Statement by Hillary Clinton on Today's March on the Department of Justice

"Today, thousands of men and women from across the country gathered to march on the Department of Justice to deliver an important message to the President - the Justice Department needs to get back to the business of protecting our civil rights, defending our Constitution and the rule of law, and after seven years of neglect, proving that its mission is the evenhanded and vigorous enforcement of our laws.

"The Administration's misplaced priorities have resulted in a slow and inadequate response to alarming reports of racially charged incidents across the country. The Jena Six case was a stark example. For too long, the Department of Justice failed to confront the serious questions of injustice, inequality and intolerance raised by the troubling events in Jena. But Jena is not an isolated case. As we continue to hear about crimes of hate and intolerance, we have every reason to be skeptical of how the Bush Justice Department will respond.

"When we take back the White House, we will have a lot of work to do.

"We'll need to restore professionalism to - and remove partisanship and ideology from - DOJ's Civil Rights Division. We'll need to modernize our hate crimes laws -- and truly enforce them. We'll need to strengthen our voting laws so that every citizen can fully exercise his or her constitutional right to vote. And we'll need to recommit the Department of Justice to the fundamental mission of protecting our citizens' civil rights."