"Barack Obama represents 'Positive Change' for
all of America. Obama will stir the 'Melting Pot' into a better "Molten
America.'"
Read The New Black Panther Party
10 Point
Platform from the anti-white and virulently anti-Semitic black supremacist party
that has endorsed Obama on the presidential candidate's
own website.
Following criticism earlier this month of an online endorsement from the
New Black Panther Party (NBPP), Obama's campaign removed the
controversial organization from the presidential candidate's official
website. The NBPP had been a registered team member and blogger on
Obama's "MyObama" campaign site.
But the NBPP endorsement was reposted on Obama's official website today.
"Obama is capable of stirring the 'melting pot' into a better 'molten
America,'" states the NBPP endorsement posted on Obama's site.
The NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are
notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white
activism.
Malik Zulu Shabazz, NBPP national chairman, who has given scores of
speeches condemning "white men" and Jews, confirmed his organization's
endorsement of Obama in a recent interview with WND.
"I think the way Obama responded to the attack on him and the attempt to
sabotage his campaign shows true leadership and character. He had
a chance to denounce his pastor and he didn't fall for the bait.
He stood up and addressed real issues of racial discord," stated Shabazz.
Shabazz boasted he met Obama last March when the politician attended the
42nd anniversary of the voting rights marches in Selma, Ala.
"I have nothing but respect for Obama and for his pastor," said Shabazz,
referring to Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor of nearly 20 years.
It is Wright's racially charged and anti-Israel remarks that were widely
circulated this month, landing the presidential candidate in hot water
and prompting Obama to deliver a major race speech in which he condemned
Wright's comments but not the pastor himself.
Speaking to WND, Shabazz referred to Obama as a man with a "Muslim
background, a man of color."
Shabazz's NBPP's official platform states "white man has kept us deaf,
dumb and blind," refers to the "white racist government of America,"
demands black people be exempt from military service and uses the word
"Jew" repeatedly in quotation marks.
Shabazz has led racially divisive protests and conferences, such as the
1998 Million Youth March in which a few thousand Harlem youths
reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers and speakers
demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa.
The NBPP chairman was quoted at a May 2007 protest against the 400-year
celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Va., stating, "When the
white man came here, you should have left him to die."
He claimed Jews engaged in an "African holocaust," and he has promoted
the anti-Semitic urban legend that 4,000 Israelis fled the World Trade
Center just prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
When Shabazz was denied entry to Canada last May while trying to speak
at a black action event, he blamed Jewish groups and claimed Canada "is
run from Israel."
Canadian officials justified the action stating he has an "anti-Semitic"
and "anti-police" record, but some reports blamed what was termed a
minor criminal history for the decision to deny him entry.
He similarly blamed Jews for then-New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani's initial
decision, later rescinded, against granting a permit for the Million
Youth March.
The NBPP's deceased chairman, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, a former Nation of
Islam leader who was once considered Louis Farrakhan's most trusted
adviser, gave speeches referring to the "white man" as the "devil" and
claiming that "there is a little bit of Hitler in all white people."
In a 1993 speech condemned by the U.S. Congress and Senate, Muhammad,
lionized on the NBPP site, referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers," labeled
the pope a "no-good cracker" and advocated the murder of white South
Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a 24-hour warning.
All NBPP members must memorize the group's rules, such as that no party
member "can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off
narcotics or weed," and no member "will commit any crimes against other
party members or black people at all."
The NBPP endorses Obama on its own page of the presidential candidate's
official site that allows registered users to post their own blogs.
The group labels itself on Obama's site as representing "Freedom,
Justice, and Peace for all of Mankind." It links to the official
NBPP website, which contains what can be arguably regarded as hate
material.
The NBPP previously endorsed Obama on the presidential candidate's site,
but following publicity of that endorsement, the Obama campaign removed
the NBPP posting.
"It's our policy [to remove] any content generated by a group that
advocates violence," explained Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor to
FoxNews.com.
Before the campaign removed the party's page, Obama spokeswoman Tiffany
Edwards told FoxNews.com the NBPP endorsement on Obama's website "has
nothing to do with us."
"People can form their own groups," she said. "It's not something that
the campaign -- it's not something that we've done."
While it appears anyone can initially sign up as a registered supporter
on Obama's site, it isn't clear whether the campaign monitors the site
or approves users. There is a link on each blog page for users to
report any abusers, such as those who post controversial entries, to the
administrator.
Shabbazz chalked up the Obama campaign's initial removal of his NBPP
endorsement from the website to "the game of politics."
"The Obama camp's move to remove our blog doesn't mean much because I
understand politics. We still completely support Obama as the best
candidate."
Obama 'less biased' on Israel
Shabazz said that aside from promoting black rights, he also supports
Obama because he may take what he called a "less biased" policy on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I have hopes he will change the U.S. government's position toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict because our position has been unwarranted
bias. Time and time again the U.S. vetoed resolutions in the U.N.
Security Council condemning [Israeli] human rights violations. ... I
hope he shifts policy," Shabazz said.
But he added he doesn't believe Obama could change America's policy
regarding Israel very much since, he said, "other, powerful lobbies"
control U.S. foreign policy.
After NPR initially
reported
that the Panthers were present at the event with Obama, subsequent
reports from Selma omitted any mention of the hate group appearing
with the future president.
Had any of Obama’s opponents appeared at an event with the KKK or
Aryan Nation, The New York Times would have had to double
its ink buy.
Obama’s appearance does much more than expose mainstream media
hypocrisy. It also exposes an association between a vile racist
organization and a future President of the United States. Only the
degree of association is subject to debate.
Let The Brothers Go
Obama's Justice Department
is dropping charges against the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
and two of its members who were involved in voter intimidation on
Election Day at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania polling station.
A
Justice spokesman said the department decided to take this action after
winning an injunction earlier this month against a third member, Samir
Shabazz, that prevents him from ever brandishing a weapon outside a
polling place again as he was charged with doing last November.
Shabazz was one of the three persons
from the New Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense, charged with voter intimidation last January in
a lawsuit filed under the Voting Rights Act. Shabazz will not face any
jail time or a fine.
"Claims were dismissed against the other
defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law," DOJ
spokesman Alejandro Miyar said in a statement. "The Department is
committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten
or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote."
giggle!
On
Election Day, two men in uniforms stood outside the polling station with
one of them holding a police-style baton weapon and saying he was
providing security there. Justice has alleged that person was Shabazz.
In January, Justice said in a criminal complaint that the chairman
of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense confirmed its members
were stationed at that location as part of a nationwide effort to deploy
people at polling stations.
Combat boots, leather jackets, military-style berets and a billy club--
and notice how he's brandishing it -- no intimidation there. I can
just see little old white ladies deciding that Obama was going to win
anyway, so why bother.
Shabazz
That's one scary-looking guy. He
would have given me a moments pause, swinging his police baton at the
entrance to the polling station. I'd have gotten the message.
Obviously, Obama's Justice Department was just displaying some
of the Obamamessiah's vaunted empathy -- "based on a careful assessment
of the facts and the law" -- what a hoot! -- obviously, the biggest fact
was the guy is a brother -- but Justice warned him not to do it again --
that's the ticket.
Obama and Holder would prefer to prosecute
George Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.
Obama has
replaced Justice's blindfold with shades.
