History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened. Benjamin Franklin

Addendum No. 2 to: Is Lady Justice Peeking?

The Washington Post has an article on the Justice Department’s selective enforcement of the National Voting Rights Act entitled

A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration.

The article goes on to point out that Christopher Coates, the aforementioned veteran Justice Department lawyer, is not so easily dismissed by critics as was J. Christian Adams, himself a former DOJ lawyer.

Coates has a pedigree different from that of many conservatives. He was hired at Justice during the Clinton administration in 1996 and had worked for the American Civil Liberties Union. Sheldon Bradshaw, a high-level Civil Rights Division official in the Bush administration, said Coates “is nonpartisan in how he enforces voting rights laws.”

Perhaps the Washington Post is ready to relinquish its blindfold and return it to Lady Justice?