What doesn't come through in these messages is that John Tanner is not a Bush Administration political appointee; he's not even a Republican. He's a career civil servant with a long and excellent record of defending the voting rights of minorities. He made a stupid choice of words and is now being made a scapegoat for bad administration policies.

I couldn't care less what party Tanner is.

His decision on the Georgia ID case, apparently to please his new bosses, according to several DOJ sources, is bad enough. His comments made it worse.

His "investigation" and subsequent white-washing of what happened during the abomination that was Ohio 2004 is an enormous strike against him.

Finally, talk to any of his current or former colleagues about how his atrocious management of the CRT has destroyed the joint, and I see no reason that John Tanner should be allowed to be dog catcher, much less the Voting Chief at the DoJ Civil Rights Division.

Has that message gotten through yet?!

Maura,

His "long and excellent record of defending the voting rights of minorities" ended about the time he came back to the Voting Section as the handpicked choice of Brad Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky. He then set about tearing up the legacy that he and legions of others had established.

It is true that Tanner is nominally a Democrat. However, he sure as hell doesn't act like one these days. In some ways, it's worse that Tanner is a Democrat. At least with Hans, you always knew where he was coming from. He was honest but evil. You knew that the beliefs he was implementing into policy were beliefs he truly held, as repugnant as they were to proponents of civil rights.

Tanner, on the other hand, seems to have sold out for trips to Hawaii and the possibility of retiring on a Senior Executive Service pension. And as we all know, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere appears to have sold out for a $64 per day per diem (I guess "per day per diem" is redundant, but in govspeak, a "per diem" is the payment you get each day you're on official government travel).

Tanner may have started out as a champion of civil rights. He's sure not one now. In a lot of ways, it's sad. But right now, we're so angry in the Section with what he's done to it that we can't stop to sympathize, at least not until he's gone.

Oh, yeah...

Brad, HowDe and Donna may not have given you proper recognition, but you've got lots of fans in the Voting Section these days...

The PBS channel here, specifically the News Hour (McNeil sp?), gave Brad Blog full credit.

It was the 6:00 Central Time program.

heh-heh, not really ot

A new stereotype?

IceJustIce - Appreciate the comments, response to Maura, and knowing the folks in the Voting Section are keeping an eye on things over here. (As if Maura's note itself didn't already give us that indication

You'll pardon rant last night against DNC, AP, ABC et al., but I'm rather sick and tired of bad guys out there replying to original BRAD BLOG reporting with "well, it's just a blog, you know you can't trust that" when they've got no other explanation for our ACCURATE reporting.

While I understand AP and ABC's interests in not going out of their way to offer "credibility" to blogs, I'd suggest the DNC has no similar excuse.

Crediting to FoxNews.com, of course, is just salt in the wounds. But when they wonder "what happened to all of those independent investigative sites who just gave up eventually because they couldn't keep the lights on?" hopefully they'll know who to point their fingers at.

And to be even clearer about it. The call for attribution is not for a pat on the back or ego stroke, it's so that the bad guys aren't able to say next time "Oh, that explosive story which just outed us as bad guys shouldn't be paid attention to, since it only came from a blog, and we all know such sites aren't credible".

Appropriate attributions from folks like AP, ABC, NYTimes --- and yes the DNC --- make that sort of dodge much harder for those bad guys in the future, and makes it that much easier to do what we do here, and ensure that folks pay attention to it when they should!