Trustworthy Guardians of the Electoral Process?

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(not!)

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0902-06.htm

Trustworthy Guardians of the Electoral Process?

ARTHUR HEITZER

Heitzer is a civil rights attorney and spokesperson for the National Lawyers Guild chapter in Milwaukee, where Chief Justice Rehnquist grew up. Heitzer said today: "The Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial authority on voter and civil rights, which means Chief Justice William Rehnquist's record on this issue is very crucial. During the early sixties, Rehnquist personally participated in 'Operation Eagle Eye,' an Arizona Republican attempt to challenge voting rights of minorities (primarily Hispanics). Rehnquist testified under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings that he had not personally challenged voters, but this has been called into serious question by the testimony of four others involved, including a former assistant U.S. attorney for that district who affirmed that he witnessed Rehnquist in 1962 personally confronting voters and attempting to challenge their right to vote. Rehnquist also wrote a legal memorandum in 1952, 'A Random Thought on the School Desegregation Cases,' claiming that it would be unconstitutional for the courts to order school desegregation, and asserting that the notorious decision 'Plessy v. Ferguson' was right and should be re-affirmed. Official racial segregation might still be the rule of law today if this view had been accepted, but it was rejected by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Rehnquist's attempt to later claim that what he wrote did not reflect his own views but those of the Justice he worked for, has been rejected by court historians as not being credible."

Heitzer added: "And more recently, the Chief Justice helped to stop the recount of Florida votes, which awarded a contested presidency to George Bush. This ruling was based on temporarily expanding the Constitution's Equal Protection clause in a manner that Rehnquist and his allies on the court had not afforded to citizens of color in civil rights cases, and then ruling that this holding would not have general application in future cases. Meanwhile, the court did not address the widespread exclusion of African-American voters and others in the Florida elections."

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1. ~kICk~