Berry's last valiant stand for civil rights enforcement
No way was Dubya going to let the likes of Mary Frances Berry call him out any longer. This week in a not-so-shocking move, President George W. Bush replaced Berry, the longtime chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, with Gerald A. Reynolds, a Kansas City regulatory attorney who, amid protests from women and civil rights groups, served out a recess appointment in 2003 as head of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education. Berry, however, is not going gently into the noxious night. She argues that she and fellow commission member and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso, who is also being replaced, have until midnight Jan. 21, 2005 to finish their terms. I wouldn't be surprised if Berry, 66, who successfully sued President Ronald Reagan and won her spot back on the commission after he fired her in 1984, sues Bush too. To be sure, I'd look forward to it -- because chances are that may be one of the last times that many of us will get to see a black person on that commission put up a fight that is driven by a passion for concerns about what is happening to civil rights in this country. What's happening doesn't bode well for those rights -- rights that so many of our forebears lost their lives over. In a recent 165-page report critiquing the Bush administration's civil rights record, the commission basically said that Bush has dragged his feet on civil rights enforcement and, in many cases, has worked harder to recast such rights rather than protect them. [more]