The private memo, dated July 1, 1980, was written by Mr. Gingrich on his official House of Representatives stationery and was sent to then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, Bill Casey, who would later become President Reagan’s CIA Director.

In the memo, Mr. Gingrich urges Governor Reagan’s campaign to reconsider its decision not to speak to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Convention.

“This is a great opportunity to prove that a conservative Republican can speak to the hearts and pocketbooks of Black Americans,” Gingrich urged in the memo.

The memorandum goes on to explain that a decision not to speak at the NAACP convention would insult African American voters and be a “tragedy” for the nation:

Many middle class Black Americans who would vote for Reagan will be insulted by his non-attendance.  I urge you to schedule the speech and talk about Kemp’s Inner City Jobs Bill, which Kilpatrick and George Will have both endorsed as acceptably conservative.

Failure to attend the NAACP convention will be a tragedy for Gov. Reagan and the country.  Symbolic events are vital.  Thank you for considering this.

The 1980 Gingrich memorandum aligns with comments the former Speaker has made more recently.

At a January 5, 2012 event in Plymouth, New Hampshire, Mr. Gingrich said that if he were invited to speak to the NAACP he would accept:

And so, I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention to talk about why the African American community should demand pay checks and not be satisfied with food stamps. And I’ll go to them and I’ll explain a brand new social security opportunity for young people, which would be particularly good for African American males, because they’re the group that gets the smallest return on social security because they have the shortest life span. And under social security today, you don’t build up an estate, but if you’re allowed to build up an estate, if your tax money went into your savings and it was your money, if something happened to you, your family got you restate, the difference in transfer of wealth to the black community would be amazing.

Those and subsequent comments have sparked controversy among liberal critics who have taken issue with Mr. Gingrich’s contention that President Barack Obama has been America’s greatest “Food Stamp President,” a reference to Mr. Obama’s unprecedented expansion of the food stamp program (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Mr. Gingrich’s 1980 plea that the Reagan campaign should reach out to the NAACP and make inroads with black voters was just the first of many he has made to GOP candidates over many years.

As ABC News has reported, in his book Real Change, Mr. Gingrich criticized President George W. Bush’s “failure to address the NAACP,” which according to Gingrich, sent a “clear signal to the African American community that Republicans did not see them as worthy of engagement in dialogue.”

Also, in 2008, Mr. Gingrich criticized those 2008 Republican presidential candidates who declined to participate in a black voter forum hosted by Tavis Smiley.

Still, while it’s unlikely that Mr. Gingrich’s 1980 private memorandum urging the Reagan campaign to speak at the NAACP convention will change the minds of those determined to play the race card against him, the document reveals that Mr. Gingrich’s desire to restore the historic relationship between the Republican Party and black voters extends over three decades.

Attorney General Eric Holder got a lot wrong in his speech in Columbia, South Carolina, but two things in particular: 1) that voter fraud is rare and 2) that South Carolina’s voter laws are racist, not only by their intent, but by their effect.

Holder told his audience that included the NAACP top brass:

… I learned early in my legal career – when I actually investigated and prosecuted voting-fraud cases – making voter registration easier is simply not likely, by itself, to make our elections more susceptible to fraud. Indeed, responsible parties on all sides of this debate have acknowledged that in-person voting fraud is uncommon.

But Alabama Democrat (and black) former congressman Artur Davis says that, on the contrary, voter fraud is far more common than surmised. Indeed, the very day that Holder spoke in South Carolina The Daily Caller broke a story highlighting the criminal voter fraud conducted by the NAACP in Mississippi and Ohio. Democrats, including Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, Pittsburgh District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., and Miami, FL. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, have all prosecuted the voter fraud that Holder says is rare. Voter I.D. would hamper the ease with which voter fraud could be committed.

In speaking of voter I.D., “we concluded that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect,” Holder told the audience in South Carolina, but he offers no evidence for his claim. Perhaps that’s because the evidence that requiring a photo I.D. has an “unfair impact on minority voters” is utterly lacking. The Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez really had to stretch in South Carolina’s case because, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “8.4% of the state’s registered white voters lack photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters.” Only in Eric Holder’s so-called Justice Department is the normal variance between different racial groups in identification documents tantamount to disparate racial impact while the coordinated thuggish behavior of the New Black Panthers against white voters or the discrimination against white voters in Guam were nothing to see. In South Carolina Holder brags about “a record number of new investigations—more than 100 in the last fiscal year” but somehow those two instances didn’t make the cut. Holder warned of “both overt and subtle forms of discrimination [that] remain all too common,” but the subtle forms of discrimination are simply too subtle to be noticed while the overt discrimination is too obvious to be actionable.

