justice waaaaaaaaaaaaay delayed

with a quick scan of CNN and MSNBC, you may think that the only news has to do with paris hilon or a missing white pregnant lady in ohio, but it's funny when you look at what's making headlines in britain:

Next month James Fowler is expected to be charged in Alabama with the 1965 killing of Jimmie Jackson - which triggered the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march famously attacked by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma...Federal authorities in the US are under pressure to make a final effort to bring unsolved race crimes from the civil rights era to trial after a 71-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of charges over the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers.

James Seale was convicted on Thursday of kidnapping and conspiracy in the killings of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who were found dead in the Mississippi river after they went missing while hitchhiking. The federal jury heard that the teenagers had been brutally beaten before being dropped into the river tied to heavy weights. Seale now faces a life sentence.

meanwhile, at gonzo's justice department:

Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations...he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men"...Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'

for every long delayed step forward we get two steps backward...and these are the same folks who don't think we need the voting rights act anymore.

civil rights lacking at the doj civil rights division

as if gonzo wasn't screwing up the doj enough, a new report has come out displaying the utter lack of diversity at the justice department's civil rights division. in the civil rights division's criminal section, only 2 of 50 lawyers are black...the same number as in 1978, when the total staff was less than half what it is now. the department's records across several divisions show few or no african-americans or hispanics being hired at all. minorities are more than twice as likely to leave or be passed over for management position. and on top of all that is this staggering statistic:

One Justice Department chart revealed that over a six-year period the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had referred 3,200 individual complaints of discrimination to the civil rights division for action. They have resulted in only six lawsuits for race discrimination.

6 out of 3200...that 0.1875% for y'all keeping score at home.