A “Reinvigorated” Justice Department | Transterrestrial Musings

Here’s what it looks like:

…under Holder’s “reinvigorated” CivDiv, DOJ has prevented Amazon from debuting the Kindle because it was not in Braille; attacked South Carolina for providing special treatment to inmates infected with AIDS; and demanded that the city of Dayton hire black police officers who had failed the competency examination.

Moreover, remember the case we recently heard about in which DOJ decided to sue an Illinois school district on behalf of the rookie teacher — a Muslim — who demanded three weeks off at the end of the semester to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca? Turns out the lawyer DOJ tapped to lead the case, Varda Hussain, came to the CivDiv from the Venable law firm in Virginia, which permitted her to volunteer 500 hours of her time bringing wartime lawsuits against the United States on behalf of three Egyptian terrorists held as enemy combatants at Gitmo (a feat for which Venable gave her an award in 2006).

DOJ has also tapped Aaron Schuham of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a rabidly anti-religion organization, to take the helm at a CivDiv unit in charge of … protecting religious liberty.

Further, DOJ has tapped Jonathan Smith, formerly of Prisoners Legal Services and the D.C. Legal Aid Society — groups Adams describes as anti-police and anti-prison guard — to head the unit that brings civil rights lawsuits against police departments and prisons.

The news just keeps getting better and better.

16 thoughts on “A “Reinvigorated” Justice Department”

As posted there, he’s bogglingly wrong about the Kindle – enough, and in such an easily checked thing, that it calls everything else into disrepute.

Not only did the Kindle debut 2 years before Holder, but the Kindle 3 came out during his tenure.

No holding back, no nothing. Not even any actual pressure related to the real complaint filed by a blind advocacy group (doubtless under the ADA).

There was a thing about the Kindle and braille, though. I seem to recall there was a proposal to make them available free to schoolchildren and it was blocked because of the braille thing.

Or it might have been a parody. It’s hard to tell anymore.

I am working on a new song to sing to Libs. It is set to the tune of “My Generation” by the Who. I am calling it:”Talkin’ bout your adminsitration.”

It would make a good lead-in to these articles of stunned disbelief.

Re the Kindle thing — I believe they are referring to this. I did a search via Google using the phrase “department of justice kindle” and got several articles. Apparently the problem isn’t stopping the Kindle from debuting at all, but from being used in classrooms because it isn’t easy enough for blind people to use. And yes, the DOJ was the one who blocked it (and other electronic reading devices) from being provided.

And how about the DOJ suit against Arizona re: SB 1070 while at the same time the DOJ ignores City governments which have official “sanctuary” policies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Sanctuary_Cities_Map.svg

Who is it now who is really interfering with Federal immigration law?

Yes, some school districts wanted to adopt Kindle technology to save money and reduce the heavy load of books that kids have to carry. However, the Justice Department has said we can’t do that because some blind children can’t use a Kindle easily. The Kindle does have text to speech voice synthesis but I don’t know how easy a blind person can operate the device.

So I have a brother-in-law, who lost one eye and is legally blind in the other. He can read braille, but he can also read very large font. Just curious, do text books have a zoom feature?

As Rand pointed out in another post, it’s stuff like this that makes it obvious that the Federal Government is too large. It should not have any role in telling individual school districts what books to purchase. If a child needs a textbook in braille, why must every other student carry a paper textbook? Why must every taxpayer foot the additional cost of a paper textbook, shipping such textbooks, and storing such textbooks? Why must municipalities find landfill locations for the used textbooks or cover the recycling costs?

And don’t tell me we shouldn’t treat people differently because they are blind. My brother-in-law, through charitable organizations (some government funded, some not), received free audio readings of text books and special equipment similar to a microfiche reader to increase textbook font to read. He got these things, but other students did not.

From what I’ve seen, you can enlarge the fonts on a Kindle but I don’t know if they’ll be large enough for your brother-in-law. How big a font does he need? Find out an check with Amazon.

There are a lot of other choices on the market than the Kindle. Some other brand reader might be a better choice. You can also get Kindle apps for tablet computers like the iPad. They’re more expensive but might be a better option for your brother-in-law.

What next, tax cheats in Treasury?

I guess I need to work on my writing skills. I know a Kindle has a zoon capability, and it’s sufficient (thoughhe needs it very close to his face). My point was that paper textbooks don’t have that feature. To get it, you have to use other devices. Since the blind get other devices (from braille textbooks to magnification machines); then there is no reason for the DOJ to block school district’s access to Kindle’s on the basis of it lacks braille. So do most textbooks, unless you get the braille version. The school district would still have to provide braille versions of textbooks, even if it can’t provide a braille Kindle.

Leland, Leland, Leland. You’re making too much sense! When will you learn that logic has no place in discussions of government policy? Because a technology isn’t universally accessable to everybody, we must not allow anyone to use it! Never mind that blind kids can’t use ordinary textbooks, either. That’s besides the point (for some reason). In the never-ending pursuit of equality (or is it diversity?), we must be consistently inconsistent!

It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s just our policy.