Please, someone try to defend Obama & Holder on this

[sirs]

I realize that the left, here in the saloon, has largely come down to Xo, and who can blame the left, for the ruinous path Obama has taken this country (yea yea, he "inherited" all this debt, unemployment, inflation, recession, now likely depression), but let's address my point

This dropping of the Black Panther case, where you had folks, BLATANTLY trying to intimidate voters on election day, threatening them with their batons, dressed in pseudo military garb, and throwing every racial slur one can imagine,.... the clearest case of both voter intimidation (read not disenfranchisement, but actual intimidation), and racist rhetoric that could possibly be made in a court of law......and the Justice dept drops it??  And we're to assume then they would have dropped it had this been some KKKlansman in robes, holding a rope, making similar racial derogatories, on election day, in Mobile Alabama?

Defend that, if any one has the intellectual integrity to try. 

Or will the silence be a complete concession to the hypocritical double standard this Administration & its Justice Dept holds, where if the defendent is black and the victim is any other race, especially white, they're to turn thier heads away.  Justice is not color blind, and indeed is very racially oriented, depending on who's in power.  Is that the answer we can expect by the deatly rining of silence?

[sirs]

Xo's & Tee's concesssions are duely appreciated.  Thanks

[Kramer]

Now that the world knows (D) Obama is a worthless fraud combined with destructive legislation coming out of the (D) Congress there is nothing to defend.

All America can do is wait for November and hope that enough good politicians are elected so hearings can begin. The new Congress needs to strip the budget down to nothing and force Obama to sign it. They need to investigate every scandal and prosecute with extreme prejudice. Heads need to roll and and people need to go to jail.

[sirs]

Do you find it as intriguing as I, the utter silence from the left, and barly a ruffle from the MSM, outside of Fox?

[Kramer]

Do you find it as intriguing as I, the utter silence from the left, and barly a ruffle from the MSM, outside of Fox?

Not at all

These people are corrupt to the core, lacking any morality what-so-ever. They condone what Obama, Pelosi & Reid are doing because they are all radical Communist Ideologues. They are the former lice/maggot infested drug abusing hippy punks from the 70's; that now control much of our society. They have infested every establishment from the press to education and are pure cancer to freedom. They shit on our Constitution and despise our Founding Fathers. They believe Conservatives are more the enemy than Arab Terrorists. They root on & support the terrorists because to a certain point their goals are the same. This next election is critical to them and to us. If they win that it's there will never be another civil opportunity at the ballot box to make change. If they win they will have the power to advance their corruption to the point of no return for free and fair elections. If they win the only option will be a violent rebellion by Conservatives. The enemy from within smells blood and they are rabidly pursuing their agenda. They never give up and fight like cowards.

[sirs]

What's also funny, is you have folks on the left disappointed, even angy that Obama is supposedly not the socialist hey believed him to be, when in reality, he's exactly the socialist everyone knew him to be.  Simply that it takes congress to push what he'd want to impose, and congress, realizes its their political arses that Obama is putting in a sling, with what he wants to impose.  

Come Nov, a lame duck congress is much more likely to go ahead with his agenda, unfortunately

[sirs]

[sirs]

The Washington Times is reporting that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) at the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther party. Republican congressmen Lamar Smith and Frank Wolf, who have been doggedly pursuing the Civil Rights Division trying to get answers as to why this case (which had already been won by default) was dismissed, have expressed their relief that Justice is finally beginning to take this issue seriously (or at least is pretending to do so in order to shut down any objective investigations by Congress and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission).

Given the nature of the personnel who populate OPR, there is good reason to doubt that a real investigation will occur. Many of the career lawyers at OPR are as liberal and partisan as the lawyers who work in the Civil Rights Division. The report they issued in conjunction with the inspector general on supposed ?political? hiring in the division was chock full of bias, inaccuracies, gross exaggerations, and deliberate misrepresentations of both facts and the law. Not only was the OPR attorney assigned to that investigation a liberal former Civil Rights Division lawyer, but the (now former) head of OPR who orchestrated this agitprop, Marshall Jarrett, was rewarded by Eric Holder when he became attorney general: Jarrett was made head of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a plum post that usually goes to a political appointee.

