TODAY CHICAGO, TOMORROW THE WORLD – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Having worked in Chicago politics some decades ago, I recall the whole catalogue of jokes about the dearly departed voting in every election.  True then, true now.  And what's being done about that, and other voter fraud scandals around the country?  An editorial from The Washington Times reports on some stunning news from our Department of Occasional Justice:

The dead voters may be forced back into their graves. The biggest scandal emerging from the infamous New Black Panther voter- intimidation case didn't even involve the Black Panthers. Instead, it came when whistleblowing attorney J. Christian Adams told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that top Justice Department official Julie Fernandes had openly refused to enforce laws that require states to remove ineligible names - dead people, felons, people who have moved - from voter rolls.

"We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law," Ms. Fernandes reportedly told a roomful of employees of the department's Voting Section in November. "It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it."

Now comes Mr. Adams to show this wasn't idle talk. As early as today, 16 states will start receiving official "notice letters" from him warning of coming private-action lawsuits to compel them to enforce these particular provisions of the law. This appears to mean that the Justice Department is refusing to make states comply with federal voter-verification laws - which is why the task will fall to Mr. Adams, helping represent private citizens whose legal votes otherwise would be diluted in value by fraudulent votes.

COMMENT:  Incredible.  When Gerald Ford became president, succeeding the disgraced Richard Nixon, one of the most important things he did was to choose an impeccable attorney general, Edward Levi of the University of Chicago.  Ford needed to assure the American people that the Justice Department was actually devoted to justice.

Now, under Eric Holder and his hard-left appointees, we have a department that is highly politicized and devoted only to select causes dear to its political base.  Its civil rights division has become a virtual invasion force mounted against the state of Arizona. 

You'd think President Obama would realize the danger, but, in truth, he's part of the danger.  We have a Justice Department, Chicago style.  We've reached the point where a former official, J. Christian Adams, must take action as a private citizen to assure enforcement of basic voting laws.

Republicans have pledged that, if they take control of either house of Congress, they will investigate the Justice Department's handling of the Black Panther case, which could easily lead to a probe of the entire department.  We need that probe, and we need it fast.

September 7, 2010