Holder fails to understand that this is not the South Carolina of the 1960s, the Confederate flag flying over the capitol notwithstanding. Indeed Tim Scott, one of the most popular congressmen in the Republican Party, is a black man who represents a congressional district that is 75% white. This is an achievement that no Democrat has ever accomplished in the South (or much of elsewhere for that matter) because of the persistent folly of the Voting Rights Act, which, by making congressional districts as black as possible have diluted the need for black congressmen to build bridges across the racial divide and limited their effect on the national conversation, as Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has noted. President Obama, Eric Holder’s boss, must know this well, having been trounced in his ill-considered bid to replace Bobbie Rush. It was only when he moved out to the ‘burbs and courted white voters that he began to have an effect.

Perhaps Holder doesn’t understand the achievement made in South Carolina because  Holder’s roots don’t extend south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but from the Barbados and New York City. How uncomfortable it must be for Holder that the state that once enshrined the superiority of the white race in its constitution is now governed by Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first non-white governor. Rather than celebrate these victories for what they are, as evidence that South Carolina, like the rest of America, has turned from the racism that made a Civil Rights Act necessary. Eric Holder seems to believe he is still living in Jim Crow America.

Dr. King used non-violent protest, and an appeal to universal principles, to bring Americans together. His birthday should be a holiday that unites us.

Instead, Democrats are using it to divide Americans.

Consider the sermon offered by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett yesterday, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. King preached. She told the audience: “Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because [of] the Republicans in Congress.”

Those in the audience laughed and applauded at Jarret’s brazen–and false–partisan attack.

Democrats have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle to portray Republicans as the villains, when in fact most segregationists were Democrats. Republicans, in fact, voted for civil rights laws in greater proportions than Democrats. Moreover, Dr. King himself had been a Republican. Regardless, Dr. King was careful not to divide Americans along party lines in his struggle for justice–nor would he approve of it today.

Another Obama administration official who is exploiting Dr. King’s memory for political gain is Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the holiday to renew his attack on voter ID laws in South Carolina, falsely claiming they are racially discriminatory.

It is Holder, in fact, who practices racial discrimination by refusing to apply voting laws equally, notably in the New Black Panther Party case, an open-and-shut example of voter intimidation.

Holder appears to be coordinating his battle against voter ID laws with the (NAACP), which likewise exploited Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for political purposes. (The NAACP is not non-partisan when it comes to voting rights; it only cares about Democrats, as I learned firsthand last July.)

Dr. King cared passionately about voting rights, but never would have condoned voter fraud, which does occur and which voter ID laws–likewise passed by Democrats, whom the NAACP is not targeting–aim to prevent.

Perhaps most insidious of all is the effort by Democrats and their radical allies in the Occupy movement to turn Dr. King’s legacy into an opportunity to set the “99 percent” against the “1 percent.” That was the message at “Occupy the Dream” services in Chicago, where one incendiary pastor even encouraged people to seize homes.

It is true that Dr. King turned his attention to poverty, in Chicago and elsewhere, in the years before he was brutally cut down. He pushed for an end to residential segregation, and for the introduction of open-housing laws.

But Dr. King would never have advocated theft or violence to property. And though he favored economic redistribution, Dr. King opposed the violent tactics, bigotry and criminality often seen at Occupy demonstrators.

There is no doubt that Dr. King would have seen the election of America’s first black president as a partial fulfillment of his dream. But he would have rejected the divisive rhetoric of the Obama administration, which is stoking class resentment and playing up past racial divisions for political gain.

Attorney General Holder once called America a nation of racial “cowards.” On Dr. King’s birthday, let us celebrate his courage–and ours.

Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech this week declaring that vote fraud is “uncommon.”  He also said in an interview to The Washington Post, “You constantly hear about voter fraud … but you don’t see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.” Eric Holder, along with others on the left, is worried that the truth will get out.  Vote fraud denial is a project of the radical left to associate voter ID and other electoral reforms with racism of the past like Jim Crow, poll taxes, the KKK. Even comparisons to torturing and killing children have been made.

At least, we have some reasonable people of the progressive persuasion, like former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis and current Rhode Island state Senator Harold Metts, who both recognize that vote fraud occurs and support voter ID.  There is not only fraud committed by one party against another.

Democrats have committed fraud against members of their own party in primaries.  While Holder is focusing on trying to explain how Fast and Furious could have happened, people like Senator Metts has said, “For decades many of us have heard complaints about voter fraud … There have been numerous anecdotal complaints that have spanned the last two decades that have been ignored.”

The truth is that vote fraud is real, has occurred across the country in recent years and election reforms are necessary.  The left claims no one ever gets convicted or persecuted for vote fraud. RNLA did a survey to find examples in a wide variety of states just by looking on the Internet.  Predictably, the left has attacked the RNLA survey while missing the point, vote fraud is everywhere if you look for it.

Of course, some of the leading deniers have committed vote fraud themselves in the past.

Example #1: Al Sharpton

MSNBC has launched a segment titled, “Block the Vote” which is spearheaded by Sharpton, who himself has committed vote fraud to win elections.

Example #2: Lessadolla Sowers

This Mississippi Tunica County NAACP executive board member was found guilty of ten counts of vote fraud.  This is a vote fraud conviction of a leader of the NAACP, while the same organization has launched protests and issued a report calling vote fraud rare.

What the RNLA found is no surprise to the American public, which in large proportions, supports electoral reforms to prevent fraud — like voter ID. Democrats supported voter ID in Rhode Island and even liberal leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter urged people to “support voter ID laws that make it easy to vote but tough to cheat.”

Even a union election recently held by the liberal International Association of Machinists had a sign up saying “picture ID required to vote.”  Vote fraud is a widespread problem and the vote fraud map by the RNLA shows this.

It is unfortunate that people like Eric Holder see investigating voter ID laws in Texas as a political issue when the Supreme Court had previously ruled similar laws constitutional.  When Holder’s boss (President Obama) is so unpopular that the left decides to try and scare their base into voting by using electoral reforms (as the President might not be able to win a legal election), it tells you a lot.

Giving speeches like Holder delivered this week is not what the Attorney General should be doing.  It seems there are more reasons than Fast and Furious to lose confidence and call for the resignation of the Attorney General.

Project Vote appears to be directing DOJ resources toward particular states; is having meetings with DOJ staff; and is even recommending lawyers to work in the Justice Department Voting Section that will oversee the 2012 presidential election.

Project Vote also appears to have played a role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration, which aims to force the state to increase voter registration in welfare agencies and drug treatment offices.

The documents also appear to show that Project Vote receives special access to, and meetings with, DOJ officials. So do other voter fraud-deniers, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Tova Wang at Demos; and the Brennan Center for Justice. I write about numerous similar instances in my book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.

These activist groups have enjoyed access to the top political appointees at DOJ over voting–including Aaron McCree Lewis, in the Office of the Attorney General; Sam Hirsch, Deputy Associate Attorney General; and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of voting issues, Matthew Colangelo.

Emails obtained by Judicial Watch also suggest that Project Vote was directing complaints to the persons at DOJ responsible for deploying election monitoring resources, urging them to devote resources to races around the country–particularly where Tea Party groups were active in efforts to combat voter fraud.

On February 23, 2010, Estelle Rogers, head of Project Vote and a former ACORN lawyer, also urged Voting Section Chief Chris Herren to hire two particular ACORN-approved attorneys to work in the Justice Department Voting Section. “Now that the application period has closed, I want to heartily recommend two candidates to you,” she wrote.

“Thanks very much Estelle,” Herren wrote back.

Eventually, the Voting Section in fact hired numerous lawyers from left-wing groups, such as those that were dedicated to aggressive enforcement of the welfare agency voter registration provisions of Motor Voter. The relevant emails obtained by Judicial Watch are redacted, so we don’t know if the individuals hired were the same ones suggested by Rogers. However, we do know that DOJ hired attorneys expert in Motor Voter–such as Bradley Heard and Elizabeth Westfall, who brought lawsuits while at the Advancement Project that stopped Colorado and Michigan from purging voter rolls of ineligible voters prior to the 2008 Presidential election.

