Remember - - The Bush Administration Chooses These People For Leadership

The administration could have picked anyone in the country for key positions, and intentionally chose people like Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, or Michael Brown to run FEMA, or various insider lobbyists to manage regulatory agencies.

It wasn't that long ago that US climate change policy, with a noticeable tilt towards Big Oil and away from renewables, was line-edited by a former Exxon lobbyist, Philip Cooney.

But the recent outrage over John Tanner's supervision of the Justice Department's Voting Rights section takes the cake.

Tanner is the guy who recently said that obstructions. such as voter ID requirements, faced by elderly white voters was a more serious problem than it was for elderly minority voters because whites tended to live longer and minorities died earlier.

Don't believe that a Justice Department official could hold that sort of view, and verbalize it?

Here is the Washington Post story.