Keep in mind that the New Black Panther party endorsed Barack Obama for president, a fact that his campaign had on its website until there was criticism over highlighting the endorsement of a hate group. And one of the New Black Panthers who was dismissed from the suit is a Democratic-party official in his ward in Philadelphia and was credentialed as a Democratic-party poll watcher during the November election. So who has the new head of OPR assigned to ?investigate? the Civil Rights Division?s improper dismissal of this case? According to the letter she sent over to Congressman Smith, it is a career lawyer named Mary Aubry. Despite her modest government salary, Aubry contributed $3,850 to Obama?s campaign and victory fund, not to mention the $2,500 she has given to the DNC or the $1,000 she gave to Hillary Clinton.

So a woman who has given $7,350(!) to the current president and other Democrats is going to be the chief investigator tasked with determining whether the president?s political appointees at Justice (such as Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli) acted unprofessionally when they dismissed this case. Perhaps we will all be pleasantly surprised; but given that politics has driven almost every recent action by Justice, I doubt it.

The only way to objectively find out the truth of what happened is for the Justice Department to provide Lamar Smith, Frank Wolf, and the Civil Rights Commission with all of the documents and information that they have requested and that Justice has so far refused to provide. It is also very important that Smith et al. obtain the testimony of the trial team of career lawyers who investigated the case, something else that Justice has so far refused to divulge.

When OPR was carrying out investigations of various Civil Rights Division personnel during the Bush years, Congress did not suspend its investigation; rather, it insisted on testimony from the targets of OPR?s investigations.

The Civil Rights Commission voted unanimously last week to make its investigation of the Black Panther case its principal project for the year. The commission should continue to press this case no matter what OPR does, as should Congressmen Smith and Wolf.


And the continued silence from the left remains deafening

[sirs]

Inquiry opened into New Black Panther case

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has begun an official inquiry into the dismissal in May of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during the November general elections.

The inquiry is disclosed in an Aug. 28 letter to Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who first raised questions about the dismissal in May and asked unsuccessfully that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. make available the head of the department's Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division for a closed-door briefing on the decision.

In the letter, Mary Patrice Brown, acting OPR counsel, told the veteran congressman from Texas that the office had "initiated an inquiry into the matter" and that it would "contact you with the results of our inquiry once it is completed." A copy of the letter was obtained by The Washington Times.

"I am pleased that someone at the Justice Department is finally taking the dismissal of the New Black Panther Party case seriously," Mr. Smith said Wednesday. "The Justice Department's decision to drop a case against political allies who allegedly intimidated voters on Election Day 2008 reeks of political interference."

Mr. Smith said the department's refusal to provide Congress with an explanation for the dismissal "only further raises concerns that political favoritism played a role in this case."

"Voter intimidation threatens democracy," he said. "These cases must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law without political considerations."

In January, the Justice Department filed a civil complaint in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against the New Black Panther Party, claiming two of its members in black berets, black combat boots, black shirts and black jackets with military insignias intimidated voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick. A third party member was accused of managing, directing and endorsing their behavior.

The complaint said two New Black Panthers engaged in "coercion, threats and intimidation racial threats and insults menacing and intimidating gestures and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote." It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would continue to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters "by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country."

The original incident was captured on videotape and gained national attention after the video was distributed on YouTube.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican and a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, has unsuccessfully sought to interview the career lawyers involved in the case and has called on Mr. Holder to refile the civil complaint. He said he was "deeply troubled" by the dismissal, adding that "this stinks to high heaven."

"After months of unanswered questions, incomplete and faulty excuses, and revelations of political influence, the Office of Professional Responsibility has agreed with our July 9 letter asking for a full investigation of the dismissal of this important voter intimidation case over the objections of both the career attorneys on the trial team and the department's own appellate board," he said Wednesday.