An Official Watcher
When confronted by Philadelphia Police, Black
Panther Jerry Jackson stated that he was "an official watcher" --
meaning that he had been appointed by a party or candidate to observe
the election at the polling location. Only voters, election board
workers, and watchers may enter a polling location. The New Black
Panther Party isn’t an officially recognized political party in
Philadelphia, so they couldn’t appoint him. So who gave this guy a
credential?
We already reported here that Jackson is an elected
member of the Philadelphia Democratic Committee. And a document
obtained from the Philadelphia Board of Elections confirms he was
"representing the Democratic Party" at the polls in November.
Here is a copy of the watcher certificate he was issued and below is
some of his "official" activity.
Definitely looks like a case of
Respondeat
Superior by the Democratic Party.
You Are About To
Be Ruled By A Black Man, Cracker
Excerpted from the
affidavit of Bartle Bull, a civil rights attorney who served in the
mid-60s as a lawyer with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law in Mississippi. He worked closely with Charles Evers:
I served
as an attorney poll observer at the polling place, 1221 Fairmount St,
Philadelphia. There I observed two men wearing Black Panther party
insignia, black boots and berets. They were positioned in front of
the entrance to the polling place.
The shorter of the two men
possessed a weapon in the form of a billy-club. I watched the man
with the weapon point it at individuals and slap it in his hand.
I watched the two men confront and intimidate voters. They were
positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close
proximity to them. The weapon was brandished in plain sight of
voters.
I watched the two men interfere with the work of other
poll observers whom the uniformed men believed did not share their
preferences politically.
In my opinion, the men created an
intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll. In all of my
experience in politics, in civil rights litigation...I have never
encountered or heard of another instance where armed and uniformed men
blocked the entrance to a polling location. Their clear purpose
was to intimidate voters.
I heard the shorter man (Shabazz) make
a statement towards white poll observers that "you are about to
be ruled by a black man, cracker."
Political Appointees Overruled Career Lawyers
Justice Department political
appointees overruled career lawyers and
ended a civil complaint
accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia
polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.
Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an
affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the
confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter
intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in
Mississippi a half-century ago.
The lawyers also had ascertained
that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by
securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to
interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.
The
career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against
the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse
course, according to interviews and documents. The court had
already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.
Black Panther Answers Overdue
Philadelphia's, The Bulletin, is
reporting that the Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission,
Gerald A. Reynolds, has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder seeking answers to their questions about a
voter intimidation case in Philadelphia involving the New Black
Panther Party (NBPP). It considers the responses "overdue."
The letter, dated September 30, 2009, is seemingly an unprecedented
action. It asks for Mr. Holder to "instruct Department officials
to fully cooperate" with the Commission's investigation, as required by
federal law.
The correspondence noted that the Commission still
has not received any of the documents they requested in their initial
June inquiries. It has questions surrounding the "unusual
decision" by the DOJ to dismiss the case against two of the three
defendants and the equally unusual injunction obtained against the third
defendant.
It needs this information because the Commission is
responsible to investigate voting rights deprivations and evaluate
federal enforcement of federal voting rights laws. They want to
form an independent opinion about the DOJ's enforcement actions and the
potential impact on future voter intimidation enforcement. It may
also try "to determine whether any decisions in the case were induced or
affected by improper influences."
The communication reminded Mr.
Holder that Congress mandates that, "all Federal agencies shall fully
cooperate with the Commission to the end that it may effectively carry
out its functions and duties." It wants Mr. Holder to identify the
person responsible for complying with the requests.
The
Commission voted in September to make its review of the implications of
the NBPP matter the subject of its annual enforcement report. The
report focuses on a selected area of civil rights enforcement.
The letter concludes by cautioning Mr. Holder that if he does not
respond by October 14, they will contact the DOJ personnel involved
directly.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit in January under the Voting
Rights Act against the NBP and three of its members alleging the
defendants intimidated voters last election day. The complaint,
filed in federal court in Philadelphia, alleged that NBP members Samir
Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were standing at a polling location wearing a
military-style NBP uniform while Mr. Shabazz repeatedly brandished a
"police-style baton weapon."
The complaint said NBPP Chairman
Malik Zulu Shabazz confirmed that the placement of Mr. Shabazz and Mr.
Jackson was part of a nationwide effort to deploy members at polling
locations. The Justice Department initially sought an injunction
to prevent any similar future actions.
None of the defendants
responded to the lawsuit. However, instead of immediately filing
for a routine default judgment, the DOJ voluntarily dismissed the
lawsuit for two of the defendants -- including Mr. Jackson, who was a
Democratic Party poll watcher.
The DOJ only obtained an
injunction against Samir Shabazz, which was granted on May 18.
However, this has been criticized because it contained none of the usual
conditions for such a case.
Is The Justice Department Against Civil
Rights?
The
dispute between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice
Department is starting to look like the legal equivalent of World War
II's Anzio campaign, which represented a major escalation late in the
war. The battleground is the controversy about the department's
decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against members of the New
Black Panther Party. The commission is mounting a massive legal
assault; Justice is refusing to be budged; and the casualties could be
high.
The shame of it is that the department itself would be
well-served if it would merely cooperate. That's what it would do
if it were confident its decision was correct.
For six months,
various members of Congress and the commission have been asking for
cooperation from the Justice Department. The basic questions are
simple enough: On what legal basis did Justice drop these cases, which
it effectively already had won? Who were all the officials at
Justice (and possibly the White House) who were involved in the
decision? And does the decision represent a shift in enforcement
policy concerning voting rights?
The Justice Department
stonewalled at almost every turn or provided false information.
For instance, department official Portia Robinson wrongly claimed that
New Black Panther defendant Jerry Jackson "was a resident of the
apartment building where the polling place was located" (and thus
presumably had more of a right to loiter there). If the department
can't even figure out that Mr. Jackson, a visibly fit age 53, doesn't
live in a senior assisted-living facility, its overall reliability
surely is questionable.
Frustrated by the lack of cooperation,
the commission finally resorted to subpoenas to force information from
the Justice Department. The commission has specific statutory
power to issue subpoenas, and executive departments are required
statutorily to comply. The Justice Department, however, claimed
otherwise and ordered its lawyers to ignore the subpoenas.
That's when the commission went "Anzio" on Justice, with a letter
Tuesday documenting the commission's legal authority and a
legal-discovery request of breathtaking scope. The commission's
letter notes that the department fully cooperated with a commission
subpoena in 2004; the unuttered follow-up question is: So why not this
time?
The commission bolstered its claims by citing court
precedents and Congressional Research Service reports. It also
said that by consulting on the matter with an outside group -- the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund -- the department effectively waived its various
claims of privilege.
The discovery request, meanwhile, is 26
pages long, with 49 interrogatories and 51 separate document demands.
Among its key nuggets: The commission challenges the department to
justify, at great length, any claim of legal privilege against
disclosures; it hints that it suspects White House involvement in the
decision; it asks for documentation that might show Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr.'s involvement; it confidently asserts that the
second-ranking member of the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General
David W. Ogden, took part in the decision; it challenges the
department's tacit contention that the New Black Panthers (one of whom
carried a nightstick) were merely exercising First Amendment speech
rights; and its subtext suggests that the commission suspects all sorts
of other shenanigans. (Mr. Ogden suddenly announced on Dec. 3 that
he would soon leave his position)
All of this means the
commission has substantially raised the stakes of this battle.
