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Biden taps voting rights advocate Kristen Clarke for senior DOJ role

Kristen Clarke
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Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting and civil rights advocate, was nominated Thursday to serve as President-elect Joe Biden's assistant attorney general for civil rights.

If confirmed by the Senate, Clarke will lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, helping to enforce civil rights laws and ensure equal justice for all Americans. She currently serves as president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national nonprofit that played a critical role during the 2020 elections.

The Lawyers' Committee helped voters navigate changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, understand voting procedures and safeguard against voter intimidation. The organization's Election Protection hotline, available in 11 languages, fielded a record-high 229,000 calls by Nov. 3.


"This job is about justice. It's about equality. And under our DOJ, we'll move closer to the TRUE meaning of equal justice under law," Clarke tweeted, adding that she was honored to have been nominated.

Clarke is no stranger to the Justice Department. Before leading the Lawyers' Committee, she was an attorney in the Civil Rights Division and a federal prosecutor in its Criminal Section. While there, she worked on cases involving hate crimes, human trafficking and police misconduct. She also worked in the Voting Section on voting rights and redistricting issues.

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Previously, she worked in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office and at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

"Kristen Clarke is a force of nature. She has been working tirelessly, around the clock, morning, noon and night to ensure that all Americans share the same rights and privileges as equal members of our society," said Shira Scheindlin, a federal judge in New York and co-chair of the Lawyers' Committee's board.

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Podcast: How do police feel about gun control?

Podcast: How do police feel about gun control?

Jesus "Eddie" Campa, former Chief Deputy of the El Paso County Sheriff's Department and former Chief of Police for Marshall Texas, discusses the recent school shooting in Uvalde and how loose restrictions on gun ownership complicate the lives of law enforcement on this episode of YDHTY.

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Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

There's something natural and organic about perceiving that the people in power are out to advance their own interests. It's in part because it’s often true. Governments actually do keep secrets from the public. Politicians engage in scandals. There often is corruption at high levels. So, we don't want citizens in a democracy to be too trusting of their politicians. It's healthy to be skeptical of the state and its real abuses and tendencies towards secrecy. The danger is when this distrust gets redirected, not toward the state, but targets innocent people who are not actually responsible for people's problems.

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Your Take:  The Price of Freedom

Your Take: The Price of Freedom

Our question about the price of freedom received a light response. We asked:

What price have you, your friends or your family paid for the freedom we enjoy? And what price would you willingly pay?

It was a question born out of the horror of images from Ukraine. We hope that the news about the Jan. 6 commission and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination was so riveting that this question was overlooked. We considered another possibility that the images were so traumatic, that our readers didn’t want to consider the question for themselves. We saw the price Ukrainians paid.

One response came from a veteran who noted that being willing to pay the ultimate price for one’s country and surviving was a gift that was repaid over and over throughout his life. “I know exactly what it is like to accept that you are a dead man,” he said. What most closely mirrored my own experience was a respondent who noted her lack of payment in blood, sweat or tears, yet chose to volunteer in helping others exercise their freedom.

Personally, my price includes service to our nation, too. The price I paid was the loss of my former life, which included a husband, a home and a seemingly secure job to enter the political fray with a message of partisan healing and hope for the future. This work isn’t risking my life, but it’s the price I’ve paid.

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Given the earnest question we asked, and the meager responses, I am also left wondering if we think at all about the price of freedom? Or have we all become so entitled to our freedom that we fail to defend freedom for others? Or was the question poorly timed?

I read another respondent’s words as an indicator of his pacifism. And another veteran who simply stated his years of service. And that was it. Four responses to a question that lives in my heart every day. We look forward to hearing Your Take on other topics. Feel free to share questions to which you’d like to respond.

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No, autocracies don't make economies great

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No, autocracies don't make economies great

Tom G. Palmer has been involved in the advance of democratic free-market policies and reforms around the globe for more than three decades. He is executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

One argument frequently advanced for abandoning the messy business of democratic deliberation is that all those checks and balances, hearings and debates, judicial review and individual rights get in the way of development. What’s needed is action, not more empty debate or selfish individualism!

In the words of European autocrat Viktor Orbán, “No policy-specific debates are needed now, the alternatives in front of us are obvious…[W]e need to understand that for rebuilding the economy it is not theories that are needed but rather thirty robust lads who start working to implement what we all know needs to be done.” See! Just thirty robust lads and one far-sighted overseer and you’re on the way to a great economy!

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Podcast: A right-wing perspective on Jan. 6th and the 2020 election

Podcast: A right-wing perspective on Jan. 6th and the 2020 election

Peter Wood is an anthropologist and president of the National Association of Scholars. He believes—like many Americans on the right—that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and the January 6th riots were incited by the left in collusion with the FBI. He’s also the author of a new book called Wrath: America Enraged, which wrestles with our politics of anger and counsels conservatives on how to respond to perceived aggression.

Where does America go from here? In this episode, Peter joins Ciaran O’Connor for a frank conversation about the role of anger in our politics as well as the nature of truth, trust, and conspiracy theories.

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