Imagine arriving at your neighborhood polling place on Election Day and seeing two men guarding the entrance, dressed in paramilitary uniforms, wielding a deadly billy club, shouting racial epithets and menacing voters. Would you walk through the door? Now imagine political appointees in the Department of Justice (DOJ) refusing to pursue the case, the U.S. Attorney General stonewalling and refusing to enforce lawful subpoenas in the face of questions about that decision, and the mainstream media remaining silent on the story for a year. This isn’t a case of pure …
At last! It took a year, but The Washington Post and The New York Times have finally done (grudging) stories about the Justice Department’s scandalous dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. Indeed, even The Los Angeles Times editorialized about the testimony of former career lawyer Christian Adams before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, going so far as to admit that the Department’s handling of this case “raises larger questions,” although they then claim that “so far the case hasn’t been made” that this was …
I was on vacation with my family in Yellowstone National Park when the New Black Panther voter intimidation case exploded into the headlines with the testimony of former Department of Justice career lawyer J. Christian Adams before the Civil Rights Commission. This story has been in the public domain for a year, but the reaction to Adams’s testimony was eerily similar to the many geysers I saw venting steam into the atmosphere in Yellowstone. Adams confirmed many of the details that I have reported for National Review over the past …
On May 14th, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing to investigate the Justice Department’s decision to completely drop charges against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members for alleged voter intimidation in violation of the 1964 Voting Rights Act. The remaining defendant who wielded a billyclub at the polls on election day 2008 got a proverbial wink and a slap on the wrist that he shouldn’t do it again …at least not in the City of Philadelphia … for a few more years. The …
The Justice Department filed its expected lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law (S.B. 1070) yesterday and issued a press release trumpeting its action. It is clear from reading the lawsuit and the press release that politics—not an objective analysis of Arizona’s law—is driving the Justice Department’s action. This should be no surprise to anyone given the Justice Department’s recent politicized actions in other matters like the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. But it should concern everyone who understands the enormous power of federal prosecutors and the danger posed by …
I previously reported for National Review Online on the memorable going-away speech by Christopher Coates, the former career head of the Voting Section in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, who had been relieved of his post and “transferred” to South Carolina by the division’s new political leadership. Coates’s frankness and willingness to call out those who had criticized him for trying to enforce the Voting Rights Act in a race-neutral manner surprised and shocked the other career lawyers in the section, particularly since such evenhandedness runs …
We now have the second casualty of the Obama Administration from the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. Christian Adams, one of the career trial lawyers who worked on the case, submitted a letter of resignation on Friday, May 14 (effective June 4) apparently in disgust over “the events surrounding the dismissal” of the lawsuit, including testimony earlier that day by the Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights, political appointee Thomas Perez, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The first casualty was Chris Coates, the long-time career lawyer who led …
The Washington Times is reporting that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) at the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther party. Republican congressmen Lamar Smith and Frank Wolf, who have been doggedly pursuing the Civil Rights Division trying to get answers as to why this case (which had already been won by default) was dismissed, have expressed their relief that Justice is finally beginning to take this issue seriously (or at least is pretending to do so …
This month, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) sent a letter to the Chairman of the FCC and the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, asking them to investigate cell phone exclusivity agreements. Exclusivity agreements are arrangements between cell phone makers and service providers to allow one carrier the exclusive rights to sell a particular phone for a period of time. One of the major objections by Sen. Kohl and others was that these agreements disproportionately hurt rural Americans, and those who were customers of smaller carriers. Then, last week, Verizon …
The liberal political establishment is always expressing its concern over the possible “disenfranchisement” of voters (claims that almost always turn out to be completely exaggerated), but their concerns seem to disappear when the disenfranchised are military voters. How else can one explain the almost total lack of interest expressed over the pending disenfranchisement of possibly thousands of overseas voters in Virginia, mostly military personnel? Just prior to the Nov. 4 election, the McCain-Palin campaign filed a federal lawsuit in Richmond against the Virginia State Board of Elections under the Uniformed …
