It looks like the now-resigned but newly-reassigned former chief of the Voting Section in the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division, John “Minorities Die First” Tanner, may be having trouble letting go.
The BRAD BLOG received the following email from a DoJ insider who has requested anonymity. We’ve confirmed the details with another insider DoJ source…
John Tanner, the chief that “resigned immediately†last Friday after extreme controversy seems to have not gotten the memo to depart. Tanner has been lingering in the chief’s office playing on his computer for the last two days. He claims to have needed time to “pack†but there is nothing left to pack. Could the announcement that he was leaving be a ruse to buy some Congressional peace??
In a follow up note, the source added some detail that the lingering Tanner “had all weekend to pack,” but “had very very little actually to pack as he only has one file cabinet in his office.”
No doubt, that file cabinet is chock-full of letters to Ohio election officials telling them they did a swell job in 2004.
A second DoJ source confirms the sorry tale. That source told The BRAD BLOG, that Tanner “has been in his office for the last two days” and “he has not been talking to anybody.”
“He is ostensibly packing his office, but he has been there,” the source told us, before both offered still more insight on the very different way that others were forced, by Tanner, to leave the section in a hurry when their time was up, and on the fete being held tonight by staffers, current and former, in his dishonor…
The second source described how Tanner pushed previous outgoing colleagues out the door when they were similarly “reassigned.”
“Bob Berman was not even allowed to clear out his desk,” when he was forced out, just after Tanner became Voting Section chief, the source explained, adding that someone else “was told to clean out his desk for him.”
Berman was one of the dissenters in the now infamous Georgia Photo ID case where the majority of Voting Section career staffers recommended against approving the new law under the Voting Rights Act, since, they argued, it would cause minority voter disenfranchisement in the state. Nonetheless, Tanner overruled the vast-majority advice of his staff, Berman was moved out shortly thereafter, and two federal judges would ultimately find the law unconstitutional on the grounds that it amounted to little more than a modern day Jim Crow era poll tax.
Tanner had been answering a question about that very case, at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles last October, when he made his now infamous comments that “minorities don’t grow elderly the way white people do. They die first.” The firestorm in the wake of those comments, as originally video-taped and reported by The BRAD BLOG, ultimately led to his undoing.
Our first source confirmed the Berman story, saying that “Tanner took him to coffee and told him he had a couple of hours to hit the road.”
As well, another “reassigned” staffer in the department was apparently given just hours by Tanner, to clean out his desk and hit the bricks.
But none of that has kept the overjoyed Voting Section staffers — even some of whom had left after things “went South” — from celebrating. They were out in force tonight, celebrating Tanner’s “departure” (well, if he ever gets out, anyway) at DC’s posh Ozio Martini and Cigar Bar Lounge. Party on, boys! Hope you smoked one for us…
UPDATE 12/19/07: The next morning. And one of our sources writes us to say: “WTF…he’s here today, too?!?”
UPDATE 12/21/07: And he’s still there on the Friday before Xmas! A full week after he notified his staff that he was resigning last Friday “effective immediately”! Fresh details now here…
Sounds like another seven-level hard drive erase to me. You know, to “kill a virus”, like what Rove’s buddies just pulled. Hope they keep backups.
Perhaps he’s waiting for the new pearl Harbor event … Whatta Fuckin Asshole …
Oh. Pathetic… and kinda creepy.
Maybe he’s going to pull a Budd Dwyer on us?
I’m sure he’s getting rid of evidence.
Why wasn’t the computer seized immediately/who the hell let him back in the building?
This get’s me thinking.
Q: What is the one thing that all this corruption has in common?
A: Electricity.
Think about it, the destruction of the Constitution and the abuse of executive power, war profiteering… It all comes back to electricity.
You want to get the bastard out of the office? Shut off the electricity.
You want to get your voting rights back from the criminals? Shut off the electricity.
You want to keep your private data from being stolen from databases? Shut off the electricity.
You want to avoid the Supreme Court from selecting America’s next president? Shut off the electricity.
You want to stop hearing propaganda, lies, fluff stories from corporate owned media? Shut off the electricity.
It’s high time for America to invest in wire snippers.
I used to think a hammer was what we needed to fix the problem, but the more I think about it, it’s simple. No power at the plug, no voting machine can plug in!
Forget everything else.
The other thing is that, this next election. We can’t just allow law enforcement and the media to ignore when problems occur, this is clearly a pattern, and our country can’t take corruption much longer. It’s like the penalty for rigging elections is two years, meanwhile the guy they get elected gets to stay in power. That’s utter crap. By the time the guy that got elected has finished destroying the country, the guy that got two years for rigging an election is out and doing it again.
Does anyone see a problem here?