Others can best adjudge the legal arguments, and important larger issues
of constitutional separation of powers could be involved. Yet a
far simpler observation is appropriate and increasingly obvious: The
Justice Department would not force the Civil Rights Commission to
instigate such a huge legal battle if it had nothing to hide.
Wolf Presses For New Black Panther Probe
The Washington Times is reporting that a senior House Republican on
Thursday introduced a "resolution of inquiry" that would require the
House Judiciary Committee to seek answers on why the Justice Department
dismissed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther
Party who disrupted a
Philadelphia polling place in last year's elections.
Rep. Frank
R. Wolf of Virginia also said he had language inserted in the Justice
Department's annual spending bill requiring that its Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) provide to the House Appropriations
Committee the results of OPR's investigation surrounding the dismissal
of the case.
Mr. Wolf, a senior member of the Appropriations
Committee's commerce, justice and science subcommittee, and Rep. Lamar
Smith of Texas, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee,
requested an investigation into the case earlier this year.
Under House rules, committees must take action on resolutions of inquiry
within 14 legislative days. Mr. Wolfs resolution directs Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr. to provide Congress with "all information"
relating to the decision to dismiss the case. The committee must
hold a straight yea-or-nay vote on the resolution.
Mr. Wolf said
he has written the attorney general six times seeking answers concerning
the handling of the New Black Panther case and has yet to receive an
answer.
"I regret that Congress must resort to oversight
resolutions as a means to receive information about the dismissal of
this case, but the Congress and the American people have a right to know
why this case was not prosecuted," he said.
The Justice Department has ordered government lawyers who filed a
complaint against the New Black Panther Party for intimidating voters in
last year’s presidential election not to cooperate with a nonpartisan
civil rights commission investigating how the Obama Administration
handled the case.
Federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in
Philadelphia against members of the radical black revolutionary group
for bullying voters with racial
insults, profanity and weapons. Clad in military attire, the Black
Panther thugs were captured on video in front of precincts during the
2008 presidential election.
But the case was abruptly killed by
a top Justice Department official just as a federal judge was preparing
to punish the Black Panthers for ignoring the charges and refusing to
appear in court. The order came from Loretta King, who at the time
was Obama’s acting assistant Attorney General for the civil rights
division. No explanation was offered for the sudden dismissal and
outrage ensued among federal prosecutors handling the case.
Now
the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a fact-finding nonpartisan agency
with subpoena power to investigate discrimination complaints --
including allegations that citizens are deprived of their right to vote
-- is digging into the matter.
Michael P. Tremoglie is
reporting that the United States Commission on Civil Rights (CRC)
announced that it will hold a public hearing on February 12, 2010,
regarding the New Black Panther Party
voter intimidation case.
Its purpose is to collect information within the jurisdiction of the
Commission related particularly to the Department of Justice's actions
in the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and enforcement of Section 11(b)
of the Voting Rights Act.
The CRC wants to know the reason the
Department of Justice (DOJ)
dismissed
voter intimidation charges in May against members of the New Black
Panther Party after they had already won a default judgment in the civil
suit filed in January.
One of the witnesses will be Chris Hill, a
Republican poll watcher. He told The Bulletin that one of the
Republican poll watchers felt intimidated. "He was inside the
building and he refused to stand outside with the two New Black
Panthers," he said.
There will be other witnesses who can testify
to the facts of the case. Also a video of the incident will be
shown.
One person’s testimony which has been sought is that of J.
Christian Adams the career Civil Rights Division prosecutor who compiled
the voter intimidation case against the NBPP will testify. It is
not known if Mr. Adams will testify. Allegations have been made
that there were political motivations in dismissing the case. It
is felt Mr. Adams could verify or disprove this.
The DOJ has
taken the unusual step of instructing its people not comply with
subpoenas issued by the Commission. A memo by DOJ to CRC General
Counsel David Blackwood said it objects to the questions asked.
The DOJ has repeatedly refused to provide information requested about
this case not only by the CRC, but by Congressman Frank Wolf ( R-Va.),
as well as, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tx.). Mr. Wolf sent a
letter January 26 to Glenn Fine the DOJ Inspector General.
He
said, "I have been disappointed by your reluctance to investigate the
unfounded dismissal of an important voter intimidation case, U.S. v. New
Black Panther Party. As you may recall, this case was inexplicably
dismissed last year -- over the ardent objections of the career
attorneys overseeing the case as well as the division’s own appeal
office. Despite repeated requests for information by members of
Congress, the press, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the DOJ
continues to stonewall all efforts to obtain information regarding the
case’s abrupt dismissal. This obstruction should be of great
concern to you and merit an immediate investigation."
Mr. Wolf
will appear at the hearing, which will be held at 624 9th St., N.W. Room
540, Washington, DC 20425. It is open to the public and the media.
Obama's Black Panther Pander
Ashley Taylor says, at last, an explanation for
the decision to drop the Black Panthers
voter intimidation case.
At the U.S. Civil Rights Commission's upcoming hearing on May 14,
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez will attempt to explain why the
Obama administration dropped federal voter intimidation charges against
two New Black Panthers. Clad in paramilitary uniforms and armed
with a nightstick, the Panthers had spent several hours on Election Day
2008 stalking the entrance of a voting place in Philadelphia -- hurling
racial epithets at whites and blacks alike, taunting poll watchers, and
intimidating voters who sought to cast their votes for president as well
as other candidates on the ballot. These voting rights violations
were captured, partially, on video and uploaded to YouTube.
Attempting to defend the Justice Department's decision to change course
in this case, the Obama administration's apologists have tied themselves
in knots and turned the Voting Rights Act on its head.
Their
principal argument is that the Panthers were not scary enough.
They contend that two men who dress up like soldiers and stand in the
doorway of a voting place brandishing a billy club cannot be prosecuted
for voter intimidation in the absence of testimony from a voter who was
intimidated, or proof of someone who was turned away from voting.
Without such evidence, they argue, it is impossible to prove what the
Panthers intended by their actions.
This argument ignores
several indisputable facts. First, the videos themselves are clear
evidence of the intimidating nature of the Panthers' actions that day,
which included one man thumping the nightstick against his open palm,
and one shouting that voters should prepare themselves to be "ruled by
the black man." Second, multiple witnesses have testified to
seeing additional egregious behavior that was not captured on video,
including one black Republican poll worker who the Panthers called a
"race traitor" and promised there would be "hell to pay" when he emerged
from the voting place. Another person has testified that the
Panthers called him a "white devil" and a "cracker." Witnesses
also have testified that they saw voters approach the entrance, stop
upon sight of the uniformed, weapon-wielding Panthers in the doorway,
and turn and leave without voting. All of this evidence and
testimony was known and available to Justice when it dropped charges
against three of the four Panther defendants.
Obama's Justice Department Sued Over Black
Panther Documents
Jennifer Rubin
says Obama's Justice Department has been stonewalling individual
members of Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in their
efforts to get to the bottom of the Obama-Holder Justice Department’s
decision to abandon a default judgment against the New Black Panther
Party and multiple individual defendants in a case of blatant
voter intimidation.
Now the conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch is going to court to
pry the documents loose:
Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA
request on May 29, 2009. The Justice Department acknowledged
receiving the request on June 18, 2009, but then referred the request to
the Office of Information Policy (OIP) and the Civil Rights Division.