But that isn’t the worst of it. Other documents suggest that a swarm of left-wing groups is meeting regularly with top DOJ election officials. The documents show these groups urging the DOJ to open investigations into particular people, states and events.

For example, Rogers met with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes to discuss lawsuits under Section 7 of the Motor Voter law. Previously, Fernandes had announced her unwillingness to enforce portions of the same law designed to ensure dead voters or ineligible felons were not on the rolls. Former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates testified under oath that he had recommended investigations into eight states with possibly corrupted voter rolls, but Fernandes and other Obama appointees had spiked the investigations.

Instead, the documents show pleasing Project Vote was a DOJ priority.

In an October 10, 2010 email, Rogers made clear that she wanted the DOJ to take action against then-Senate candidate Mark Kirk in Illinois  (Rogers incorrectly refers to him “Paul” Kirk). Rogers places the words “voter integrity” in quotes, as if fictional.  Herren respondes: “Hi Estelle….We are also receiving complaints from various sources. For all these, we are reviewing and taking action as appropriate. If you have any issues that come up that you want us to be aware of, please feel free to shoot us an email (to Brian [Heffernan], Bert and I) – that’s the easiest way to keep track of the many things coming in the door.”

The “many things” include complaints made by left-wing groups about voter integrity and Tea Party efforts.

The documents reveal how left-wing civil rights groups work against Republican or conservative candidates by attempting to leverage law enforcement against them. These groups have a cozy relationship with the Obama Justice Department, and know just who to call if they want something done against someone like Mark Kirk.

The documents that Project Vote sent to the DOJ also include allegations against a client of mine, True the Vote.  That might explain why the Justice Department took no action on a complaint that True the Vote sent DOJ in October 2010 documenting that self-professed non-citizens were registering to vote in Houston.  We even sent documents showing that applicants marked “no” to questions about whether they were US Citizens.

True the Vote didn’t get the kind responsive emails that Project Vote did.  They didn’t get special meetings with Voting Section staff and political appointees like Project Vote did.  They didn’t receive any telephone calls, requests for more documents, interview requests, nothing.  In fact, they didn’t get any response from Justice.  Of course the most obvious difference in how Justice treated Project Vote compared with True the Vote is that DOJ launched a series of enforcement efforts against Rhode Island and Louisiana, just like Project Vote wanted.  Against officials in Texas with the corrupted voter rolls, DOJ did nothing.

These emails are just the tip of the iceberg. The emails refer to other emails, not disclosed by DOJ, which involve employees not within the scope of the request.  When Judicial Watch expands the FOIA to cast a wider net, and more employees that are named in the emails, more evidence of the coordination between the ACORN affiliate and your Justice Department’s Voting Section is likely to be found.

Holder claimed that the Department of Justice would be “fair” in reviewing such laws, but also quoted a misleading charge made by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who claimed there was a “systematic attempt” to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights. Holder specifically singled out “new photo identification requirements” in Texas and South Carolina, and applauded Maine’s voters for preserving same-day registration.

The fact is that requiring voters to provide photo identification is standard practice in much of the democratic world–even, and especially, in poor countries with a history of struggle against racism and colonialism.

In South Africa, for example, where black people were denied the vote until 1994, the new democratic government requires every registered voter–black or white, rich or poor–to bring official photo ID to the polls.

Indians show photo ID to vote (Photo credit: AP/Biswaranjan Rout)

India’s election commission issues a special photo identification card to voters when they register, which they must present at the polls:

The Election Commission of India has made voter identification mandatory at the time of poll. The electors have to identify themselves with either Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Commission or any other documentary proof as prescribed by the Commission.

In Europe, the official EU Handbook for Election Observation acknowledges that voters are required to show identification in many countries, and suggests that observers verify that all voters are subject to the same ID check (166). Even the Carter Center for Human Rights, which monitors democratic elections all over the world, identifies “a requirement for identification” as a “reasonable limitation” on universal suffrage.