"I fully support OPR's decision to investigate this dismissal and look forward to their report," he said. "I hope the Civil Rights office also will agree that the case should be re-filed."

OPR, which reports directly to the attorney general, is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys in the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate or provide legal advice.

Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said, "As a general policy, we don't comment on ongoing OPR matters."

The Times first reported the decision to dismiss the complaint in May and later reported that Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the department's No. 3 political appointee, had approved the decision even after the government had won judgments against the New Black Panthers for their actions.

A Justice Department memo shows that the front-line career lawyers who brought the case decided as early as December to seek a complaint against the party; its chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a lawyer and D.C. resident; Minister King Samir Shabazz, a resident of Philadelphia and head of the Philadelphia chapter who was accused of wielding the nightstick; and Jerry Jackson, a resident of Philadelphia and a party member.

Witnesses said Mr. Samir Shabazz, armed with the nightstick, and Mr. Jackson used racial slurs and made threats as they stood outside the polling place door.

The Justice Department did obtain an injunction against Mr. Samir Shabazz that prohibits him from brandishing a weapon outside a polling place through Nov. 15, 2012, and Ms. Schmaler has said the department "will fully enforce the terms of that injunction."

Mr. Jackson was an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was credentialed to be at the polling place as an official Democratic Party polling watcher, according to the Philadelphia city commissioner's office. Records show he obtained new credentials as a poll watcher "at any ward/division in Philadelphia" just days after the charges against him were dismissed.

None of the New Black Panthers responded to the charges or made any appearance in court. The party has not returned e-mails for comment, and the voice mailbox at its Washington headquarters Wednesday was full.

Four months after the complaint was filed, at a time career lawyers who brought the charges were in the final stages of seeking actual sanctions, they were told by their superiors to seek a delay after a meeting between political appointees and career supervisors, according to federal records and interviews.

Loretta King, who was acting assistant attorney general, ordered the delay after she discussed with Mr. Perrelli concerns about the case during one of their regular review meetings, according to the interviews. Mrs. King, a career senior executive service official, had been named by President Obama in January to temporarily fill the vacant political position of assistant attorney general for civil rights while a permanent choice could be made.

She and other career supervisors ultimately recommended dropping the case against two of the men and the party. Mr. Perrelli approved that plan, officials said.

None of the front-line career lawyers who brought the complaint has been made available for comment.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights also has demanded that the Justice Department explain the dismissal, saying a previous response "paints the department in a poor light." In a letter to Mr. Holder, the commission noted that it is "answerable" to the president, Congress and the public to ensure that civil rights laws are enforced and had the authority to subpoena witnesses and documents to guarantee that the laws are being followed.

Commissioner Todd Gaziano, an independent named to the agency by Congress in February 2008, has outlined a witness list in a request for a "major study project" by the commission that would include an extensive investigation by its staff armed with subpoenas and public hearings in both Washington and Philadelphia.

Mr. Gaziano, a former Justice Department lawyer who served in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, said the commission needs to determine, among other things, whether the decision to drop the charges constituted a departure from prior enforcement policy and whether it ultimately would lead to more voter intimidation.

"The dismissal of the lawsuit has the potential to significantly change the understanding some officials have regarding the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, for good or for bad," he said.


In other words, its open season on voter intimidation, come 2010....as long as its black on white (or any other race)

[sirs]

Black Panther case expands
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Even if the liberal media continue to ignore it, the Justice Department's dismissal of a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party is a full-blown scandal. Fortunately, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is pursuing justice even though the Department of Justice is not.

As reported in our news pages last Friday, the commission has sent a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., effectively threatening to subpoena witnesses and documents if Justice does not provide better, more complete answers about its decision to dismiss the cases. "We believe the Department's defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law," wrote the commission, "and raises other serious questions about the department's law enforcement decisions."