On January 15, 2010, the OIP notified Judicial Watch that it would be
responding to the request on behalf of the Offices of the Attorney
General, the Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Public
Affairs, Legislative Affairs, Legal Policy, and Intergovernmental and
Public Liaison.
On January 15, the OIP also indicated that the
Office of the Associate Attorney General found 135 pages of records
responsive to Judicial Watch’s request, but that all records would be
withheld in full. On January 26, the OIP advised Judicial Watch
that the Office of Public Affairs and Office of Legal Policy completed
their searches and found no responsive documents. On February 10, the
Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division indicated that after an
extensive search it had located "numerous responsive records" but
determined that "access to the majority of the records" should be
denied. On March 26, the OIP indicated that the Office of
Legislative Affairs and the Office of Intergovernmental and Public
Liaison completed searches and found no documents.
It’s about
time the courts rule on the panoply of made-up defenses and fake
privileges that Holder has cooked up to avoid turning over these
documents. Let the courts decide if the Obama administration can
have it both ways -- declining to invoke executive privilege but relying
on the privilege under other names ("deliberative privilege").
A
knowledgeable lawyer e-mails me: "Notice DOJ revealed nothing about the
number of panther documents in the AG and deputy AG office. Even
for the associate attorney general they revealed there were 135 but they
weren’t going to turn them over. Failing to even name a number is
extremely suspicious because those units can be searched quicker and
easier for compliant documents. It leads one to conclude any
number would be an embarrassment, and a high number would be a
catastrophe. So, don’t reveal a number. Typical of this
non-transparent operation."
And now we’re going to see the
administration’s true colors played out in open court. As a
Judicial Watch spokesman said: "If there is nothing to hide, then
Eric
Holder should release this information as the law requires. And this is
just one more example of how Obama’s promises of transparency are a big
lie."
But the Obama team may have a different problem: if either
or both houses of Congress flip to Republican control, new chairmen will
populate key committees and subpoenas will begin to fly. Congress is in
an even better position to get access to the documents, as
attorney-client privilege doesn’t work against a co-equal branch of
government. In sum, Holder is running out of room to hide, finally.
Pro-Black Panther Prejudice
The Washington Times
says Obama's Justice Department is implementing a racial double
standard.
The foundation is crumbling from the Justice
Department's stonewall on the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case.
What's becoming visible is a serious corrosion in the whole edifice of
the Civil Rights Division in the Obama-Holder Justice Department.
The edifice shook on Friday when a key lawyer in the case notified
the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he is now available to testify.
The lawyer, J. Christian Adams, had been ordered by his Justice
Department superiors, quite improperly, to ignore a subpoena by the
commission. Mr. Adams instead resigned from the department
effective two weeks ago, largely in honorable protest over its handling
of the Black Panther case. His attorney e-mailed the commission on
Friday, "Mr. Adams wants to relieve any obligation he has under the
subpoena." Mr. Adams' testimony surely will shed light on how the
unreasonable decision was made.
Readers will remember that the
case involved two New Black Panther Party members -- one a local
Democratic Party official and poll watcher -- who used racial epithets
and threats while standing at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling
place on Election Day, 2008. One Panther brandished a nightstick
like a weapon. After the case effectively had been won, political
appointees of Obama's dismissed or reduced all charges or sanctions
against the defendants, and then they stonewalled multiple inquiries
about the case from Congress, the media and the Civil Rights Commission.
The stonewall's mortar further disintegrated when the June 21 issue
of the Weekly Standard, published on Sunday, featured a lengthy,
explosive expose on the Black Panther case by Commentary magazine
contributing editor Jennifer Rubin. Confirming and expanding on
months of reporting by The Washington Times, Ms. Rubin provides at least
five nuggets of information that are damaging to the official story line
peddled by Attorney General Eric
H. Holder Jr. and the Obama White House.
First, Ms. Rubin
reports that Steven H. Rosenbaum, the acting deputy assistant attorney
general for civil rights, who spearheaded the decision to drop the case,
was repeatedly unfamiliar with case details even as he ordered it to be
dismissed. Second, Mr. Rosenbaum repeatedly based his arguments
for dropping the case on the idea that First Amendment speech
protections somehow excused the Black Panthers' threats. Yet
during May 14 testimony to the Civil Rights Commission, Assistant
Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas E. Perez repeatedly,
exasperatingly, dodged questions about whether First Amendment concerns
prompted the cases' dismissals, effectively suggesting that the position
could not be defended.
Third, Ms. Rubin reports that Mr. Holder
was briefed personally on the decision to drop the case, a fact that
seemingly contradicts earlier Justice Department statements.
Fourth, the Justice Department's own internal investigation into the
strange handling of the case has itself been a sham. Even though
the Office of Professional Responsibility was assigned to the case in
July, it did not bother to interview the original trial team until a few
days before Mr. Adams left the department.
Finally, Ms. Rubin's
reporting confirms that much of Justice's Civil Rights Division rejects
"the notion that any discrimination case should be filed against black
defendants" for any reason. In short, a double standard exists in
which only whites and Asians can be guilty of illegal discrimination but
never be its victims, while blacks can only be victims but never charged
as perpetrators.
This is a dangerous and un-American
notion. If Americans of different races cannot receive equal
justice from the Justice Department, there is no real justice.
The Black Panther Case -- Anger, Ignorance
And Lies
J. Christian Adams says on the day Obama was
elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New
Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in
Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and
poll watchers (video).
After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation
case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I
and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an
entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before
a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us
to dismiss the case.
The New Black Panther case was the simplest
and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department
career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements
falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders
for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas
investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a
Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.
The federal
voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were
enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in
elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the
end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and
those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But
unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not
discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions
of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in
one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen
dam.
Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal
of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward
equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department
share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and
abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers.
The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's
enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent
2012 presidential election.
FoxNews.com is reporting that a former Justice
Department attorney who resigned last month in protest of the Obama
administration's handling of a voter intimidation case involving the New
Black Panther Party accused a top Justice official of lying under oath
about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the case.
J. Christian Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a blogger for
Pajamas Media, told Fox News in an exclusive interview that aired
Wednesday that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez provided false
testimony in May to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which
is investigating the department's decision to drop charges against three
members of the radical group in a case that the government won.
Perez told the commission that the facts and the law didn't support the
case against the group.
"I know about the truth…and I know what
the truth is and I know to say the facts and law don't support the Black
Panther case is not true," Adams said, adding that Perez ignored his
warnings not to provide false testimony.
"We made it very clear
that continuing to say that the facts and the law don't support this
case would not be consistent with the truth," he said.
Scott Johnson
adds,
Adams is a protagonist in this story with first-hand knowledge of the
Department of Justice's machinations in the case. His accounts of
what transpired are credible and devastating. Did Eric Holder
approve of the dismissal of the case against the NBPP? Adams
provides ground for concluding that he did.
The department has
responded by characterizing Adams as a conservative and a disgruntled
employee. As Adams states in
the interview with Kelly and as Roger Simon reports, Adams was
disgruntled only about the department's disgusting treatment of the NBPP
case. He was otherwise fully gruntled.
And Adams's senior
Department of Justice colleague on the case (Christopher Coates) has
been exiled to South Carolina. What was his offense?
