Seeking to fill yet another second-term Cabinet vacancy, President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general involved in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, to be the next secretary of labor, the White House says.

If confirmed by the Senate, Perez, who has been head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for 3 1/2 years, would take over the Labor Department as Obama undertakes several worker-oriented initiatives, including an overhaul of immigration laws and an increase in the minimum wage.

Before taking the job as assistant attorney general, Perez was secretary of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which enforces state consumer rights, workplace safety and wage and hour laws.

In choosing the 51-year-old Perez, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Obama would be placing an already high-ranking Hispanic official in a Cabinet slot. Perez, a lawyer with a degree from Harvard Law School, would replace Hilda Solis, a former California congresswoman and the nation's first Hispanic labor secretary.

Perez's nomination has been expected for weeks, and comes with vigorous support from labor unions and Latino groups.

But a newly released report by the Justice Department's inspector general is likely to provide fodder for Republicans who say the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has been too politicized.

Read the full report here.

Politico.com reports:

"The report released Tuesday by Inspector General Michael Horowitz describes a 'poisonous environment in the civil rights division,' with a faction of the voting rights staff which favored litigation on behalf of minority groups bitterly clashing with another faction which believed the department should do more to protect the rights of white voters. The strife, which extended for the last decade or more has led to harassment, racially charged emails, and efforts to do end-runs around certain managers, the report found."

The report, released last week, said Perez gave incomplete testimony to the US Commission on Civil Rights when he said the department's political leadership was not involved in the decision to dismiss three of the four defendants in a lawsuit the Bush administration brought against the New Black Panther Party.

The report also concluded, anecdotally, that Perez did not intentionally mislead the commission and that the department acted properly.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said Perez appeared to be "woefully unprepared to answer questions" from the Civil Rights Commission.

Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel at the AFL-CIO, said the report shows that Perez, who was first hired by the civil rights division as a career attorney under President George H.W. Bush, restored integrity to the voting rights program at the Justice Department.

READ FULL SOURCE ARTICLE: 03/18/2013

Editor's Note: If the GOP in the US Senate allow this nomination to go forward -- given the fact that Perez has proven himself to be dishonest, grotesquely ideological and a racist -- then the Senate Republicans stand for nothing...The US Senate is charged with the power of advice and consent by the Constitution for presidential nominations. The idea that a President is due the cabinet he wants is a false narrative that opportunistic ideologues foist upon the American public.