Here's another reason to be grateful for George W. Bush's re-election: a long-time public nuisance is off the public payroll. Mona Charon explains:
Mary Frances Berry, chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, is resigning. Those scratch marks on the floor may be from her fingernails as they dragged her from the building by her feet. Berry has been a member of the commission for 24 of its 47 years -- a record probably unmatched even in Washington, D.C., a city of sinecures.Berry departs with allegations of mismanagement swirling about her head. The commission is small potatoes, Washington-wise, with a budget of only $9 million and a staff of only 70. But no one knows how that money has been spent over the past 12 years, while Berry has presided with an iron hand. Peter Kirsanow, a black conservative member of the commission, writes that the management of the agency is "completely dysfunctional." Record-keeping is said to be "indecipherable," and there hasn't been an independent audit (required by law) for 12 years.
The mismanagement was not limited to money....
Under Berry's direction, the Civil Rights Commission published an utterly fallacious finding about the 2000 election in Florida, concluding that "countless Floridians ... were denied their right to vote."
When Commissioners Russell Redenbaugh and Abigail Thernstrom issued a minority report showing, among other things, that the commission had not interviewed a single Floridian who was denied the opportunity to vote, Berry ruled that the minority report could not be considered an official commission document because they had used the services (free) of a scholar named John Lott.
Another egregious example was Berry's hateful attempts to stir up fear of lynching among black citizens, as noted earlier here and here. Good riddance.
Posted by Alan at December 11, 2004 09:51 AM