Ellington

The Department of Justice case against Ike Brown and the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee definitively shows racism, but it's quite unlike what has been reported by The Clarion-Ledger and Sid Salter.

In 2000, the Republican Party of Florida generated a list of felons to be purged from the voter rolls. But the criteria to be purged were based on skin color, not whether or not the person had been a felon. Thousands of African Americans were denied the right to vote for being black. The Department of Justice did not launch a grand jury investigation.

In 2004, operating under orders from Ken Blackwell, the black Republican secretary of state of Ohio, elections staffs reduced the number of computerized voting machines allocated to large black voting districts. The effect was that black people had to wait hours to vote and many left in frustration without voting. The Department of Justice did not launch a grand jury investigation.

Another anomaly in Ohio was large, predominately Democratic districts where purportedly thousands of people voted for Bush. The culprit appears to be electronic vote switching that cannot be tracked without a paper trail, which Ohio did not mandate in their voting machines. Again, the Department of Justice did not launch a grand jury investigation.

But down here in Mississippi in little Noxubee County with a population of 12,500, Mr. Brown's case has garnered national attention as the first case of black voter discrimination against whites.

Yes, there is prejudice involved in this matter. But the bias is that the Department of Justice has twiddled its thumbs and whistled "Dixie" while larger, more onerous cases of voter discrimination have occurred.

Scott Tyner
Hattiesburg

Crime-Free America?
As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas. After World War II, the U.S. convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Am-erican and Allied prisoners of war. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, charging leading members of Japan's military and government elite with, among their many other crimes, torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof for their torture convictions was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by "subjecting prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions."

Apparently now all that has changed, and waterboarding is OK.

Of course, it also used to be against the law to invade countries for no apparent reason, illegal to lock up anyone without a fair and speedy trial, illegal to wiretap citizens or secretly go through their personal records without a subpoena.

George Bush's crime-free America. Ain't it grand?

Brian Essex
Jackson

Previous Comments

ID

75700

Comment

I say Amen to the selective justice letter. Ike Brown's indiscretions, although wrong too, is a pen prick in a much larger game that is still mostly invisible though pervasive. When Ike's deeds can register against the conduct of the past or compare to the deeds of the republicans right now, I'll be ready to cricify him. I refuse to be fooled!

Author

Ray Carter

Date

2007-12-10T12:15:52-06:00