A
Google News search on "Washington Post Christian Adams" and "New York
Times Christian Adams" turns up only my own posts noting the lack of
interest in the case on the part of the Post and the Times. Yet
the case has all the ingredients of a major scandal if a single standard
were applied to these matters.
Rush Limbaugh turned his attention
to the case yesterday. So word has gotten out. Even the
Associated Press covered the story yesterday. AP reporter Jesse
Washington quotes Jennifer Rubin on the case and he does a creditable
job with the story.
If the mainstream media did not have an
intolerably high threshold for embarrassment, professional pride among
the AP's colleagues would dictate that they take an interest in it too.
Media Blackout For Black Panthers
The Washington Times
says that explosive racial allegations are being ignored by the
poodles in the press.
Where is the New York Times? Where is
The Washington Post? Where are CBS and NBC? A whistleblower
makes explosive allegations about the Department of Justice; his story
is backed by at least two other witnesses; and the allegations involve
the two hot-button issues of race and of blatant politicization of the
justice system. A potential constitutional confrontation stemming
from the scandal brews between the Justice Department and the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights. A congressman highly respected for
thoughtfulness and bipartisanship has all but accused the department of
serious impropriety. By every standard of objective journalism,
this adds up to real news.
Or it would be real news if a
Republican Justice Department stood accused. It would be real news
if the liberal media weren't mostly in the tank for our celebrated but
failing first black president.
Tomorrow, the Civil Rights
Commission will hear long-awaited testimony from J. Christian Adams, who
resigned from the Voting Section of the Justice Department after the
department improperly ordered him to refuse compliance with the
commission's lawful subpoena. Mr. Adams first told his story in
public in these pages on June 28 and later did two major interviews with
Fox News' Megyn Kelly. In those appearances, he flatly accused the
Obama Justice Department of adopting an unlawful, immoral policy
identified in previous Washington Times editorials -- namely, enforcing
civil rights laws against white perpetrators who victimized minorities
but never against black perpetrators who victimize whites or Asians.
If this is indeed the policy, it makes a scandalous mockery of the
cherished American principle of "equal justice under the law."
All these allegations stem from what should have been a slam-dunk
voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party
videotaped in menacing behavior outside a Philadelphia polling place in
2008. The Obama Justice Department dropped or seriously reduced
all the charges or penalties in the case after it already effectively
had been won. Mr. Adams' former colleague, longtime award-winning
civil rights lawyer Christopher Coates, has been reported on multiple
occasions to have backed Mr. Adams' version of events and of the Obama
team's openly discriminatory policy.
If the department's motives
are not racial or racist, Justice officials surely appear political.
One of the Black Panthers against whom the department declined to press
charges was an official poll watcher for the Democratic Party and an
elected local party official. The department dropped charges just
four days before another election, allowing him again to serve as a poll
watcher.
Mr. Adams says the official most directly involved in
dropping the case, Steven H. Rosenbaum -- whose ethics have been subject
to judicial sanction -- refused to read his own team's legal briefs
before deciding to dismiss the case. Mr. Adams accuses Thomas E.
Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, of
providing false answers in testimony to the Civil Rights Commission.
On a parallel track, The Washington Times has reported strong
circumstantial evidence suggesting that department officials may have
consulted the White House before dismissing the case. That
possibility, too, cries out for investigation.
These broad policy
questions and suggestions of political chicanery are important. Do
we have a nation of laws equally applied to all, or is justice being
reduced to raw politics? Investigating such questions is the
essence of the news business. Failure to look into such a scandal
is evidence of the institutional corruption of the much-ballyhooed
"fourth branch of government," a supposedly independent media.
Ex-Official Accuses Justice Department Of
Racial Bias
Fox News is reporting In emotional and personal
testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter
intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former
employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore
cases that involve black defendants and white victims.
J.
Christian Adams, testifying Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, said that "over and over and over again," the department showed
"hostility" toward those cases. He described the Black Panther case as
one example of that -- he defended the legitimacy of the suit and said
his "blood boiled" when he heard a Justice official claim the case
wasn't solid.
"It is false," Adams said of the claim.
"We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens," he later
testified.
The department abandoned the New Black Panther case
last year. It stemmed from an incident on Election Day in 2008 in
Philadelphia, where members of the party were videotaped in front of a
polling place, dressed in military-style uniforms and allegedly hurling
racial slurs while one brandished a night stick.
Robert Moon says its support for anti-white
race quotas were already enough to demonstrate the NAACP's blatantly
racist views (since they decided to bring up racism), we now learn that
they were directly involved in protecting fanatical racist militants
from prosecution.
According to the Washington Times,
Congressional testimony has revealed that the NAACP spoke regularly
about the Black Panther voter intimidation case to the Justice
Department and lobbied for the case to be dismissed. Or, as Obama
would put it, they "acted stupidly."
It's a stunning revelation
considering the pot-kettle "racism" smears they've spent the last few
days hurling at the Tea Party movement from their shiny glass house.
Has the Tea Party movement intervened in any cases against armed
Klansmen caught on tape intimidating voters at the polls? Does the
Tea Party movement routinely fight for racist preferential treatment for
white people?
No. That kind of flagrant racial bigotry
comes from the NAACP -- the group accusing anyone who dares to disagree
with Obama of hating black people.
As noted, contrary to
everything we are told, the Tea Party movement is
mainstream, more
educated and best
reflects the racial make-up of the country. As also
noted, the only actual bigots here are our "post-racial"
Marxist-in-chief and his black power allies at the New Black Panther
Party and the NAACP.
Related: The Islamists at
CAIR back the NAACP Resolution on Tea
Party Racism.
Surprised?
More Black Panther Hi Jinks
Mark Tapscott
says Democratic election lawyer
and Obama political appointee Samuel Hirsch was deeply involved in the
Justice Department decision to drop the federal prosecution of two
Philadelphia New Black Panthers for voting rights violations in the 2008
president election (file here), according to documents identified by
Judicial Watch.
The documents describe eight email exchanges
between Hirsch, who is Deputy Associate Attorney General, and Deputy
Assistant Attorney General Steve Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum is a career
attorney in DOJ.
The involvement of Hirsch in the decision
contradicts sworn testimony by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez
before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
In response to a
direct question from Commissioner Peter Kirsanov about political
appointees influencing the decision to drop the New Black Panther
prosecution, Perez responded by saying: "No. The decisions were made by
Loretta King in consultation with Steve Rosenbaum, who is the Acting
Deputy Assistant Attorney General."
Judicial Watch discovered the
existence of the email exchanges between Hirsch and Rosenbaum as a
result of a DOJ-compiled Vaughn Index in response to a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request. The index describes documents that were
not provided in an FOIA response by a federal department or agency.
The Vaughn Index listing, according to Judicial Watch, said the
denied documents the non-profit had requested included:
"An
'Email Chain with Attachments' from Rosenbaum to Hirsch dated April 30,
2009: The email chain includes '…a detailed response and analysis of the
proposed draft filings in NBPP (New Black Panther Party) litigation…The
response includes a candid assessment of legal research and raises
questions about the case law and proposed relief….This document also
contains attorney discussion, opinions, and analyses of the draft
documents and case law.'”
The Judicial Watch discovery is likely
to fuel new controversy about the case that arose from the voter
intimidation video featuring the combat-clad
New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia area polling place.
Coates To Testify
The news that Christopher Coates, former chief
of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, is set to testify Friday
before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is crucial to the panel’s
investigation of allegations that the Obama administration has not
enforced the nation’s civil rights laws in a race-neutral manner.