…and seized while it was on btw
yep … deletin’ emails and shreddin’ things is haaarrrddd weeerrrkkk.
He is probably being paid overtime while he is deleting and shredding.
These are “shit eatin’ dawgs” as they say in southern Bullshitistan.
I guess we can add “Get tannie new job at NAACP before he dies” to the list of things to do at the
WhiteWhat House.Only one inaccuracy in the story above.
Ozio is not, at least in my humble opinion and at least by Washington standards, “posh.”
More than a little creepy that folks are leaking the location of our happy hours to the blogosphere…
But, yes, John Tanner was in the office yesterday, though he didn’t seem to be talking to anybody.
Eisenhower building fire…that won’t be the last one
#11
It’s this type of thinking that gets us here…426,401 homes enter foreclosure in the past two months. Yeah, it’s only a 68% increase over last November. I need a martini.
#13
It’s just a frickin’ bar where some of D.C.’s overwhelmingly white collar workforce gather for drinks after work from time to time. Happy hour is $5 Cosmos and $6 martinis. A burger is $8.95.
That doesn’t sound overly upscale/posh, does it? And folks can afford it on GS-9 to GS-13 paychecks, which is where the vast majority of us sit on the payscale.
I suggest you read Bagdad Burning over your next $6 happy hour martini.
Americans out of touch?….nnaaaaahhh.
#15 —
I do. In fact, I’ve had a crush on Riverbend for several years now.
Well who will be surprised when they hear that the White House cannot supply Congress, the Courts or the Justice Department with the documents about the destroyed tapes or the telecom companies they are requesting because of the problems created in the EEOB fire. It may be quite some before everything is back in order and the documentation can be supplied.
Of course that is certainly understandable and everybody should certainly understand.
I do!
Dredd 10.0 – Heeeehe
Source say;
Fire in the electric room @ the eeoc was caused by over loading of a compressor that supplies air to cheney’s penis pump. It is suspected he was viewing the missing tapes. . .
I’m picturin’ this ole boy sittin’ in the bed of a pickup in his Carhartts, ax handle in hand, cruisin’ for some buck nigra to tune up.
Maybe John is lonely — he doesn’t want to leave his “special friend” Susanna Lorenzo-Giguere.
Can you imagine the GOP hypocracy.
Civil rights took a hit with this quasi nazi in charge; but, to be honored for the lack of sincere work not done. This guy and his cohorts have no shame, no soul and no right to call themselves Americans.
mr.ed Can ya be l’il more specific as to whom ya had in mind with the VIOLENT THREAT?
THE CONSTITUTION +
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION= gop MISSION ACCOMPLISHEDTHE CONSTITUTION+EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION= gop MISSION ACCOMPLISHED{Please fix #23 with above}
Some here will remember the Olviedo Voice thread. It happened at about the apex of bushie power (70% favorable ratings for preznit blush).
During that thread I went back and forth with the editor of that Florida paper (Feeney’s home town paper), pointing out that he had furnished certain evangelical writers with tools to propagate propaganda. China was involved, powerful folk in California were involved, and of course the feeney weenie was involved.
It was a glimpse into the vastness of the right wing plots that had been planned for decades and were finally being played out.
Sometime after that came revelations in the MSM of the government paying “journalists” to write stories, and thousand other unf**king believable unAmerican things.
Lets face it, we could see Amurka even in the dark before others could see it. And I was attacked shortly after that by the gummit.
Feeney et al. were able to get IRS to go after me, like they did Sharpton and many others … actually an incredible host of others.
Like the Department of
JusticeJust Us was corrupted, so was the IRS. But who is reporting that story? Nobody … yet.Look at filings in the Tax Court since bushiedom:
Yep, this is the boston tea party pattern, but my focus is on who they are going after and who is fighting back.
Take note that 99% of Tax Court cases are won by the IRS … which is
justicejust us in Amurka.To put it in perspective, if your home is foreclosed upon, and you owed 50,000 on it, but the bank just took the property and let you move on, they IRS says you just had a 50,000 income! (actually the Tax Court is the one who thought this up as I remember) and you have to pay income taxes on 50,000 right after you have been forclosed upon.
Boston Tea Party was an American event, not an Amurkan even. Remember that.
What a sin to get rid of this guy now,.. with the 2008 election coming up and all. Maybe they are not really getting rid of him just going through the motions.
When it come to brainstorming the disenfranchisement of Democratic Party inclined voters this guy is a gold star KKKarl Rovian ace.
Heck give him a stealth office in the sub-basement dungeon under the White House and let him toil away to screw up/tamper with the 2008 vote count for President, Senate and the House.
Someone should call security and get him out of there. For all anyone knows he’s not working at his computer…he’s deleting it.