At the end of a week in which most of Senator Barack Obama’s press came from pundit musings on his willingness to toughen up his act and distinguish himself from his rivals, came a freebie from the Department of Justice.

Speaking to a Latino group in Los Angeles earlier this month, John Tanner, the chief of the DoJ’s civil rights division said that elderly voters are most likely to be disenfranchised by photo ID requirements designed to ward off election fraud.  He then concluded, with jaw-dropping nonchalance, that the problem does not extend to minority voters because they die before reaching old age.

Wow.

Obama has called for Tanner to step down and wrote a letter to his boss, acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, requesting that Tanner be replaced.

“This administration has shown very little interest in making sure that all people have equal access to the ballot box,” Obama said in a telephone interview with the New York Times. “It’s important for all of us to embrace the basic notion that we should try to make voting easier, not harder.”

Right. And while Tanner might be lauded for pointing out inequities in health care in this country, using them as a defense for the department’s ass-backwards policies is revolting. Universal health care, anyone?

Granted, Obama doesn’t exactly score any points off Hillary on this one.  After all, I’m sure she wants elderly minorities to vote, too.  

But the disenfranchisement of minority voters is an issue the dems tend to scream loudest about after they’ve lost a really big election.  It needs to get play now, and let’s hope this little glimpse into an alarmingly deteriorated Department of Justice does the trick.