Jeering Inaugural DOJ Lawyer Typical Bureaucratic Partisan Ideologue

Department of Justice Voting Section lawyer Daniel Freeman is the face of the modern regulatory state – radical, ideological, partisan, unafraid, and unconstrained. 

I introduced Freeman’s radicalism to readers of my book Injustice, but many more came to know him this week when he boasted on Twitter that he led the chorus of boos at Representative Paul Ryan’s appearance at the inauguration.

Freeman’s outburst gives the public a rare glimpse of how the federal regulatory state is often driven by fiercely radicalized partisans. Democrat party control has intersected with leftist ideology, which has then overspread the federal bureaucracy. Ancient civil service laws designed to prevent ideological hiring of federal employees are wholly ineffective against the modern organized left. 

And America is suffering for it. 

Consider that Freeman was instrumental in Eric Holder’s Justice Department attack on voter identification laws in South Carolina and Texas. He is also behind an outrageous attack on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett relating to voter identification laws in the Keystone State, an attack which the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee converted into a fundraising letter within 24 hours of Freeman’s DOJ action.

Imagine thousands of fellow travelers like Freeman scattered throughout the federal leviathan – at the EPA, Department of Labor, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, everywhere. 

Radicalism has become so fashionable inside the Beltway that the radicals don’t even know they are radicals – they think they are normal, just like everyone else they work with.

So when Obama campaign signs hang inside the Department of Justice Voting Section, no big deal. When a DOJ employee writes a report so shoddy on terrorist interrogation that Attorney General Michael Mukasey is forced to personally rewrite it, the Obama administration promotes her and sends her to a DHS job to further damage national security. When billions of your tax dollars are handed over in grants to radical groups and failing energy projects, nobody protests – because the bureaucrats all agree, it is good.

When the United States Supreme Court in Chevron v. NRDC empowered the nameless, faceless bureaucracy to write rules that Congress alone should be writing, it set in motion the framework for the modern leftist leviathan. DOJ Voting Section lawyer Daniel Freeman is one small example. 

But what of the elite professional class of experts like Freeman best suited to govern us? One problem, Freeman never practiced election law in his life before he came to the powerful DOJ Voting Section. He had more important credentials – he was an activist at the ACLU representing GITMO detainees and worked with the Yale Law School Democrats. 

The same story repeats over and over with DOJ hires since 2009 – a demonstrated leftist background became the key to employment at the explicit direction of the Assistant Attorney General.

The DOJ Inspector General is investigating this illegal conduct, but the draft report is currently being rewritten by higher-ups inside the Department. Heaven knows what will ever reach the public.

So what can be done about the tens of thousands of Daniel Freemans who get your money every two weeks? 

House Republicans have the constitutional power of the purse. The beast doesn’t get fed unless House Republicans say so. House Republicans also have the power of oversight. The Judiciary Committee could, for example, make an issue out of every one of the radicalized polices at DOJ.

Republicans in Congress could also hold fast in budget talks, demanding steep cuts in the size of the (now partisan) federal workforce. 

That’s what could be done. 

What will be done is an entirely different matter. Unfortunately, doing nothing empowers loud and obnoxious radical federal employees like Daniel Freeman.