Bush and His Evil Minions^™ wanted to stack the Civil Rights commission. The problem? The law forbade any more than 4 of the 8members being of one party.

Bush’s solution was to have two of the Republicansregister as independent, and then appoint two more Republicans.

Well, now the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has reviewed the 1957 Civil Rights Act that established the commission, along with the 1983 changes designed to forstall Ronald “What me, Racist” Reagan doing what Bush just did.

In sum, the situation that precipitated Congress’ 1983 revision of the Civil Rights Commission – the presidential firing of five of the then six sitting commissioners – is arguably indistinguishable from the changes in party registrations that has effectively allowed the President to establish a majority of his political in control of the Commission. The intent of the 1983 restructuring, as confirmed by the Wilson decision, was to preclude similar juggling of the of the Commission’s statutory appointments process. In light of that history, together with the recognition of the Wilson court of the central importance of independence of the central importance of independence to the accomplishment of the Commission’s mission, it is likely that a reviewing court would find the OLC opinion unpersuasive and the recent appointments violative of the political balance requirements of the statute.

In English, it’s pretty clear that they just ignored the law because they felt like it.