(Update: That’s not to say international practice should govern American practice at the federal, state, or local level, but it certainly undermines the notion that photo identification is somehow motivated by a desire to keep people from exercising their rights. The opposite is true: voter ID laws are intended to protect voters’ rights against fraud and manipulation by those who would subvert their will.)

The idea that requiring American voters to show photo identification when they vote is racist is simply absurd. It’s a requirement enforced regularly by Holder’s labor union allies. It’s also a requirement demanded by federal agencies that provide welfare and other benefits. If there’s no destitute South African too poor to obtain photo ID, there is surely no American who deserves pity for failing to obtain the same in order to vote.

Holder’s attack on photo identification is crude partisanship, a fact made clear by his attack on Texas’s new congressional map. The federal government, he proudly notes, is challenging Republican-controlled Texas for failing to provide adequate representation for Hispanic voters. Yet Holder has ignored Illinois, where his fellow Democrats have cut Hispanics out of redistricting, and Republicans have tried to challenge the map in court.

Holder cited a Republican in Maryland who was convicted of trying to trick black voters into staying home. Yet there is also ample evidence of voter fraud by Democrats–such as in the 2008 primary in Indiana, or in the ongoing effort to recall Republican governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Holder’s attack on sincere attempts to stop voter fraud is itself a fraud that abuses the civil rights legacy to disenfranchise the public at large.

On Tuesday, Americans will have a rare chance to voice their disdain of the corruption and lies flowing from this Justice Department.  They will have a chance to speak out against the radical and racialist law enforcement priorities of this Justice Department.  Eric Holder comes to Austin, Texas to make a major announcement about voting laws, probably to acquiesce to some loud demand of the NAACP to block state efforts to ensure voter integrity. But a counter-rally organized by Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote will greet Eric Holder’s appearance in Austin, Texas at the LBJ Library at 4 p.m.  America is invited, and here is a flier with details.

You have a First Amendment right to petition your government for redress of grievances.  Use it.  So rarely has so much been worth grieving.

As bad as Watergate was, it didn’t involve hundreds of murders, dead American law enforcement agents, and the illegal distribution of thousands of firearms.  How long has it been since an Attorney General appeared before Congress and words such as “contempt” and “impeachment” were used by members as they were last week?

The Fast and Furious scandal isn’t the only mess overseen by Eric Holder.  His entire tenure has been characterized by racialist radicalism, disguised to some critics as mere incompetence.  But it is far worse than incompetence, and to think otherwise is a mistake. From the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against racist anti-Semitic New Black Panther thugs, to the Mirandizing of battlefield captures in Afghanistan, Holder has presided over a systemic radicalization of the most powerful federal agency.  This isn’t incompetence.  It is radicalism.

Many in Washington remain unconvinced of the extent of the destructive radicalism permeating this administration, and particularly the DOJ.  In the speeches I give around the country, I lament that I wish Bill Clinton was still President.  These are not your grandfather’s democrats.  These are not just liberals.  From bringing cases to force schools to allow child transvestites, to forcing schools to give Muslim teachers almost four weeks paid vacation for an Islamic pilgrimage, radicalism prevails.

Ponder the racialist rot that Eric Holder carries in his wallet.  I write in my book “Injustice“ about a clipping he has carried since 1971.  Holder’s clipping says:

Blackness is another issue entirely apart from class in America. No matter how affluent, educated and mobile [a black person] becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else. Black people have a common cause that requires attending to, and this cause does not allow for the rigid class separation that is the luxury of American whites. There is a sense in which every black man is as far from liberation as the weakest one if his weakness is attributable to racial injustice.

In “Injustice,” I note:

When asked to explain the passage, Holder replied, “It really says that … I am not the tall U.S. attorney, I am not the thin United States Attorney. I am the black United States attorney. And he was saying that no matter how successful you are, there’s a common cause that bonds the black United States attorney with the black criminal or the black doctor with the black homeless person.”

When you witness Holder’s contempt for the rule of law, his disdain for enforcing civil rights and voting laws equally regardless of the race of the victim, and his disdain toward members of Congress, this quote explains a great deal.

This Tuesday at 4 p.m., in Austin, Texas, at the LBJ library, Americans tired of this sort of contempt, this racialist lawlessness, have a chance to let the Attorney General know they expect something better from high office.  See you in Austin.