“A victory for disfranchised Mississippi voters — and they happen to be white.” From John Fund, WSJ:

Last week a federal district judge found direct evidence that the political machine in Noxubee County, Miss., had discriminated against voters with the intent to infringe their rights and that “these abuses have been racially motivated.”

Among the abuses catalogued by Judge Tom Lee were the paying of notaries public to visit voters and illegally mark their absentee ballots, manipulation of the registration rolls, importation of illegal candidates to run for county office, and publication of a list of voters, classified by race, who might have their ballots challenged. The judge criticized state political officials for being “remiss” in addressing the abuses. The U.S. Justice Department, which sued Noxubee officials under the Voting Rights Act, has called conditions there “the most extreme case of racial exclusion seen by the [department’s] Voting Section in decades.”

Explosive stuff, so why haven’t you heard about it? Because the Noxubee case doesn’t fit the media stereotype for voting rights abuses. The local political machine is run by Ike Brown, a twice-convicted felon. Mr. Brown is black, and the voters who were discriminated against were white.

Feh. So what? After years of oppression, haven’t blacks earned the right, now that they have power, to stick it to the Man? How else, after all, are you going to ensure the kind of “diversity” that at least 5 members of the Supreme Court (four in a dissenting role) note is a compelling government interest?

That it was the Bush Justice Department — the legal arm of institutionalized racial prejudice and hate — that sued under the Voting Rights Act, well, that just makes this attempt to beat back strong, proactive diversity initiatives that much more unseemly.

What will they go after next, jury nullification? O.J.?

Judge Lee concluded that Mr. Brown retained his power “by whatever means were necessary.” According to the judge, Mr. Brown believed that “blacks, being the majority race in Noxubee County, should hold all elected offices, to the exclusion of whites.” (Whites are 30% of the county’s 12,500 people, but only two of the 26 elected county officials.) Judge Lee also criticized top officials of the state Democratic Party for “failing to take action to rectify [Mr. Brown’s] abuses.”

Typical. “Judge” Lee blames the (historic) victims, then takes a shot at the political party that has only the Blacks’ best interest at heart — intimating that the blind eye they turned to this so-called “abuse” was somehow cynical and perhaps even politically opportunistic, rather than in keeping with the party’s long, nuanced history of combating pernicious institutionalized racism by promoting, in it’s stead, well-meaning institutionalized racism.

One man’s political “abuse is,” after all, simply another man’s “ameliorative measure to correct past injustices”.

Shameful, this ruling. Trust me: if John Edwards and I thought we could make the charge stick, we’d have such a reactionary judgment overturned as “hate speech,” then we’d replace this particular hick with a Judge who would prove more sensitive to the complex issues of racial justice, issues whose root causes can only be corrected when the judiciary has the courage to promote social policy from the bench — even if, in so doing, they’re forced to strain Constitutional interpretation at the seams like Pam Anderson strains a sports bra, or Rosie O’Donnell’s success strains credulity.

(h/t Dan Collins)