The case involves a nationally broadcast incident in which two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb, one of them wielding a nightstick, stood outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day in November. They were uttering racial epithets and otherwise discouraging voting. Career attorneys at the Justice Department won a default judgment against both Black Panthers, plus a national Panther leader and the party as a whole -- but at the last minute, Obama appointees at Justice dismissed all the charges except one, and responded to that one with an extraordinarily mild injunction.

One explanation from Justice was that First Amendment (free speech) rights somehow mitigated against greater punishment of the Black Panthers. The commission responded, sensibly: "It is unclear what First Amendment issue would arise by enjoining the [New Black Panther Party] or other racial hate-groups from organizing its members again to carry any weapons (especially when dressed in paramilitary uniforms) at polling places and subject particular voters to racially-bigoted diatribes as they attempt to enter the polls."

The commission also "noted the peculiar logic of the department's court filing that the defendants' failure to respond was the reason for its dismissal of the case against three defendants: Such an argument sends a perverse message to wrongdoers -- that attempts at voter suppression will be tolerated so long as the persons who engage in them are careful not to appear in court to answer the government's complaint."

It really is a strange notion of justice to say that refusal to contest one's guilt is reason to treat someone as innocent. The Commission on Civil Rights is correct to challenge it.

The commission also ought to continue asking if outside groups played an improper role in the case's dismissal, or if there was untoward political interference from the White House or other Democratic Party sources.

But the commission may not stop even there. Letters can be ignored. Yearlong investigations can't be. At last Friday's meeting, Commissioner Todd Gaziano noted that the commission statutorily is required to issue an annual report on some aspect of federal civil rights enforcement. He proposed that the report for 2010 focus on the Justice Department's handling of the Black Panther case. While the commission did not make a final decision on the matter, Mr. Gaziano's proposal seemed to enjoy tentative majority support.

"The implications of the department's actions in this case are potentially quite negative," Mr. Gaziano told The Washington Times. "For this reason, the commission has a responsibility to investigate and report to Congress exactly what those implications are."

We look forward to what the commission discovers about Justice constraining civil rights.


Full Blown Scandal at hand.  Shhhhh don't let the MSM get wind of it

[sirs]

What's that old saying....It's not the act itself, it's the attempted coverup afterwards, that really mucks things up?  Something along those lines

[sirs]

[sirs]

A black or white person, now dead, who lived during the civil rights struggles of the 1930s, '40s or '50s, might very well be appalled and disgusted by black behavior accepted today. Yesteryear, it was the Klan or White Citizens Council who showed up at polling places to intimidate black voters. During the 2008 elections, it was the New Black Panthers who showed up at a Philadelphia polling place to intimidate white voters and tell them, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker." What's worse is the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to not to prosecute.

Black intimidation of voters, to my knowledge, is rare, but black intimidation of Asians is not. Recent reports out of Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian students. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, in the wake of serious black-on-Asian violence at South Philadelphia High School, charged the district with "deliberate indifference" to the harassment of Asian students and with "intentional disregard" for their welfare.

The violence is not restricted to Asian youngsters. Asian adults are included, such as the recent bludgeoning to death of an 83-year-old Chinese man in San Francisco and the pushing of a 57-year-old Asian lady onto Muni subway tracks.

A white Charleston, S.C. teacher frequently complained of black students calling her: white b----, white m-----f-----, white c--- and white ho. Most people would judge that to be racism and demand it to end. Charleston school officials told the teacher this racially charged profanity was simply part of the students' culture, and if she couldn't handle it, she was in the wrong school. The teacher brought a harassment suit and the school district settled out of court for $200,000.

What about black youngsters who hit the books and study after school instead of hitting the streets? Sometimes they are ridiculed as being incog-negro or acting white and the ridicule is often accompanied with life-threatening physical violence. Many blacks, particularly black males, have arrived at the devastating conclusion that academic excellence is a betrayal of their black identity.

