Justice is charged with enforcing the MOVE Act. It should have filed a lawsuit immediately. In fact, its lawyers should have been on the phone Oct. 1 checking to make sure election officials had met the deadline.

But Justice lawyers took no such action. A department spokesman was quoted as saying that Justice was "in urgent discussions" with New York officials.

But Justice didn't engage in "urgent discussions" with Defense when New York's unjustified waiver application was being considered. Nor did Justice sue New York months ago when it became obvious that the Legislature was not going to implement federal law by moving the primary. And Justice didn't sue the city and the other four counties when it belatedly discovered that they had not even met the waiver conditions.

All of which is no surprise, given the consistent lack of attention this administration's Justice Department has given to protecting the voting rights of our military personnel.