DHS officials should be forewarned that in this particular matter they will be treated as accomplices should they assist any effort to misuse their authority toward voter suppression. And the general immunity Law Enforcement rightly enjoys will not extend to efforts to undermine the very foundations of our Republic and Democracy.
given the blowback the DHS received from election administrators when it previously deemed elections to be critical infrastructure it needed to protect from foreign threats.–
They should save time and start their investigations with people named “Trump”.
“The investigations will continue now, they won’t be able to stall if through litigation,” Kobach bragged to Breitbart.
Kobach is asserting actions taken by DHS are not subject to litigation or lawsuits. Anyone know if this is true, or if some portion of what they do is exempt from judicial oversight? If DHS blocked off the street to my home, alleging illegal aliens used it as a traffic route to smuggle drugs, would I be unable to contest the street closure in the courts? Citizens truly have no judicial recourse to contest DHS actions? WTF?Kobach has a real boner for his fantasy voter fraud initiative. Viagra fail!
It’s lasted over 4 hours, he should really see a doctor about it.
My brain is saying, ironically in Trump World, somehow Kobach will end up being charged with Voter Fraud.
Not sure how, but it is not hard to imagine
I’m concerned. @tierney Are the editors forcing you to tone down your article headlines? Was there something you wanted to tell us about how you feel about the Voter Fraud Panel?
“wanted access to data DHS maintains on non-citizens to run against state voter lists, under the belief that non-citizens plague the registration rolls.”
wanted access to data DHS maintains on non-citizens to run against state voter lists, under the belief that the voter registration rolls will contain plenty of Jose Rodriguezes and Maria Garcias that they can purge from the rolls under entirely false and contrived pretenses.
FIFY
Stop attributing to these people that they actually believe the bullshit that’s foaming out of their mouths. They don’t. Kobach is a smart man and knows very well that voter fraud is not a widespread, overwhelming, election-altering problem. He just thinks he and people like Von Spakovsky are smarter than everyone else and have figured out how to fool everyone into allowing them to rig the voting rolls and suppress votes.
It’s minuscule enough that he’s okay for at least 16 hours.
You may inform Mr Kobach the google is not his friend. They are subject to the rule of law just like anyone else
Google: Dept of homeland security lawsuit
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&ei=45ZPWsjzFciI_QahlayIAQ&q=Dept+of+homeland+security+lawsuit&oq=Dept+of+homeland+security+lawsuit&gs_l=psy-ab.12...156510.167747.0.170893.25.25.0.0.0.0.404.4648.0j12j11j0j1.24.0…0…1c.1.64.psy-ab…1.8.1706…0i7i30k1j0i7i5i30k1j0i5i30k1j0i8i10i30k1j0i8i7i30k1.0.FuOM17H22u4
Bannon is (or imagines himself) an Atwater/Rove evil genius. Kobach is the whiz kid from Harvard/Oxford/Yale. Trump, of course, is the idiot. The tragic flaw that pulls them all down the drain shouting insults at each other is racism.
Well done, Tierney! Thank you for staying on top of Kobach’s fraudulent pretense as a public servant.
Every once in a while, you look at the country and wonder if there isn’t a bit of fight left in the old girl after all.
Even in these genuinely scary and truly dark days, under the idiot regime of Donald, in the grip of an incredibly well-funded, well-thought-out, durable fascist plot that’s been rolling out since the 1980s–one that has consumed one entire political party and largely neutralized the other, that has subverted our press and is hard at it subverting our courts—it seems there are still some built-in little pockets of resistance that these odious little reactionaries hadn’t anticipated.
Worth fighting for and reinvigorating and rebuilding our almost-lost democracy in all its flawed, messy, complicated, impossible glory. It evidently has the power to stymie a creature like Kobach, even with all that Koch and Mercer money behind him.
The tragic flaw for all three of them—as well as for idiots like Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and the dimwits in the “Freedom Caucus” is hubris.
Racism compounds the flaw, but is not the flaw itself.
I heard that asshole KKris Kobach on NPR yesterday.
I’ve rarely been as disgusted as I was when the interviewer failed to push back at all on Kobach’s blithe assumption that name + birthdate matching between the DHS lists and state voter rolls was sufficient to (1) prove voter fraud and (2) purge names from the rolls.
Thanks for spreading Kobach’s vile propaganda, NPR. I’ll remember this the next time you hold a begging campaign.
Yes, there certainly are days when it seems an impossible climb back to the land of the free and home of the brave. It’s the sparks of resistance and the increasing number of small victories that keep the fire alive.
That just means it doesn’t require enough blood to affect brain function, so he can’t use the “Robin Williams” defense to excuse his behavior.
Poor little thing is probably calcified by now, best to remove it and donate it to the “Museum of Really Sad Conservative Boners” with a plaque and a magnifying glass so people can read the tiny print.
I don’t think the goal is really to do anything, at least from the executive’s POV - it’s just to throw it over the wall and have many, many very smart (or great) people keep working on DJT’s biggest electoral victory ever.
They’ll have some very interesting (or scary) results very soon, perhaps in two weeks.
As I noted in another thread yesterday, but bears repeating, the natural mission-related interest that DHS would have in voter fraud issues is the Russian intervention in the most recent election. That is a genuine national security threat.
Once the Kobach project gets tossed into the bureaucracy, I would be surprised if he has much ability to influence what happens with it, unless Trump wants to get personally involved (and, he’s likely to have far bigger problems taking his attention than this sideline concern).