Eric Holder
Will he follow in the footsteps of Harry Daugherty and John Mitchell?
The below story in the Washington Times is beyond disturbing. Former Justice Department attorney J Christian Adams resigned over this issue and describes how a case he was (successfully) prosecuting was dropped at DOJ's orders under Attorney General Eric Holder. If ever a case called out for a special prosecutor, this is it.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/25/inside-the-black-panther-case-anger-ignorance-and-/
Intimidation? You be the judge.
Even if you accept DOJ's defense that the case lacked merit (which is preposterous), how does one justify ordering DOJ lawyers to ignore subpoenas by the US Commission on Civil Rights, which was investigating the dismissal?
What kind of lawyer is this man Eric Holder? Under Clinton, he ramrodded questionable pardons right up to the president's desk even though the FBI opposed the pardons. Now he is challenging Arizona's immigration law.
Now this.
This has all the earmarks of a major scandal. It was fishy enough when the DOJ dropped the case in the first place. Now one of the involved lawyers is speaking out. Watch our Democrat Congress try to bury this one.
This really sounds like a red herring to me. Nobody blocked anyone from entering the polling station. Nobody suggested that people who voted would be hurt. Nobody followed people into the voting booth to see how they filled out their ballot. Nobody had lists of likely Republican voters to turn away. In fact, nobody has proposed a scenario for how the Will of the People might have been distorted by the presence of these individuals.
ReplyDeleteI don't at all object to police officers removing the man with the night stick. There are many things that are illegal within defined radii of polling places, and I would bet carrying a night stick is one of them.
Black Panthers? There is no Black Panther Party. No doubt there are a half dozen wannabees who were born too late, who like to dress up and play. None of them are an organized presence of any significance.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteIt is called the New Black Panther Party, and it is an organization under a racist known as malik Shabazz, a Howard Law School graduate.
If the KKK pulled this in front of black voters, you can rest assurred there would be indictments.
"Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it." Sage words uttered long ago by someone wiser than me. And they have been proven true time and again.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "red herring" of Mr. Jenkins, I think he should read the testimony before the Civil Rights Commission on this matter then actually look at the history of voter intimidation in the United States. One of the eyewitnesses called before the Civil Rights Commission was a fellow by the name of Bartle Bull, a veteran civil rights worker and campaigner from the era when the Democrats controlled the South and forced segregation on the populace. This from the National Review:
"Bartle Bull — a well-known Democratic lawyer (and former publisher of The Village Voice), who worked in the South during the height of the civil-rights campaign — saw the same thing happen. He had also gotten a call about the intimidation and drove to the polling place. One of the Panthers pointed his billy club at Bull and said, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” This to a man who started off as a volunteer for Adlai Stevenson, who headed Robert Kennedy’s campaign in New York in 1968, and who, in 1971, worked to get civil-rights stalwart Charles Evers elected governor of Mississippi."
Bull saw several voters walk up the long driveway to the polling place, stop, turn around, and leave when they saw the Panthers standing there in their black uniforms and combat boots with one of them slapping a billy club in his hand. It was a pretty dramatic moment in the hearing room when Bull, Hill, and Mauro turned in their chairs, and Bull pointed to one of the Panthers sitting two seats down from me and identified him as the one who wielded the billy club that day and who also said on the National Geograpic documentary that he wanted to kill white people."
http://article.nationalreview.com/432583/voter-intimidation-new-black-panther-style/hans-a-von-spakovsky?page=3
The statement that Mr. Bull made to the U.S. Department of Justice said, in part, "...In all my years of civil rights [activism] I never saw a more egregious voter rights violation." To put this into context, Mr. Jenkins, one must remember history of the Civil Rights era and a Democrat Sheriff named Bull Connor. Bartle Bull remembers him and others like him very well.
