Clarence Page: [POTUS Barack] Obama's Willie Horton. *SIGH*.
Obama's Willie Horton
By Clarence Page
Having failed to convince us that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, a secret Kenyan and a secret pal of terrorists, his opponents now want us to believe he is a secret pal of the New Black Panther Party.
Who? In case you're wondering, the New Black Panthers have no connection to the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s. Led by lawyer-activist Malik Zulu Shabazz, they have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League for promoting black supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Although their entire membership could probably squeeze into a small SUV, they have received a jumbo-jet of publicity from conservative blogs and talk shows. All the better to frighten you with, dear voter.
The right-wing blogosphere is outraged that the Justice Department under Obama's watch withdrew a federal civil rights suit charging the New Panthers with voter intimidation after two members stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.
A video of the men, posted online, showed them dressed in paramilitary clothing. One, identified as King Samir Shabazz, carried a billy club.
But consider this: The polling place was in a majority-black precinct that has long voted Democratic. Most of the voters there hardly needed to be intimidated into voting for Obama.
Besides, when a police officer was summoned and told Shabazz to leave the area, he did. That might help to explain why then-Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham's office says it received no complaints of intimidation from the precinct.
Yet, before the Bush administration left office in January 2009, the civil rights division filed a civil lawsuit alleging voter intimidation by both men, plus their chairman and their organization.
In April the Panthers failed to show up in court, so the government appeared to win by default. But the next month the department dropped all charges except the lawsuit against the club-wielding Shabazz. Against him the government won an injunction to forbid him from carrying a weapon near an open polling place in Philadelphia through 2012.
The right was livid. Republican lawmakers held up the confirmation of Obama's assistant attorney general for civil rights for months in a failed attempt to win a congressional review of the case.
But, contrary to complaints of a "liberal media" cover-up from bloggers and commentators, the case has not been ignored. A probe by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is pending and the Commission on Civil Rights plans to issue a report in September.
The eight-member commission is dominated by six Bush-era appointees. Yet, after hearing hours of testimony, one prominent conservative member of the commission, Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, criticized the case as "small potatoes."
For one thing, she pointed out in a National Review essay, the case invokes a narrow provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has been prosecuted successfully only three times since its passage. That's why reasonable Justice Department minds thought this case had been "over-charged."
Indeed, Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez offered examples of much more substantial cases that the division declined to prosecute -- like the group of Minutemen, one of whom was armed with a gun, who were hanging around a polling place in Pima, Ariz., in 2006. Perhaps conservatives would be less tough on the club-wielding Shabazz if he had been holding a gun instead.
That may sound harsh, but so was a report from the Government Accountability Office last December that found a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws during George W. Bush's presidency, compared to Bill Clinton's administration. Now the shoe is on the other foot. As Thernstrom writes in a National Review essay, there are so many other more substantial criticisms to make of the Obama administration, "Why waste your breath on this one?"
Why? Well, there's always politics. "In 2010, Republicans across the nation should make King Samir Shabazz their 21st century Willie Horton," blogs conservative CNN commentator Erick Erickson at his Red State website. That's already happening, Erick. Horton, a black murderer and rapist, was used to smear Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime in 1988. Now the New Black Panthers are being used to call a black president soft on black racism.
Coming soon, I am sure, to campaign attack ads near you!
Clarence Page is a columnist with the Chicago Tribune. His email address is cpage@tribune.com.
By Clarence Page
Having failed to convince us that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, a secret Kenyan and a secret pal of terrorists, his opponents now want us to believe he is a secret pal of the New Black Panther Party.
Who? In case you're wondering, the New Black Panthers have no connection to the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s. Led by lawyer-activist Malik Zulu Shabazz, they have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League for promoting black supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Although their entire membership could probably squeeze into a small SUV, they have received a jumbo-jet of publicity from conservative blogs and talk shows. All the better to frighten you with, dear voter.
The right-wing blogosphere is outraged that the Justice Department under Obama's watch withdrew a federal civil rights suit charging the New Panthers with voter intimidation after two members stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.
A video of the men, posted online, showed them dressed in paramilitary clothing. One, identified as King Samir Shabazz, carried a billy club.
But consider this: The polling place was in a majority-black precinct that has long voted Democratic. Most of the voters there hardly needed to be intimidated into voting for Obama.
Besides, when a police officer was summoned and told Shabazz to leave the area, he did. That might help to explain why then-Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham's office says it received no complaints of intimidation from the precinct.
Yet, before the Bush administration left office in January 2009, the civil rights division filed a civil lawsuit alleging voter intimidation by both men, plus their chairman and their organization.
In April the Panthers failed to show up in court, so the government appeared to win by default. But the next month the department dropped all charges except the lawsuit against the club-wielding Shabazz. Against him the government won an injunction to forbid him from carrying a weapon near an open polling place in Philadelphia through 2012.
The right was livid. Republican lawmakers held up the confirmation of Obama's assistant attorney general for civil rights for months in a failed attempt to win a congressional review of the case.
But, contrary to complaints of a "liberal media" cover-up from bloggers and commentators, the case has not been ignored. A probe by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is pending and the Commission on Civil Rights plans to issue a report in September.
The eight-member commission is dominated by six Bush-era appointees. Yet, after hearing hours of testimony, one prominent conservative member of the commission, Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, criticized the case as "small potatoes."
For one thing, she pointed out in a National Review essay, the case invokes a narrow provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has been prosecuted successfully only three times since its passage. That's why reasonable Justice Department minds thought this case had been "over-charged."
Indeed, Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez offered examples of much more substantial cases that the division declined to prosecute -- like the group of Minutemen, one of whom was armed with a gun, who were hanging around a polling place in Pima, Ariz., in 2006. Perhaps conservatives would be less tough on the club-wielding Shabazz if he had been holding a gun instead.
That may sound harsh, but so was a report from the Government Accountability Office last December that found a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws during George W. Bush's presidency, compared to Bill Clinton's administration. Now the shoe is on the other foot. As Thernstrom writes in a National Review essay, there are so many other more substantial criticisms to make of the Obama administration, "Why waste your breath on this one?"
Why? Well, there's always politics. "In 2010, Republicans across the nation should make King Samir Shabazz their 21st century Willie Horton," blogs conservative CNN commentator Erick Erickson at his Red State website. That's already happening, Erick. Horton, a black murderer and rapist, was used to smear Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime in 1988. Now the New Black Panthers are being used to call a black president soft on black racism.
Coming soon, I am sure, to campaign attack ads near you!
Clarence Page is a columnist with the Chicago Tribune. His email address is cpage@tribune.com.
Labels: General information, Keeping them honest
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 1:15 PM
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