Early in Bush's second term, Bush did a now standard ploy: find a way to bend the rules governing an institution to further their far-right agenda. In this case, Bush abused the rule governing the appointment of members of the "Us Commission on Civil Rights, the nation's 50 year old watchdog for civil rights." By law, half of the members of the Commission can not be from the same political party. Since the US has always had a "two party" political system, this has meant that for approximately 50 years, the Commission has been made up of four Democrats and four Republicans. Bush has changed that. Bush has appointed two conservative Republicans, making them change their party registration from "Republican" to "Independant" right before the appointment was made. The Boston Globe has the story here.
And what are the results of this move by Bush? Traditionally, the Commission, according to the article, has/had:
-collected evidence of voter discrimination and police brutality that laid the groundwork for major civil rights laws.
-issued subpoenas and gone on the road to hold lengthy fact finding hearings, a practice it did about once a year.
-planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending.
After the appointments, the Commission terminated all of these activities. Instead, the Commission is now concentrating on: on opposing school integration, calling for closer scrutiny of policies encouraging the acceptance of minorities into law school and have opposed government programs that encouraged the hiring of minority owned businesses. Moreover, the Commission, with 6 out of 8 members now Republicans, even if 2 are registered Indenpenant, has pointedly refused to investigate the lack of voting machines in black precincts in Ohio in the 2004 election and the racially motivated of african-american teenagers in Jena.
And what have the Democrats done to block this action? Nothing at all. According to the article, the appointment to the Commission must be approved by the Senate. Amazingly, no fillibuster was made to block this outrage. Even now, no Democrat has voiced opposition to what Bush has done.