Eric Holder has amply demonstrated that under his leadership Civil Rights and equal justice are not for all Americans. He clearly holds the view that only those who support his President should have the law on their side to ensure that their rights are protected. All others need not apply. His actions are egregious enough, I believe, to support impeachment if we had anything other than a sycophantic Congress; but that will have to wait until after November. What I fear is the overall reaction to such blatant actions that disregard for the rule of law by the Justice Department. Only time will reveal the damage that Holder and his ideological ilk have done to a once great institution.
Still think it's a red herring, Siarlys?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do. I'm perfectly familiar with the civil rights era episodes Mr. Bill describes, and I am old enough to have been born in time to watch Bull Connor on TV. Nothing on the video showed anyone being turned away from the polls. Mr. Bill's citation from National Review describes something different, and on its face, more serious.
ReplyDeleteSo, I googled "Bartle Bull." Ah yes, when Eugene McCarthy became senile, he endorsed Ronald Reagan, and there is the sad tale of Mr. Horowitz, and here is what Village Voice had to say about Bartle Bull, after National Review trumpeted that Bull had endorsed John McCain, and that Bull was a former owner of Village Voice (which he very indirectly and disastrously was for about four years):
"After the sale in 1974, the anniversary issue notes, "Bull became a novelist; one of his works involves a sex scene with a dwarf."
"If that sounds a bit dismissive, at least now there's a new footnote to Bull's career, as he boldly stumps for McCain and calls Obama's economic platform 'pure Karl Marx'."
Now none of that is evidence of anything much, but when you have Fox News, National Review, and this guy Bartle Bull lined up, I don't see much of a case.
I'll tell you what I would do if such a pathetically amateur wannabe as you describe pulled this half-baked stunt at my local polling place. I would walk right by him, laugh, say "Yeah, right," and walk on through the door. Then, if he actually menaces, blocks, or swings his night stick at me, I would call the police.
This guy may well deserve a local prosecution for simple violation of Pennsylvania election laws. Its not a federal case. He's a two bit punk at worst, and it must really feed his ego that you pump him up to be the "New Black Panther" he styles himself. You have your motives, he has his motives, and you feed on each other the way George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden fed on each other.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteYour dismissiveness astounds me. First you go after this guy Bull, whom I know nothing about, then you say there was one guy-there weree at least two.
Sure, I would have done the same thing you would have done, but many people would and did turn away.
Interfering with a person's right to vote free of intimidation is a federal issue. You seem to be applying a double standard here.
Man, that sure is frustrating when somebody is dismissive, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSo what is your take on this issue, Lance?
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough to have an opinion. I don't like having an opinion just for the sake of having one.
ReplyDeleteLance,
ReplyDeleteOh, you just wanted to deride my "dismissive" comment.
I just appreciated the irony is all.
ReplyDeleteGary, the fact that you know nothing about this guy Bull is precisely my point. Taking Mr. Bill at his word, the ALLEGATION sounds serious. But, ALL of what passes for "evidence" is from very suspect sources, and you didn't even check them out, because they match up with your prejudices.
ReplyDeleteNow you say people were in fact turned away from voting, but there is NO evidence anyone actually turned around and went away! Frankly, unless this guy is promoting a total boycott of the election, denouncing... what was the candidate for president's name... Barack Obama??? as a half-white sellout, I don't know what a self-styled "New Black Panther" would get out of turning people away. Maybe that was exactly his point, I don't know, and neither do you.
Like I said, he might be good for a year or two in the state pen, or six months in county jail, but something isn't right the way this is being blown up. Some people who think they are righteous revolutionaries need to be treated dismissively. Nothing punctures their ego. No jack, you are not in the league of Osama bin Laden, you are not even in the league of Slats Grobnik, but you can cool your heels in the country jail for six months and then go get yourself a real job.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteDriving people from the voting places is not a local offense. It is a federal offense (something about that Voting Rights Bill a few decades ago.) It works for the protection of all (or at least I thought it did).
Secondly, are you relying solely on this one account and picture? There is much more. The news media was actually present and spoke to one of the thugs.
You and Lance like to accuse me of selective outrage, but I think you are guilty of it as well.