Obama administration political operatives overruled DoJ career professionals in the decision to not prosecute Black Panther voting intimidators. I guess that means that it would be OK for KKK members in hoods to hang around voting places with guns, too. Right?
[Friday morning update, with a bump]
More thoughts from Andrew McCarthy:
Republicans…are pressing for details about internal DOJ deliberations on the case, particularly the role played by Obama political appointees in the dismissal. Holder, Mr. Transparency, is naturally stonewalling. Obviously, the enforcement of the civil rights laws is not as important as the discretionary firing of U.S. attorneys (regarding which congressional Democrats demanded, and got, reams of DOJ documents and testimony). Nor is transparent law-enforcement as critical as the top-secret prisoner photos that Holder wanted disclosed to the world despite warnings from military and intel officials that disclosure would endanger our troops.
Seper recaps the sordid facts: “Two NBPP members, wearing black berets, black combat boots, black dress shirts and black jackets with military-style markings, were charged with intimidating voters, including brandishing a nightstick and issuing racial threats and racial insults. A third was accused of managing, directing and endorsing their behavior. The incident was captured on videotape…. Witnesses said [Minister King] Samir Shabazz, armed with the nightstick, and [Jerry] Jackson used racial slurs and made threats as they stood at the door of the polling place.”
I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn that the sweetheart settlement Holder’s Department gave these defendants does not require them to refrain from election activities. So of course Jackson, the alleged menacing racist who is also — surprise! — a Democrat Party operative, is right back in business again…
Change! But not much hope.
[Update mid morning]
Clarice Feldman has more:
The attorney general who engaged in this inexplicable act was appointed by President Barack Obama, who was sold to the voters as a post-racial figure and a constitutional law scholar.
In 2004, the misnamed left-wing outfit People for the American Way (PFAW) put forth a report entitled “The Shadow of Jim Crow,” which risibly confused efforts to prevent obvious voter fraud with intimidation and suppression. It concluded on this pot-banging note:
Robbing voters of their right to vote and to have their vote counted undermines the very foundations of our democratic society. Politicians, political strategists, and party officials who may consider voter intimidation and suppression efforts as part of their tactical arsenal should prepare to be exposed and prosecuted. State and federal officials, including Justice Department and national political party officials, should publicly repudiate such tactics and make clear that those who engage in them will face severe punishment.
So when I read this story from the Washington Times yesterday, I checked to see if PFAW had anything about it at all. I could find not one word.
Maybe PFAW missed the story, so I checked the NAACP website. I didn’t see a single thing criticizing the politicization of the Department of Justice in a way which undermines every citizen’s right to fair and free elections without intimidation.
Shocking. But expect commenter “Jim” to continue to shill and lie for this fascist and his (now) state-sanctioned black shirts. It’s what he does.
And she has a suggestion:
Perhaps in honor of the cop Obama unfairly maligned we ought to call this kind of racial discrimination “Jim Crowley.”
I like it.
[Update a few minutes later]
And more, from Heritage:
The Department’s spokeswoman says that “the facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims.” Really? Then why is the Department refusing to allow the trial team who actually investigated the “facts and the law” or the chief of the Voting Section who supervised the investigation to brief members of Congress? We all know why – because those lawyers would dispute the spurious claim being made by their political superiors.
Justice even sent a letter to Cong. Lamar Smith claiming that one of the defendants was dismissed because he was a resident of the building in which the polling place was located, a “fact” that is completely false. The Department’s own pleadings publicly filed in court in Philadelphia, as well as a poll watcher certificate issued to the defendant by the Democratic Party, show that that this defendant did not live at the polling place (a senior living center). This basic factual error shows just how unimportant the real facts were to those dismissing the case. And that defendant, whose MySpace page lists one of his general interests as “Killing Crakkkas,” was dismissed just in time to be reappointed as a poll watcher for the May 19 primary in Philadelphia!
When the facts don’t fit the narrative, the facts have to be ignored.