Quotas for Elected Hispanics! Affirmative action for elected officials???WAKE UP!

Outrage of the DAY! Is the US Justice Dept. attempting to kill the 10th amendment?

The Bush administration by way of the Justice department, is threatening suit against a community because they don't "elect enough hispanics". They are being ordered to "change" the way they hold elections so that more "hispanics" are elected.

In a day when the Justice Department could be doing something to protect our borders, instead they are rooting through census records of small communities and hammering them to sidestep their lawful elections to elect more hispanics, whether they can win an election or not, it appears. Is your town next? Will we also be required to elect Muslims in other communities where they have high immigration numbers?

Will you allow the US Justice Department to dicatate how your town holds elections and for whom they vote?

From Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dec. 7, 2006
The Justice Department tells a New York village, change the way you elect officials or you're going to court.

The federal government tonight is telling the city of Port Chester, New York, to change the way it elects its officials. The Justice Department says the city's Hispanic population is underrepresented.

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, the notice from the Justice Department was handed down to city -- village officials here without any prior warning, without any prior discussion.

The letter announced that the federal government was authorizing the filing of a lawsuit against the village of Port Chester. A lawsuit that would be filed as a result of what the Department of Justice called voting patterns polarized by ethnicity, preventing Hispanics from being elected to office. Ironically, the unintended consequence could be to create representation for a large illegal alien population, which some see as the way it should be.

REV. RAFAEL GARCIA, SUMMERFIELD METHODIST CHURCH: They mow the loans of those who live here. They do baby-sitting of those who live here. So you know, they are connected to the life of the village, whether they like it or not.

TUCKER: The Justice Department's case rests on the fact that no Hispanics have ever been elected to office in Port Chester. In honest review of voting records compared to Census Bureau's statistics, the department notes that according to the 2000 Census, Hispanics comprise 46.2 percent of Port Chester's total population, 43 percent of its voting age population, and 21.9 percent of its citizen voting age population.

No effort was made by the department or the Census Bureau to verify a resident's legal status.

Legal or not, there is no denying the implications of the population statistics.

ANTHONY PISCIONERE, SPEC. COUNSEL, PORT CHESTER: There really is, there really is a lot of irony when you think about it. Why would you want to take a group and segment them into a district when in the short period of time they're going to have influence village-wide? It makes no sense to me.

TUCKER: The mayor of Port Chester says he is not ignoring the large Hispanic population, noting proudly that the village holds citizenship classes to help those who want to become citizens. As for what happens next, the village would like some dialogue with the Justice Department, something which to date has not happened -- Lou.


Joining me now from Port Chester is the village's mayor, Gerald Logan. Mr. Mayor, good to have you with us.

Well, you are in a heck of a mess here.

MAYOR GERALD LOGAN, PORT CHESTER, NEW YORK: Thanks for having me here, Lou.

LOGAN: Well, we appreciate it, Lou, and, you know, we're doing everything we can. We're doing our due diligence. We have our attorneys working with the Justice Department. We've had our own experts review all of the data that was received from the federal government.

DOBBS: You are ready for a lawsuit.

LOGAN: Yes, sir.

DOBBS: All right. Has anybody from the Justice Department come over and said, Mr. Mayor, we would like to talk to you about the situation here?

LOGAN: Not yet, but we're hoping. Our attorney spoke with them yesterday and said when are we going to meet.

DOBBS: You mean no one from the Justice Department has had the class, the courtesy, the common sense to just come in there and talk to you all about what might be a resolution here?

LOGAN: Not yet, sir. Not yet.

DOBBS: Unbelievable.

LOGAN: But we're hoping that's going to happen. We feel as though the dynamics have changed here since our data does not agree -- our experts, and we have some great experts reviewing their data.

DOBBS: Port Chester is -- I think I'm correct in saying -- not exactly a giant metropolis that's very difficult to discern here. You're a community of, what, about 30,000 folks?

LOGAN: Roughly speaking, yes. We are about 2.4 square miles, so we're a very small village in area, but we have a lot of people.

DOBBS: How many people in your community, Mr. Mayor, are Hispanic and how many are white and how many are black?

LOGAN: Well, the percentage of Hispanics has grown tremendously. I think the last census added up somewhere in the neighborhood of 46 percent. The number of voting age Hispanics is somewhere in the 20,000 range, but voting age could mean people that are 18 or older. They may not be citizens, they may not be registered to vote, but at 18 or older you are eligible to vote, so that's the statistics they're going by.

DOBBS: So you have never elected a Hispanic in your town even though they're almost half your population, right?

LOGAN: That is correct. Hispanics have run for office. They have not been successful.

DOBBS: All right.

LOGAN: But, obviously, that is going to change in the next several years as their population grows, they become citizens.

DOBBS: What percentage -- Mr. Mayor, what percentage of your town's businesses are owned by Hispanic businessmen and women?

LOGAN: Well, if you go along our main street area, there's a number of restaurants and shops and travel agencies and clothing and bakeries all Hispanic-operated. I have visited many of them, had meetings with them, and they're doing very well down there. They're very happy in their businesses. And so, you know....

DOBBS: So why haven't -- you would think with that, that at least one Hispanic would be voted in.

LOGAN: Well, it just hasn't worked that way, Lou. We have in the past asked many qualified Hispanics to run for office, but either because of their careers or their job commitments, they were not able to do so. There's a lot of fine Hispanics, very well-qualified. Many are attorneys that are well-qualified, so it's a question of time it's going to happen.

DOBBS: And what will happen next, it looks like, legal action, but the fact is, do you have a sense of what percentage of your Hispanic population there is legal?

LOGAN: At this point, Lou, it's hard to determine because they fall under the radar when the last census was done. Obviously, we don't know how many. We know there's probably in excess of 30,000 people here.

DOBBS: Yes. We should point out -- and I neglected to do so at the outset. I mean, the fact is that the census makes no distinction between a citizen and any other person here, whether you are here lawfully or unlawfully.

Mr. Mayor, we know you have got to be frustrated by this. I have to imagine your community is.

LOGAN: Yes.

DOBBS: It seems like you have racial harmony. In fact, it would seem to me that you have racial harmony that many might not expect given the rapid increase in the population of Hispanics over the course of the past 10, 15 years.

LOGAN: Well, that's true, Lou, and, you know, I have been working with Hispanic groups. I have a Congresswoman Nita Lowey coming here the end of January with staff and immigration people to talk to several hundred people that are now qualified to take the application process, and we're working with those people and we're going to get them to become citizens.

So that number is going to grow tremendously, and they want to be registered to vote. They want to be citizens, so it's a question of time. We are working our hearts out to try to work with them in any way we can.

DOBBS: OK. Well, we appreciate it, and we're going to be following up, by the way, to find out why the Justice Department is so interested in this case a priori, rather than trying to deal with it intelligently and trying to understand who the people are that the Census Bureau picked up. This is a great series of disconnects in this country.


Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.