Civil Rights Commissioner's Double Switch (Stacking the commission w conservatives)

Civil Rights Commissioner's Double Switch
By Paul Kiel - January 9, 2008, 12:50PM

--snip

But a TPM reader made a good observation. The packing scheme relies on Republican commissioners changing their party affiliation to "Independent" after they've been appointed, thus creating room for more Republicans to be appointed (there can be no more than four commissioners at any one time from a single party).

The Republicans who've switched their affiliation, of course, have denied changing them just to create more room for other conservatives. Abigail Thernstrom was no different, telling the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage that she'd just decided that she'd be "most comfortable" as an independent.

But her comfortability level appears to have abruptly changed. In December, the president reappointed her to the commission, but this time as a Republican, after one of the four Republican nominees left. The move also allowed her to become the commission's vice chairman.

So to retrace her steps: she was first nominated as a Republican, then registered as an independent, then was re-nominated as an Republican. With that move, the commission's conservative majority drops to five to two -- it's not clear yet who the eighth nominee will be, or what party he or she will represent. But not to worry: the committee can move forward on business with a simply majority, so the commission's direction shouldn't change that much.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005043.php

Report: DoJ Wrong to Bless Admin Civil Rights Panel Stacking Scheme

By Paul Kiel - January 8, 2008, 2:54PM
Back in November, The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage reported on how the Bush administration had stacked the U.S. Civil Rights Commission with Republicans -- two GOP commissioners had switched their registration to independents after being appointed, clearing the way for the administration to appoint two more Republicans. The scheme was entirely legal, the administration said, and the Justice Department, in a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, had said so. But now a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has found the OLC memo "problematic" and says that if someone were to challenge the arrangement in court, the administration would probably lose.

You can read the report, which was prepared at the request of counsels on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff, here.

The commission was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and is supposed to serve as a watchdog for discrimination. But there hasn't been much of that during this administration. Savage reported that the coup shifted "the commission's emphasis from investigating claims of civil rights violations to questioning programs designed to offset the historic effects of discrimination."

Here's how the scheme works. The commission has eight members. By law, no more than four of them can be from any one party -- usually meaning that there are four Dems and four GOPers. But since two of the commissioners changed their party affiliation to independents after they were appointed, the commission now has only two Dems, two "independents," and four Republicans.

-snip

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005036.php