The testimony by Coates, a career government lawyer, is expected to
shed light on whether DOJ:
• Discriminated against white voters
in dismissing the voter-intimidation case against two members of the
New Black Panther Party and the party itself that arose from
incidents at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008.
• Had a general policy or practice in its Civil Rights
Division of not enforcing voting laws when the subjects of
complaints were racial minorities.
• Had a racially
motivated policy of not enforcing Section 8 of the National Voting
Rights Act, which requires states to remove ineligible voters from
the voter rolls.
When Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general
who heads the Civil Rights Division, testified under oath before the
independent Commission on Civil Rights in May, the Obama appointee
repeatedly denied a racially motivated policy was in place. Perez
also testified that he would investigate any statement to the contrary
by anyone in his division.
However, Perez has refused to address
the truth of subsequent sworn allegations alleging that Julie Fernandes,
his deputy assistant attorney general in charge of voting issues,
ordered and implemented such a race-based policy. In fact, Perez
has publicly embraced her leadership.
In July, J. Christian
Adams, a former career lawyer, testified under oath about Fernandes’
statements. Some veteran DOJ watchers say the absence of any
Section 8 enforcement activity by the Civil Rights Division more than 20
months into the Obama administration, despite evidence of non-compliance
by states throughout the country, lends credence to Adams’s charges.
Testimony by Coates that the Civil Rights Division under Perez
purposely did not pursue full, equal, and race-neutral enforcement of
federal voting laws could -- and rightfully should -- cause huge
problems for this or any administration.
Adams testified on these
matters after resigning from the Justice Department. He said
Coates could confirm his testimony and specific accusations that
Fernandes did not equally or fairly enforce voting rights laws.
The news that Coates indeed will testify follows revelations earlier
this week by Judicial Watch. A privilege log obtained by Judicial
Watch in a lawsuit against the Justice Department under the Freedom of
Information Act shows that political appointees at Justice were much
more involved in the decision to dismiss the Black Panthers case than
they repeatedly claimed.
Related:Congressman Warns AG Holder not
to Block Coates’ Testimony
Malik Shabazz Visited The White House
Andrew Breitbart says, that in May 2009, the
Obama/Holder Justice Department dropped charges in a voter intimidation
case against
Malik Shabazz, a leader of the New Black Panther Party, despite
having already won a summary judgment against him, and his New Black
Panther Party colleagues
King Samir Shabazz
and Jerry Jackson who
were video-taped outside polling place in Philadelphia intimidating
voters as they arrived on election day, 2008. In July 2009, when
Congress began looking into the matter, someone named Malik Shabazz
visited the private residence at the White House.
When news of the visit was released under the
auspices of transparency, the White House denied that the Malik Shabazz
on the visitor’s log was the same Malik Shabazz involved in the New
Black Panther voter intimidation case. According to Norm Eisen,
Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, the
records contained "a few "false positives" -- names that make you think
of a well-known person, but are actually someone else." He
specifically cited Malik Shabazz as an example of one of these "false
positives".
At the time, the media did not challenge the White
House on the veracity of this claim. The White House’s position
was, basically: "We’re being transparent, here are all the visitor logs,
and this guy is not the guy you think he is, TRUST US."
The White
House has assured the American people that the Malik Shabazz that
visited the White House at that time is not the same Malik Shabazz at
the center of the New Black Panther story. But, the White House
has not provided any information to verify its contention or who this
"other" Malik Shabazz is.
The great thing about transparency --
when there is actual transparency -- is that it renders trust
unnecessary. We ask that the White House identify which Malik
Shabazz visited the White House residence on July 25, 2009.
The
Washington Times
says Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has an obligation to
clean house at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
That's clear after explosive new whistle-blower testimony under oath
Friday in the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, which
triggers a pledge Perez made under oath on May 14. Failure to fire
some officials and to radically revamp practices in the Civil Rights
Division would represent clear dereliction of duty by Perez.
Friday's testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came from
much-decorated Justice Department veteran Christopher Coates, a hero of
the civil rights legal community when he was a lawyer for the American
Civil Liberties Union. "The election of President Obama," he said,
"brought to positions of influence and power with the Civil Rights
Division many of the very people who had demonstrated hostility to the
concept of equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act."
Coates
named names and gave numerous examples of how the division and its
political supervisors refuse to enforce civil rights laws to protect
white victims against black perpetrators. He said his supervisor,
Loretta King, then serving in a political position as acting assistant
attorney general, specifically forbade him from asking prospective
employees if they would be willing to enforce civil rights laws in a
race-neutral manner. Additionally, he testified that the
department under Perez has refused to enforce federal law that requires
states to remove ineligible voters -- including dead people and
incarcerated felons -- from their voting rolls. Coates officially
recommended a full year ago that the department enforce the law against
at least eight states that were flagrantly noncompliant, but Perez and
the Obama team ignored the issue.
All of this puts Perez, among
others, in a bind. Not only is some of Perez's sworn testimony
misleading, but his pledge to crack down against employees who act in a
race-biased manner is being put to the test. On May 14, under
questioning from Civil Rights Commissioner Todd Gaziano about employees
making racialist non-enforcement statements and decisions, Perez said
four different times that he would not put up with what he called
"people of that ilk." Perez indignantly challenged Gaziano, "If
you have such a statement, bring such a statement to our attention."
Coates now has confirmed sworn testimony from other witnesses that
Perez's team did and continues to act in a race-biased manner.
Coates swore that he told the same thing to Perez before Perez testified
in May. Even before that, multiple press reports dating back to
last September indicated this allegation of racialist non-enforcement of
voting rights laws was a serious concern. Yet Perez seems to have
questioned nobody about it, disciplined nobody over it or raised a
finger to address the problem.
This broad issue of deliberately
unequal enforcement of the law is the main point of the Black Panther
investigation. The evidence points to racially unequal enforcement
-- and a dangerous abrogation of justice.
Malik Shabazz Incriminates Himself
"We decided that on election day we would go out to the polls
because of what? Because they said they was going to be
stopping black people from coming to vote. We knew that they
didn't want a black man in office and there were strong intelligence
indicators that there was going to be some trouble at the polls and
that we wanted to make sure that the police weren't harassing our
people, so we wanted to go out and do what we could. It's just
that the New Black Panther Party sometimes, whatever we do, we just
tend to do it kind of strong. You know what I mean?
(laughter) Sometimes whatever we do, sometimes we just do it,
just REAL strong, and sometimes it can even be TOO BLACK, and TOO
STRONG. And so what happened was one of our men, one of our
brothers, my little brother, and I love him, King Shamir Shabazz
just was a little bit TOO STRONG and he was caught out there in the
polling place with a nightstick. At the polling place, and the
John McCain campaign rolled up on him with some cameras and some
poll watchers and jumped all over the issue and all over the
brother. . ."
The Wrongdoing, the Cover-Up, And Executive
Privilege
Jennifer Rubin
says, that like any administration snared in a Beltway scandal, the
Obama team has two problems in the New Black Panther Party scandal: the
wrongdoing and the cover-up.
The wrongdoing is not merely that
the Obama administration dismissed a blatant case of voter intimidation.
