Civil rights commission yanks report critical of Bush rights record

The US Commission on Civil Rights, newly reconstituted with the addition of anew Republican chairman and another Republican appointee, has removed from its website a controversial staff report highly critical of the civil rights policies of the Bush administration.Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004was posted online in October before the November Presidential vote, although full Commission consideration of the document was put off until afterwards. At a November 12 meeting following the President's re-election the Commission split 4-4 on adoption. Outgoing Commission chair Mary Frances Berry and vice-chair Cruz Reynoso nonetheless forwarded the unendorsed report to President Bush in a November 30 letter as a final act before their end-of-term resignations. At its January 7, 2005 policy meeting the Commission, with new Republican appointees Gerald Reynolds (chair) and Ashley Taylor, adopted what the Commission website Friday called "a new policy on the public release and posting of reports and Commission documents." The website notice goes on to explain that "To comply with that new policy, the website has been updated and several draft reports that failed to receive a majority of Commissioners' votes have been removed." Although an obvious link to the report on the Commission's home page is now gone, the text of the report is still accessible on other parts of the site. The Commission indicates that copies of the removed draft report and others like it are available from the Commission upon request.

• Pictured above: Bush Flunkey - Civil Rights Commission Chairman Gerald Reynolds who said: "Affirmative action is the big lie. It is a corrupt system of preferences, set-asides and quotas, a concept invented by regulators and reinvented by political interest groups seeking money and power."[more]
• Commission on Civil Rights: Bush has Failed to Lead and Failed to Act [more]
• Dowload the report: Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001–2004 [PDF]