Peter Kirsanow, a Commissioner on the US Commission on Civil Rights, just offered ringing testimony in favor of Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, opining that his civil rights opinions have been well within the mainstream. But ...
Who is this Peter Kirsanow, other than being a Republican appointee to the Civil Rights Commission? Well,
here's a story about Mr. Kirsanow and how seriously he takes civil rights:
Washington, DC, July 20, 2002 -
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today called for the removal of Peter Kirsanow from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission after he raised the possibility of internment camps for the mass detention of Arab Americans. Kirsanow told a Commission hearing in Detroit on July 19 that if there was another terrorist attack on the United States "and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights." He said "not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops, more profiling, there will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights."
Nice.