It is not merely that an NAACP attorney pressured the Obama team to dump
the case. It is not merely that the Obama Justice Department
explicitly told attorneys not to enforce Section 8 of the Voting Rights
Act, which helps prevent voter fraud. It is that the Obama team
believes that the civil rights laws run only one way and offer
protection only to certain racial or ethnic groups. That’s not the
law (or the Equal Protection Clause has no meaning), and it runs afoul
of Americans’ basic sense of fairness. That is why the Obama
administration denies that it holds such a view. They may be
radicals, but they aren’t dumb.
The cover-up takes two forms.
There are the false statements put out by the Justice Department and
made under oath by the assistant attorney general for civil rights,
Thomas Perez, first, denying that political appointees were involved in
the case and, second, disclaiming the existence of hostility toward
race-neutral enforcement of voting laws. But there is also the
Nixonian abuse of executive privilege to prevent scrutiny of the Justice
Department. It is this latter issue that has gotten too little
attention.
The administration has refused to produce witnesses
and documents, employing a spurious claim of "deliberative process"
privilege. Case law and Justice Department memoranda make clear
that this is an offshoot of the executive privilege that is applicable
only when invoked by the president (or, some would say, a Cabinet-level
official). But Obama hasn’t done this. After all, "executive
privilege" sounds bad. It reeks of "cover-up." But without a
formal invocation of the privilege, it is lawlessness, pure and simple,
to withhold documents and witnesses in response to lawful subpoenas,
FOIA requests, and a federal statute (which obligates the DOJ to
cooperate with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights).
It was both
inaccurate and nervy for the Justice Department’s spokesman to claim
that Chris Coates’s testimony was short on facts. To begin with,
Coates cited example after example to support the conclusion that the
Obama team considers only racial, ethnic, and language minorities to be
protected by civil rights laws. But more to the point, he was
prevented from disclosing even more details because of the
administration’s privilege claim. Again and again, Coates
explained that he couldn’t answer questions out of respect for the DOJ’s
position. Similarly, the log obtained by Judicial Watch lists
dozens of e-mails and documents transmitted between political appointees
and the voting section that would substantiate testimony by Coates.
All that information remains hidden from view because the Justice
Department is concealing it.
The mainstream media have just woken
up to the extent and importance of the scandal, so perhaps they will get
around to this aspect of the case. Yet I get the feeling that if
it had been the Bush administration telling whistleblowers not to
testify and withholding, absent any legal basis, key documents that
could implicate high-ranking officials, the media would have already
been all over this.
And Speaking Of The Black Panthers
Here's another video from King Shamir Shabazz,
from the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panthers. Shabazz
is the dude who was swinging the nightstick at the voting poll, that
began this entire sordid story. In this one, Shabazz accuses white
people of using black babies as "alligator bait."
This is the guy that Obama and Holder's Justice Department have
defended. What does that tell you?
Shabazz is beyond a racist -- he's an insane racist -- just
watch this video, in which he calls for the killing of white babies.
When this bunch of hard-core Obama supporters is added to those who
are holding the 10/2 rally, you begin to get a really good picture of
ObamaWorld. These people are not Americans. By their own
words they identify themselves as the enemy of everything we hold dear
-- and Obama is their champion.
Black Panther Blackout
The Washington Times
says new reports raise the stakes on voter-intimidation case.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights votes today on its report
regarding the Black Panther voter-intimidation case. The Obama
administration's malfeasance in this scandal is becoming impossible to
avoid -- even for the White House's most reliable defenders.
After 17 months of averting its eyes, The Washington Post finally ran a
major front-page feature on the controversy on Saturday. Three
current Justice Department lawyers told the Post that whistleblowers J.
Christian Adams and Christopher Coates are accurate in stating that
anybody who tries to enforce civil rights laws in a race-neutral fashion
will be ostracized, criticized and denied promotions because leaders at
Justice believe "it is not the voting section's job to protect white
voters." One senior official confirmed and even defended that
view.
While the left has tried to demonize Mr. Adams as a
conservative hit man, several current Justice officials admitted Mr.
Adams performed his work admirably when he was a civil rights attorney
for the department. This gives added credence to the
whistleblowers' assertions that the Obama administration dispenses
race-based justice, a charge backed up by the facts in the New Black
Panther Party case. Consider the elements:
The Black
Panthers caught on videotape intimidating voters both have convictions
for assault. One used a club -- much like the one brandished on
Election Day -- to hospitalize a victim with a serious head injury.
Political interference in the ongoing prosecution is obvious.
Federal prosecutors already had won the Panther case before Obama
appointees at Justice dismissed it.
Justice has made extravagant
claims of "privileges" from divulging otherwise public information.
In one never-before-known form of exemption from public transparency,
the administration is claiming "deliberative process" privilege for
discussions that occurred after decisions were made. As a legal
argument, that's nonsensical.
There has been a persistent failure
by Justice officials to honor legal subpoenas issued by an independent
governmental commission. By law, all federal departments "shall"
honor subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Yet the
Justice Department is defying the commission and likewise continues to
ignore repeated inquiries from respected congressmen.
Obama
officials claimed repeatedly that political appointees played no role in
dropping the Black Panther case. An e-mail log proves otherwise.
A timeline of White House meetings lends credence to the idea that the
White House interfered. For example, Associate Attorney General
Thomas J. Perrelli made a series of visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
that corresponded exactly with major developments in the case -- but he
almost never visited the White House otherwise.
The Civil Rights
Commission's vote tomorrow is largely a ruling on the Obama
administration's attempts to evade justice. Despite all the
stonewalling, there's little doubt Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr.'s
department made race-based decisions in this race-based conflict.
Civil Rights Panel Postpones Vote As
Democrat Walks Out
Jerry Markon is reporting that a federal
commission had to postpone a vote on a report that criticizes the
Justice Department's handling of a voter-intimidation lawsuit Friday
after a Democratic panelist walked out of the meeting in protest.
The draft of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report says that
Justice tried to hide the extensive involvement of high-level political
officials in the dismissal of the suit against members of the New Black
Panther Party. The move, the report says, indicates that Justice's
Civil Rights Division is failing to protect white voters and is "at war
with its core mission of guaranteeing equal protection (under) the laws
for all Americans.''
The Justice Department has strongly denied
the allegations in the report, which follows the commission's year-long
investigation into the Obama administration's handling of the 2008
incident. The Bush administration had filed the lawsuit against
the New Black Panther Party members, but the Justice Department under
the Obama administration dismissed most of the case.
The
commission was scheduled to vote on the report Friday morning. But it
could not reach a quorum because commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic
appointee and a former senior adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
refused to participate. The commission needs five members present
to meet quorum.
"This has been a procedural and partisan farce
from the beginning,'' Yaki said in an impromptu news conference.
"It's not my responsibility to make a quorum for this kangaroo court ...
they want to score political points against the Obama Justice
Department.''
Members of the commission's majority, who drafted
the report, denied they were motivated by politics and accused Justice
Department officials of blocking their investigation, failing to turn
over key documents and instructing witnesses not to testify.
"The degree of stonewalling that the Justice Department has engaged in
is unprecedented in the 53-year history of the commission,'' said
commissioner Todd F. Gaziano, a senior fellow in legal studies at the
conservative Heritage Foundation. He said the commission would
vote on the 131-page report at its meeting next week.
