The Lonely Centrist has this provocative post responding to the latest Washington Post article on politics in the voting rights section of the Justice Department. After discussing the careers of many of the former DOJ lawyers who have left and now criticized the department, the Lonely Centrist concludes: “None of this is to say that these folks are wrong on the merits in the current dispute. But let’s not have a bunch of dewey-eyed odes to the impartial civil servants of the Voting Rights Section.” It would be nice to be able to look at the career path of the Lonely Centrist as well to ferret out any potential bias. But we can’t, because he or she chooses to blog anonymously. To paraphrase Justice Scalia from his dissent in McIntyre, “I can imagine no reason why an anonymous [blog post] is any more honorable, as a general matter, than an anonymous phone call or an anonymous letter. It facilitates wrong by eliminating accountability, which is ordinarily the very purpose of the anonymity.”
UPDATE: Over at the election law listserv, there is an interesting debate on the Lonely Centrist’s comments, and his anonymity. See here and scroll down near the bottom.