-Caveat Lector-
~Amelia~
August 17, 2001
Looks like the only thing really to have been proven by this panel
is that M.F. Berry is intent that these two panel members who heard
every word of evidence shall not have their opinions known. This
looks like a cover up of the fact that the panel failed to find
what they set out to do. Not only do whites have no civil rights
according to Berry but apparently members of her own panel do not
if they will not say what she wants them to say.
Amelia
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights yesterday
accused the commission's liberal majority of "playing ugly games
with the truth" in an effort to stifle debate on civil rights
issues.
Commissioners Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican, and Russell
Redenbaugh, an independent, described the panel -- which recently
leaked a controversial report saying blacks were denied access to
the polls in Florida's 2000 presidential election -- as a "rogue
body that will not tolerate dissent."
The criticism came in response to what the pair called the
burying of their dissenting report on the Florida election battles.
After two months and threats of legal action, the final
minority report was made available on the commission's Web site
(www.usccr.gov) just this week, but only as an appendix containing
material from a recent Senate hearing, not as a dissenting report.
"Tucking away our dissent in a crowded appendix, along with
much other material, is designed to obscure the fact that we
attended all the hearings and viewed all the evidence that other
commissioners saw, but believe that the staff's report is partisan
and tendentious," Mrs. Thernstrom and Mr. Redenbaugh said.
"Our goal in joining the U.S. Civil Rights Commission was to
add robust debate to the vital issue before the commission, but we
have found time and again that the chairman and the liberal
majority of the commission have no interest in hearing individuals
who disagree with their ideology," the two said in a joint
statement.
"If they were confident in their views, they would allow for
the kind of thoughtful discussion we seek. Instead, they go out of
their way to hide information so it can't be analyzed, then quash
any dissent," they said.
In a report leaked in June to three newspapers, the
commission's majority, led by Chairman Mary Francis Berry, a
declared independent who has contributed thousands of dollars to
Democratic candidates over the years, said that black voters were
nine times as likely as nonblacks to have their votes thrown out.
But Mrs. Thernstrom and Mr. Redenbaugh, in a dissenting
report, said economic status and education were the likely factors
that resulted in several thousand votes being tossed as invalid,
adding that with a large get-out-the-vote effort taking place in
black communities nationwide, many were first-time voters
unfamiliar with voting technology and rules.
They said the commission's majority report did not recognize
the concept of voter error.
Mrs. Thernstrom and Mr. Redenbaugh said they repeatedly asked
Miss Berry over several months about the report on the Florida
election, but received no information -- noting that it was leaked
to the media before they ever saw it or had a chance to study it.
They said that they were denied access to any of the
statistical data used for the report and that Miss Berry also
refused to make public their minority report in what they described
as a "naked political act of silencing the voice of dissenting
members of the commission."
Miss Berry, who was not available yesterday for comment, ruled
at the time that a Yale University professor had helped prepare the
minority report for no fee and that commission rules prohibited
work from uncompensated experts.
Mrs. Thernstrom and Mr. Redenbaugh noted yesterday that Miss
Berry submitted a similar report in 1988 from an uncompensated
expert and said use of the little-known rule "rings hollow."
"The Civil Rights Commission has a long history of allowing
commissioners to rely on work by uncompensated experts," they said,
adding that since the panel deals with topics ranging from police
brutality to immigration, "it would be natural for commissioners to
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