Wisconsin Democratic Congressional Members Want DoJ Review of Voter ID Law

Republicans Block Voters in Continuing Effort
to Stay in Political Power

WASHINGTON, D.C. – "U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and U.S. Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI 3), Gwen Moore (D-WI 4) and Mark Pocan (D-WI 2) today called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a review of Wisconsin’s voter identification requirements and consider bringing a legal challenge or join litigation in Wisconsin’s Eastern and Western District Courts."

So reads a press release dated May 2, 2016 by Wisconsin's entire Democratic Party congressional delegation.

Notes the press release:

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the Wisconsin Congressional Democrats urge the Justice Department to conduct a review of Wisconsin’s potentially discriminatory voting requirements to determine whether they are consistent with the Voting Rights Act and federal constitutional protections for the right to vote. The members of Congress also call for a review of all the options available to the Department of Justice, including bringing a legal challenge or intervening in existing litigation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that eligible voters facing difficulty obtaining ID have the right to challenge the law as it applies to them. This issue is now back before Wisconsin’s Eastern District court. A separate challenge brought in the state’s Western District is scheduled to go to trial in May.

The two cases in federal court challenging the Wisconsin photo voter ID law are One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol (United States District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324—U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson)), and Frank v. Walker, (United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (Case No. 11‐C‐01128—U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman))

The letter to the U.S. DoJ follows another admission by a national Republican that state voter ID laws are intended to obstruct voters who tend to vote non-Republican, (Graham, The Atlantic).

In Wisconsin U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R) continues to advocate for state photo voter ID laws while employing a novel pretense to being a champion of voting rights, (Mal Contends).

For a related analysis of Frank v. Walker and this case's status in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, see Canning in The Brad Blog, particularly as Canning's piece focuses on Judge Frank Easterbrook and his ruling cited in the Wisconsin Democrats' letter.

Writes Canning:

Despite the likely encouraging benefits to voters in the new ruling, the new panel decision is, nonetheless, fraught with intellectual dishonesty. 'Plaintiffs now accept the propriety of requiring photo ID from persons who already have or can get it with reasonable effort,' Easterbrook writes, [p.4], 'while endeavoring to protect the voting rights of those who encounter high hurdles.'

Plaintiffs did not accept 'the propriety' of Wisconsin's Photo ID law because they were now convinced by Easterbrook's earlier reasoning. They advanced their alternative theory in this new challenge because they were forced to accept the premise of Easterbrook's earlier controversial panel decision thanks to a legal doctrine known as the law of the case. Once Easterbrook's earlier opinion became final, the plaintiffs could no longer make the argument that Wisconsin's photo ID law violated the Voting Rights Act or the U.S. Constitution per se. They were forced to argue that the specific issues now before the court --- VA identification cards and the rights of voters who could not 'obtain a qualifying photo ID with reasonable effort" --- had not been addressed by the earlier decision.

Easterbrook's mid-April opinion follows his October 2104 opinion in the same case that was heavily criticized by jurists around the nation, and described by Canning as "extraordinarily partisan, factually deficient, [and] riddled with errors ... ."

The bottom line is legislative Republicans want photo voter ID laws to stay in political power, and Republican judges like Frank Easterbrook are perfectly content to throw away their reputations for impartiality and diligence in service to the Republican Party.

GOP Refusal to Hold Vote on Attorney General Is Unconscionable

It's been almost four months since President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch as nominee for the U.S. Attorney General and Senate Republicans still refuse to hold a vote.

Lynch was approved on a 12-8 vote on February 26 by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. (McClatchy News)

Her qualifications are stellar, having overcome racism and segregation in North Carolina to work her way through Harvard University, and then graduate from Harvard Law School.

From The Rachel Maddow Show:

But Lynch is black, and Senate Republicans are the same obstructive, can't-shoot-straight gang they've been for the last 30 years, and refuse to hold a simple up-or-down vote.

I have heard one knock against Lynch. She is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (1999-2001 and 2010-present) and Lynch has refused to correct an injustice in the matter of the wrongful prosecution and conviction in 2009 against Bradley Stinn, an innocent man targeted by overzealous prosecutors for whom convictions matter period. (Powell, New York Observer)

Ms. Lynch has the power to impose integrity onto her office, and correct an injustice made before she assumed her office. She has refused. Lynch is protecting an old conviction and is unmindful of justice, contradicting her testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary that she would do no such thing as attorney general.

This issue is fair game, and Lynch should be made to account for her lack of public integrity and simple decency in keeping an innocent man from his family.

But Senate Republicans don't care about Bradley Stinn (U.S. DoJ). Mr. Stinn has never been mentioned by one U.S. senator to their shame in the get-a-conviction-any-conviction American prosecutors' state.

Police have a license to kill, and prosecutors have a license to lie. A nominee to the office of Attorney General should answer to this reality.

Republicans should hold an up-or-down vote, and if they want to vote against Loretta Lynch, that is their job, not obstruction of a vote.

Republicans being Republicans can't shoot straight. And Americans tune out of the grand experiment known as American democracy as the Koch brothers and billionaires look to take over. Of course this is the GOP objective all along.

From the Lawrence O'Donnell Show:

US Senator at AG Nominee Confirmation Hearing: Read Licensed to Lie

Licensed to Lie by former Assistant
United States Attorney and Chief of
of the Appellate Section for the
Western and Northern Districts of Texas,
US Department of Justice, Sidney Powell

U.S. Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) offered an unusual comment in last week’s confirmation hearings for the proposed new attorney general of the United States, Loretta Lynch.

Hatch suggested the nominee read a book: Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014).

Hatch is right.

Prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in prison-state America.

Prosecutorial discretion is a quaint term we see when one reads old essays and speeches by Robert Jackson.

Violations of the Brady Rule, prosecutors’ duty under the Brady v. Maryland (1963) case to turn over to the defense exculpatory evidence are "epidemic," to borrow a term from an opinion from Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (Cassens-Weiss, ABA Journal)

From small-town prosecutors in Mississippi to northern Wisconsin, from federal prosecutors across the country to the District Attorney's office in Grant County Wisconsin, too often the office of the Prosecutor has abandoned the conception of justice, in favor of careerism and convictions.

Wrongful convictions, abuse of process and malicious prosecutions are routine in the USA.

Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit sounds the alarm in Fields v. Wharrie and Kelley.

And locally the Dane County (Wisconsin) District Attorney has spoken out favorably of the work of the Innocence Project.

"No prosecutor should want to have innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted stay in prison. If evidence is brought to the attention of the authorities demonstrating that a mistake has been made, the interests of justice demand that the evidence is carefully reviewed and the individual should be released if exonerated. As Dane County District Attorney, I have worked with lawyers from the Innocence Project, and will do so in the future. ...The ultimate goal of the system is not simply to secure convictions, it is to do justice," said Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne. (mal contends)

Sidney Powell, the author and federal appellate jurist whom Sen. Hatch recommends, wrote in response remarking of prosecutors:

Indeed, as officers of the court entrusted with the power of the Sovereign, they should be held to an even higher standard. Instead, abusive prosecutors have been promoted, gaining even more power that will make them even more corrupt.  What happened to the citizens in Licensed to Lie can happen to anyone. Just ask the teams of the Innocence Project who work tirelessly to free people who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. More than half of those wrongful convictions were the result of prosecutorial misconduct.

Powell is among the few voices in this country standing up and stating repeatedly: Prosecutors have a license to lie, and this is wrong.