The pathology seen among a large segment of the black population is not likely to change because it's not seen for what it is. It has little to do with slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. Let's look at it. Today's black illegitimacy rate is about 70 percent. When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15 percent. In the same period, about 80 percent of black children were born inside marriage. In fact, historian Herbert Gutman, in "Persistent Myths about the Afro-American Family" in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Autumn 1975), reports the percentage of black two-parent families, depending on the city, ranged 75 to 90 percent. Today, only 35 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households. The importance of these and other statistics showing greater stability and less pathology among blacks in earlier periods is that they put a lie to today's excuses. Namely, at a time when blacks were closer to slavery, faced far more discrimination, more poverty and had fewer opportunities, there was not the kind of chaos, violence, family breakdown and black racism that we see today.

Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, discrimination and the "legacy of slavery" are complicit in the socioeconomic and moral decay. But as Booker T. Washington suggested, "There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."



Racism or Stupidity?

[sirs]

Voting Rights Official Calls Dismissal of Black Panther Case a 'Travesty of Justice'

The Justice Department is ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims and wrongly abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year, a top department official testified Friday. He called the department's conduct a "travesty of justice."

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department's Civil Rights Division, spoke under oath Friday morning before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a long-awaited appearance that had been stonewalled by the Justice Department for nearly a year.

Coates discussed in depth the DOJ's decision to dismiss intimidation charges against New Black Panther members who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in military-style uniforms -- one was brandishing a nightstick -- and allegedly hurling racial slurs.

The case has drifted in and out of the limelight over the past year as the commission has struggled to investigate it. Former Justice official J. Christian Adams fueled the controversy when he testified in July and accused his former employer of showing "hostility" toward cases that involved white victims and black defendants.

Nearly three months later, Coates backed up Adams' claims. In lengthy and detailed testimony, he said the department cultivates a "hostile atmosphere" against "race-neutral enforcement" of the Voting Rights Act.

He said civil rights attorneys stick to cases that involve minority victims, and he said the Black Panther case was dismissed following "pressure" by the NAACP and "anger" at the case within the Justice Department itself.

"That anger was the result of their deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against," he said.

He said a 2005 case against a black official in Mississippi over voter intimidation claims had stirred a backlash in the department and from civil rights groups -- and that the New Black Panther case was no different.

The Bush Justice Department first brought the case against three members of the group, accusing them in a civil complaint of violating the Voting Rights Act. The Obama administration initially pursued the case and at one point won a default judgment, but the administration last year moved to dismiss the charges after getting one of the New Black Panther members to agree not to carry a "deadly weapon" near a polling place until 2012.

Coates dismissed as weak the department's rationale for abandoning the case, saying the department let one of the Black Panther members off the hook because a local police officer had determined he was a Democratic Party poll watcher. Coates called it "extraordinarily strange" for the department to rely on this and urged the commission to consider what the legal backlash would have been if the Panthers had been members of the Ku Klux Klan.

"To understand the rationale of these articulated reasons for gutting this case ... one only has to state the facts in the racial reverse," he said. Coates said that with the United States becoming increasingly diverse, it is "absolutely essential" that the law be enforced equally.

"As important as the mandate in the Voting Rights Act is to protect minority voters, white voters also have an interest in being able to go to the polls without having race-haters such as Black Panther King Samir Shabazz, whose public rhetoric includes such statements as 'kill cracker babies' ... standing at the entrance of the polling place with a billy club in his hand hurling racial slurs at voters," he said.

"Given this outrageous conduct, it was a travesty of justice for the Department of Justice not to allow attorneys in the voting section to obtain nationwide injunctive relief against" the defendants, he said.

Since last year, Coates has been transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina. He said Friday that the Justice Department told him not to testify before the commission after he was first subpoenaed in December 2009; in testifying Friday, he claimed protection from retaliation under "whistleblower" laws.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., also wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder warning the Justice Department not to punish Coates in any way for testifying.

The Justice Department has denied the allegations over its handling of the New Black Panther case. The department said in July that the case was dismissed "based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved."


shhhhhh.  Can't be bringing this kind of stuff up, until after Nov