Why The Silence.....Indeed

As my many....erm several....uh...regular reader(s) will attest, I remain quite concerned about the current decision by the Justice Department to drop the federal charges against the New Black Panther Party.  During the election of 2008, NBPP members stood outside of a polling place and threatened voters with violence if they didn't vote a certain way.  One was holding a nightstick.

The Bush Administration filed charges.  The Obama Administration was on the verge of obtaining a default judgment when an apparent political decision was made to drop the charges against all but one of the defendants.  I believe the idea of race-neutral law enforcement is one worth defending.  Apparently, elements of the Obama Administration feel differently on the subject.

I mention all this because the Ombudsman for the Washington Post has published a piece about the delay in WaPo's decision to cover this issue.

For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competitors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing bloggers have been pumping the story. Liberal bloggers have countered, accusing them of trying to manufacture a scandal.


...


That's prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, "Lord, there'd have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months."


To be sure, ideology and party politics are at play. Liberal bloggers have accused Adams of being a right-wing activist (he insisted to me Friday that his sole motivation is applying civil rights laws in a race-neutral way). Conservatives appointed during the Bush administration control a majority of the civil rights commission's board. And Fox News has used interviews with Adams to push the story. Sarah Palin has weighed in via Twitter, urging followers to watch Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly's coverage because "her revelations leave Left steaming."


The Post should never base coverage decisions on ideology, nor should it feel obligated to order stories simply because of blogosphere chatter from the right or the left.

What Mr. Alexander his missed is that it appears that the influence of latent politics is the cause for the delay in covering this issue in the first place.

Were we talking about the Klan threatening voters with clubs, the WaPo would have been among the first to point out how far we have yet to go on the subject of race relations.  They would have called for immediate federal intervention and questioned the character of any administration official that did not move forward with the requisite alacrity.

We already know via the JournoList that members of the media colluded to soften the blow of the Jeremiah Wright story on Mr. Obama.

What Mr. Alexander continues to miss is the fact that were our media truly unbiased, we never would have seen the rise of Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, or any other conservative media outlet.

A Lawyer Quits In Disgust

J. Christian Adams recently quit his job working for the Voting Rights section of the U. S. Justice Department.  He resigned in disgust over the way the Obama Administration appointees have eroded the principle of equality before the law by directing the dismissal of the cases against New Black Panther party members.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.


Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.

The quickest way to turn America into a third world country is to undermine the rule of law and the idea that we all stand equal before the law.  Federal voter intimidation cases should not be sought based on skin color.....that of the victims or that of the alleged criminals that violated federal election laws.

Anything less falls far short of who we are trying to be as a nation.

Black Panther Investigation Continues

This time via the US Civil Rights Commission.

I'm all for having the government ensure that people are not intimidated for voting...or not voting...or for how they vote.  A zero tolerance policy on voter intimidation is fine with me.

That isn't what Mr. Obama's administration has pursued.

Pick One......A Request for Congressional Consistency

As is often the case, I see indefensible behaviors in Washington D.C. that are being excused or outright ignored by our friends on the left and their fellow travelers in the major media.  I have no doubt that our friends on the left and their fellow travelers in the major media felt the same way during the previous administration.

In this particular case, we have a Justice Department that is refusing to prosecute a couple members of the New Black Panther party for acts of voter intimidation on election day in 2008.  The....gentlemen.....in question are black.  They were directly outside of a polling place brandishing weapons and threatening voters that didn't agree with their point of view.

Were these.....gentlemen....white, I have no doubt that the trial would have already been completed and they would be behind bars; where they belong.

Were this a Republican administration working with a Republican Congress, I have no doubt that the wailing from the left and their fellow travelers in the major media would be sufficient to drown out Bourbon Street in New Orleans after the Saints won the Super Bowl.

But this ain't that.

Now we have the news that the Inspector General for the Justice Department has ruled that his office lacks the authority to investigate whether the decision not to prosecute was politically motivated.  John Conyers D-Michigan [regrettably] has decided to roll over an accept the decision by the office of the Inspector General and not conduct a Congressional investigation into the matter.

It was only two short years ago that Mr. Conyers had a different perspective on Congressional investigations of the administration.

"The Committee clearly has authority under the Constitution to investigate and expose possible violations of law and abuses of executive power," Mr. Conyers wrote in a 22-page memorandum less than two years ago. "The Committee also needs more complete information on the issue of the politicization of the Department of Justice." Even more to the point, the Detroit congressman wrote: "The proper course is to recognize claims of privilege only when properly asserted in response to specific questions during a particular hearing. The courts have stated that a personal assertion of Executive Privilege by the President is legally required for the privilege claim to be valid."

 
  I am unfortunately certain that the day will come when Mr. Conyers will be full of indignation over Presidential assertions of executive privilege.  The President will be a Republican.  And his indignation may well be justified.
 
His lack of current resolve only serves to undermine his position in the future when the tables have....again...been turned.

h/t to the Blogfather