Shuckin' & Jivin', GOP-style

Hans von Spakovsky is Bush's nominee for the Federal Elections Commission. His name has come up before on my blog, as a recess appointment in January, 2006. And it would be quite safe to call him a recess monkey. According to any number of his colleagues, poor Spakovsky suffers from the same ailments as other Bush nominees: he's a partisan hack, he has contempt for the rule of law, and he's an inveterate liar.

Last week, Hans von Spakovsky, who has been nominated by President Bush for a seat on the Federal Election Commission, testified before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. He was asked at the time about a letter that had been sent to the Committee by seven former career professionals in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights division, raising various claims about von Spakovsky’s role during his tenure at the Department of Justice. Now those career professionals, after reviewing von Spakovsky’s testimony, have written a second letter (see below) contradicting von Spakovsky and raising concerns about statements he made. They assert in very specific detail, for example, that von Spakovsky’s testimony conflicts with their own recollections and, in several instances, they note that von Spakovsky’s testimony was factually wrong. Their letter also responds to von Spakovsky’s unsupported claim that the reason these career professionals wrote their original letter to the Senate committee was to advance their own partisan agenda. The full text of the letter follows:

You just know it's going to give you that weird mix of contradictory feelings that have come to characterize this administration: on the one hand, the bittersweet satisfaction of being proven right, yet again, about the neo-fascists. On the other, the agonizing frustration of it being just one more story the press won't trouble themselves with and conservatives will simply brush aside.