo met none of those standards and undermined the commission's independence and bipartisan structure that Congress intended. Mukasey was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary

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    01-29-08 CREW-Civil Rights Groups Call on Mukasey to Rescind

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    Civil rights groups called on Attorney General Mukasey to rescind a Bush administration legal memo that authorized deceptive partisan appointments to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The memo allowed Republican commission members to falsely label themselves as "independent" in order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act's requirement that no more than four members of any party serve on the bipartisan eight-person commission. During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey had pledged to review significant Office of Legal Counsel decisions to ensure they were sound, reasoned, and based, but the groups argued this memo met none of those standards and undermined the commission's independence and bipartisan structure that Congress intended. Mukasey was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary

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    01-29-08 CREW-Civil Rights Groups Call On Mukasey To Rescind

    Uploaded by

    Mark Welkie
    Civil rights groups called on Attorney General Mukasey to rescind a Bush administration legal memo that authorized deceptive partisan appointments to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The memo allowed Republican commission members to falsely label themselves as "independent" in order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act's requirement that no more than four members of any party serve on the bipartisan eight-person commission. During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey had pledged to review significant Office of Legal Counsel decisions to ensure they were sound, reasoned, and based, but the groups argued this memo met none of those standards and undermined the commission's independence and bipartisan structure that Congress intended. Mukasey was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary

    Copyright:

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    January 29, 2008

    Civil Rights Groups Call On Mukasey To


    Rescind Bush Memo Authorizing
    Politicization Of The Civil Rights
    Commission
    Contact: Naomi Seligman Steiner 202.408.5565
    nseligman@citizensforethics.org
    Bush Legacy of Politicizing Civil Rights Continues: Civil Rights Commission
    is Stacked with Partisans
    Washington, DC – This morning, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
    (CREW) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) hosted a press
    conference call with the NAACP and MALDEF to demand that U.S. Attorney General
    Michael B. Mukasey rescind a Bush legal memo that authorized deceptive
    appointments of exclusively partisan Republicans to the bipartisan Civil Rights
    Commission.
    The letter, signed by LCCR, CREW, NAACP, MALDEF, National Women’s Law Center,
    National Partnership for Women & Families, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
    Under Law, National Congress of American Indians and the ACLU is online:
    http://www.civilrights.org/library/advocacy-letters/usccr-letter.html [1]
    In order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Bush Justice Department
    wrote a memo allowing Republican members of the Commission to switch their party
    affiliation to “independent.” That allowed the president to appoint more Republicans
    to the bipartisan eight person commission under the guise that they were somehow
    “independent,” allowing the Bush administration to circumvent the law requiring that
    no more than four members of any party serve on the commission.
    During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey pledged to review “significant” decisions of
    the Office of Legal Counsel to ensure that such decisions were “sound, soundly
    reasoned, soundly based.” Allowing this deception in the appointment process was
    neither sound, soundly reasoned or soundly based and is a continuation of the Bush
    administration's legacy of undermining the credibility and subverting Congress'
    intent to retain the commission's independence and bipartisan membership
    Mukasey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
    Wednesday.

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