Bush Admin Not Real Aggressive on Voting Rights Cases

I know that's a real shocker, but that's what's alleged in this WaPo article. But the real bizarre thing about this article is that it's basically the same article that appeared in the Post 3 months ago (see my comments on that article here), except targeting the Voting Rights section of Justice rather than the Civil Rights section. Reporter Dan Eggen seems to have a handy template for writing stories - every few months, talk to some career lawyers at some DOJ section who are disgruntled over the conservative tilt and write about how badly it's affecting morale and how the political appointees are ruling against their professional recommendations. What will be next - is there an environment section at DOJ? That should be some easy pickins.

Why this is news at all is beyond me. Isn't it obvious that when Democrats are in charge they're going to be very aggressive on voting rights issues because the more blacks who vote the better it is for Democrats, and that we should expect the opposite when Republicans are in charge? The article didn't really uncover anything dramatic - we would expect career lawyers in this section to be more liberal than the political appointees, and so we would expect them to be unhappy with the current administration. That's all the article really tells us. If Eggen had instead found that the current DOJ was just as aggressive as it was under Clinton on Voting Rights cases, now that would be news.