Related:New Black Panthers Will Be
Watching Polls In Houston (video)
New Evidence Political Appointees Ended
Black Panther Case
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and
prosecutes government corruption,
announced today that it has
obtained documents from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) that
provide new evidence that top political appointees at the DOJ were
intimately involved in the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation
case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense (NBPP).
These new documents, which include internal DOJ email correspondence,
directly contradict sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney
General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership was involved in
the decision. The new documents were obtained last week by
Judicial Watch pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit (Judicial
Watch v. Department of Justice (No.10-851)).
The new documents include a series of emails between two political
appointees: former Democratic election lawyer and current Deputy
Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch and Associate Attorney General
Thomas Perrelli. Both DOJ officials were involved in detailed
discussions regarding the NBPP decision. For example, in one April
30, 2009, email from Hirsch to Perrelli, with the subject title "Fw: New
Black Panther Party Update," Hirsch writes:
Tom,
I need to discuss this with you tomorrow
morning. I’ll send you another email on this shortly. If you want
to discuss it this evening, please let me know which number to call and
when.
These emails were put in further context by an updated Vaughn
index obtained by Judicial Watch, describing NBPP documents the Obama
DOJ continues to withhold. These documents, which were
attached to the DOJ’s Motion for Summary Judgment filing, include a
description of a May 13 email chain that seems to suggest political
appointee Sam Hirsch may have been orchestrating the NBPP decision.
Acting DAAG [Steven Rosenbaum] advising his
supervising Acting AAG [Loretta King] of DASG’s [Hirsch’s] request
for a memorandum by the Acting DAAG reviewing various options, legal
strategies, and different proposals of relief as related to each
separate defendant. Acting DAAG forwarding emails from
Appellate Section Chief’s and Appellate Attorney’s with their detailed
legal analyses including the application of constitutional provisions
and judicial precedent to strategies and relief under consideration in
the ongoing NBPP litigation, as well as an assessment of the strength of
potential legal arguments, and presenting different possible scenarios
in the litigation. [Emphasis added]
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez
testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political
appointees were involved in the NBPP decision. Perez suggested
that the dispute was merely "a case of career people disagreeing with
career people."
In fact, political appointee Sam Hirsch sent an April 30, 2009, email
to Steven Rosenbaum (then-Acting Assistant Deputy Attorney General in
the Civil Rights) thanking Rosenbaum for "doing everything you’re doing
to make sure that this case is properly resolved." The next day, the DOJ
began to reverse course on its NBPP voter intimidation lawsuit.
Judicial Watch also obtained two email reports sent by former Acting
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Loretta King to
Attorney General Eric Holder.
The first report, entitled "Weekly Report for the Week ending May 8,
2009," and sent on May 12, 2009, notes: "On May 15, 2009, pursuant to
court order, the Department will file a motion for default judgment
against at least some of the defendants" in the NBPP lawsuit. The
report further notes that the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense
"has been identified as a racist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the Anti-Defamation League and the founders and members of the
original Black Panther Party."
The second report, entitled "Weekly Report for the Week ending May
15, 2009," and sent on May 18, 2009, demonstrates that the DOJ did an
abrupt reversal on the NBPP issue: "On May 15, 2009, the Department
voluntarily dismissed its claims" against the NBPP and two of the
defendants, the report noted. The DOJ moved for default judgment
against only one defendant.
"It is now obvious to me why the Obama administration continues to be
so secretive regarding the Justice Department’s decision to abandon its
lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party. These documents show
that not only was the Black Panther decision shamelessly politicized by
the Obama administration but also that Obama officials lied to cover up
the scandal. And these documents raise more questions about
Attorney General Holder’s involvement. The American people need to
know if racism and political favoritism are corrupting the nation’s
highest law enforcement agency," stated Judicial Watch President Tom
Fitton.
The DOJ filed its lawsuit against the NBPP following an incident that
took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November 4,
2008. A video of the incident, showing a member of the NBPP
brandishing police-style baton weapon, was widely distributed on the
Internet. According to multiple witnesses, members of the NBPP
blocked access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled racial
epithets. Nonetheless, the DOJ ultimately overruled the
recommendations of its own staff and dismissed the majority of its
charges. Current and former DOJ attorneys have alleged in sworn
testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that the Holder
DOJ’s NBPP and other civil rights-related decisions are made on the
basis of race and political affiliation.
Holder Let's
Black Panthers Skate... Again
Fox Nation
is reporting that J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department
Attorney, talked to Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends this morning about
why he felt the New Black Panther party were being ignored by Attorney
General Eric Holder, despite their illegal threat to 'capture' Trayvon
Martin shooter George Zimmerman.
Adams argues that the Justice
Department needs to focus on them because "You cannot solicit kidnapping
in the State of Florida, it's a felony."
"The new Black Panthers
think they are above the law" and Adams attributes this thinking to Eric
Holder's Department of Justice.
This is not the first time the New Black Panther party have gotten a
pass from the Attorney General after a voter intimidation case was
dropped.
Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a conservative blogger for
Pajamas Media, says he and the other Justice Department lawyers working
on the case were ordered to dismiss it.
"I mean we were told,
'Drop the charges against the New Black Panther Party,'" Adams told Fox
News, adding that political appointees Loretta King, acting head of the
civil rights division, and Steve Rosenbaum, an attorney with the
division since 2003, ordered the dismissal.
Related: Bond set for New Black Panther leader
in weapons case
Federal
Court Finds Obama Appointees Interfered With New Black Panther
Prosecution
Conn Carroll
is reporting that a federal court in Washington, DC, held today that
political appointees appointed by Barack Obama did interfere with the
Department of Justice’s prosecution of the New Black Panther Party.
The ruling came as part of a motion by the conservative legal watch
dog group Judicial Watch, who had sued the DOJ in federal court to
enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents
pertaining to the the New Black Panthers case. Judicial Watch had
secured many previously unavailable documents through their suit against
DOJ and were now suing for attorneys’ fees.
Obama’s DOJ
had claimed Judicial Watch was not entitled to attorney’s fees since
“none of the records produced in this litigation evidenced any political
interference whatsoever in” how the DOJ handled the New Black Panther
Party case. But United States District Court Judge Reggie Walton
disagreed. Citing a “series of emails” between Obama political
appointees and career Justice lawyers, Walton writes:
The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were
conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther
Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in
that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney
General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved
in that decision. Surely the public has an interest in documents
that cast doubt on the accuracy of government officials’
representations regarding the possible politicization of agency
decision-making. … In sum, the Court concludes that three of
the four fee entitlement factors weigh in favor of awarding fees to
Judicial Watch. Therefore, Judicial Watch is both eligible and
entitled to fees and costs, and the Court must now consider the
reasonableness of Judicial Watch’s requested award.
The New
Black Panthers case stems from a Election Day 2008 incident where
two members of the New Black Panther Party were filmed outside a polling
place intimidating voters and poll watchers by brandishing a billy club.
Justice Department lawyers investigated the case, filed charges, and
when the Panthers failed to respond, a federal court in Philadelphia
entered a “default” against all the Panthers defendants. But after Obama
was sworn in, the Justice Department reversed course, dismissed charges
against three of the defendants, and let the fourth off with a narrowly
tailored restraining order.
“The Court’s decision is another piece of evidence showing the Obama
Justice Department is run by individuals who have a problem telling the
truth,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The decision shows
that we can’t trust the Obama Justice Department to fairly administer
our nation’s voting and election laws.”
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