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  • Commentary posted June 14, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky The Latest Election News with 2014 Just Around the Corner

    Editor's note: This commentary was coauthored by John Fund. From Florida to Maryland to New York City, there has been quite a bit of election news recently involving fraud and the potential for fraud that shows the continuing vulnerabilities in our election process and illustrates the fact that there are those who are willing to take advantage of those weaknesses. In…

  • Commentary posted June 11, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky No Fix For Our Immigration Courts

    The immigration bill now being considered on the floor of the U.S. Senate does a lot of things — many of them bad. One thing it does not do, however, is fix our broken immigration courts.   When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains illegal immigrants and initiates deportation proceedings against them, those cases go to immigration courts in the Justice…

  • Commentary posted June 7, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky 'Whites Need Not Apply' at D.C. Labor Board?

    Ondray Harris, the African-American executive director of the Public Employee Relations Board of the District of Columbia, stepped down last week. His resignation letter provides a disturbing look at alleged discriminatory and partisan conduct by the members of the board tasked with overseeing labor issues and the D.C. government's relations with public…

  • Commentary posted May 27, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Think Tank Takers: Did Lois Lerner Incriminate Herself?

    It is not clear that Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS's tax-exempt organizations office, waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as has been suggested by commentators ... when she briefly appeared before the House Oversight Committee investigating the targeting of conservative organizations. Lerner proclaimed her innocence before asserting…

  • Play Movie Did the IRS Scandal Affect the 2012 Election? von Spakovsky on CBS Video Recorded on May 26, 2013 Did the IRS Scandal Affect the 2012 Election? von Spakovsky on CBS

    Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky discusses how the White House's IRS scandal may have affected the 2012 Presidential race on CBS.…

  • Commentary posted May 23, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky IRS' Lois Lerner -- Did She Really Take the Fifth?

    Did Lois Lerner, embattled head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations office, waive her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination in her brief appearance before the House Oversight Committee? I hate to say it, but… it’s just not clear. Lerner sparked an intense legal debate by making a short statement proclaiming her innocence, then pleading the Fifth and walking…

  • Commentary posted May 9, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky DOJ Offers Laughable Excuse for Perez's Using Personal E-Mail for Gov't Business

    The Washington Post reports on an — at best — highly misleading letter the Justice Department recently sent in response to an April 10 subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The committee, chaired by Representative Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), is investigating a quid pro quo deal engineered by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, President…

  • Issue Brief posted May 8, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky, Andrew Kloster Handouts to Lawyers and Special Interest Groups Add to Immigration Bill Costs

    Language in the original Senate immigration bill (that remains in the Sponsor’s Amendment) would prove to be a full-employment scheme for immigration lawyers at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer and would provide substantial federal funding for immigrant advocacy groups.[1] In addition, these provisions create open-ended commitments of the U.S. government to aliens…

  • Commentary posted April 30, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Suit Filed over DOJ Refusal to Clean Up Voter Rolls

    The American Civil Rights Union wants local election officials to clean up voter rolls in Mississippi. Last Friday, the group filed suit against two counties that have more registered voters than the Census says they have voting-eligible citizens. The ACRU is stepping into the breach left by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. Under Assistant…

  • Commentary posted April 11, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky To All the Colleges That Rejected Suzy Weiss

    Pittsburgh high schooler Suzy Weiss has a 4.5 GPA, an SAT score of 2120 (out of a maximum 2400), and a slew of rejections from Ivy League colleges. But unlike most unsuccessful applicants, Weiss didn’t accept her rejection meekly. Instead, she penned a sarcastic open letter to those who spurned her — and got it published in the Wall Street Journal. Weiss’s letter…

  • Commentary posted April 10, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Mother Jones' Source May Be in a Mother Lode of Trouble

    Left-wing magazine Mother Jones made news this week with a report based on a secret recording of a Feb. 2 meeting of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell with campaign strategists.  Federal and state law prohibits publication of information acquired through secret recording, but a 2001 Supreme Court ruling gives publishers like Mother Jones a get-out-of-jail-free…

  • Commentary posted March 29, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Felons Should Prove They Deserve Restoration of Rights

    Gov. Bob McDonnell and others propose automatically restoring all civil rights — including the right to vote — to nonviolent felons just as soon as they have completed their sentences and paid all outstanding fines and restitution. Advocates of this idea insist it’s a simple matter of compassion and justice. But automatic restoration is not in the best interests of…

  • Backgrounder posted March 27, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Mandatory Voter Registration: How Universal Registration Threatens Electoral Integrity

    It has been said that for every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong. Washington soon may seek a complex solution—preemption of states’ responsibility; federal micromanagement of elections; eventual coercion of lackadaisical citizens—to the nonproblem of people choosing not to vote. —George F. Will [1] Mandatory voter registration (MVR),…

  • Commentary posted March 15, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Ex-cons Should Prove They Deserve the Right to Vote

    The proposal to automatically restore felons' right to vote as soon as they have completed their sentences is shortsighted and bad public policy. When presented as a measure of compassion and justice, it is also hypocritical, as automatic restoration is not in the best interests of felons or the general public. Under Florida's current system, nonviolent offenders face a…

  • Commentary posted February 27, 2013 by Hans A. von Spakovsky Strike Down Section 5

    Representative John Lewis certainly deserves the nation’s thanks for the fight he led during the civil-rights movement. But his latest commentary in the Washington Post, about the Shelby County case and the Voting Rights Act, shows that he is living in the past. The South has changed since he marched from Selma to Montgomery nearly 50 years ago. Even the article’s…