Olbermann: Minority voting suppressed by Justice Dept. David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday May 8, 2007 Print This Email This Comparing the breaking scandal involving US Justice Department hiring to actions by the Soviet Politburo, MSNBC host Keith Olberman says in the video clip below that political considerations were behind the hiring of Justice Department employees at every level, "right down to the interns." Congressional investigators are examining new claims that a top official in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division based his hiring decisions on politics rather than experience, CNN reports. Bradley J. Schlozman, who recently returned to Washington after serving as interim U.S. Attorney in Kansas City, Mo., allegedly hired an employee based on Republican credentials, and Democrats accuse him of pursuing cases in Missouri designed to disenfranchise minority voters before the 2006 elections, according to press reports. "We are highly disturbed by the emerging information, because it seems to repeat this pattern going on at the [Department of Justice] where people are chosen for their positions not for their experience and qualifications, but rather whether or not they match a certain political ideology," said Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., who heads the subcommittee investigating the department, according to CNN. Olberman, and his guest, Air America Radio host Rachel Maddow, also noted that the Justice Department has a low percentage of African American attorneys in its Civil Rights Division. "The fact that the Justice Department right now in its Civil Rights Division has two African American attorneys out of 50 on staff, which is the same number of African American attorneys they had in 1978 when I was 5  meanwhile their staff has doubled in size  shows that they're not taking their civil rights obligation seriously," Maddow said. The following video is from MSNBC's Countdown.



