Almost Like Reporting

Former Posty Dave Weigel, who covers the righties he loathes, has found his natural home with Andrew Sullivan.  Together, they are producing something almost like... well, it is almost like daydreaming out loud, but not as coherent.

Dave Weigel, described reverentially and repeatedly as the best reporter covering the right today, takes on the New Black Panther dismissal and other allegations by J. Christian Adams of reverse racial bias at the new DoJ:

Adam Serwer, who's worked like the devil to debunk theories about why the Department of Justice isn't gunning for the New Black Panther Party, makes an important find:

OK, we are recycling muckrakers from The American Prospect, and me without my blood pressure medication...

On to Mr. Serwer's "important" finds (two, actually):

[T]he case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division.

Conservative activist and former Voting Section Attorney J. Christian Adams identified United States Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli as the person who ordered the case dismissed, but he wasn't confirmed until March, three months after the case was downgraded.

Sweet jiminy.  Let's get some breakthrough reporting from the July 6 NY Times, which can at least manage a timeline; my clever emphasis on 'civil' throughout:

In January 2009, less than two weeks before the Bush administration left office, the civil rights division invoked a rarely used section of the Voting Rights Act to file a civil lawsuit alleging voter intimidation by both men, the party chairman and the party.

In April 2009, the division seemed to win the case by default because the New Black Panthers failed to show up in court. But the following month, a longtime Justice official, Loretta King — who was then the acting head of the division — decided to reduce the scope of the case.

Or, although I assume Mr. Serwer never reads it, here is Fox News from June 30:

In the final days of the Bush administration, three Black Panthers --  Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson -- were charged in a civil complaint with violating the Voter Rights Act in November 2008 by using coercion, threats and intimidation at a Philadelphia polling station -- with Shabazz brandishing what prosecutors called a deadly weapon.
 
The Obama administration won the civil case in federal court in April 2009 but moved to dismiss the charges in May 2009. Justice attorneys said a criminal complaint, which resulted in the injunction, proceeded successfully.

Or John Fund from August 2009 in the WSJ (probably also on the no-read list):

In the first week of January, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs. In March, Mr. Bull submitted an affidavit at Justice's request to support its lawsuit.

Well - congrats to Mr. Serwer for his breakthrough news that it was BushCo that decided to file a civil suit.  And special thanks to Dave Weigel for breathlessly flagging it.

So where are we after Breakthrough One?  Team Bush maybe could have pushed criminal charges, but settled for a civil case; no mystery there, although I am sure instances of error can be found.  Then in April, *after* Perrelli was confirmed, DoJ scuttled the case.  Seems pretty simple, even for the Weigel/Serwer/Sully triumvirate.

(As an aside, let me note that I am including Perrelli in this drama on Serwer's word and under advisement - the Washington Times reported in July 2009 that it was Perrelli who instructed Loretta King to drop the case; in this article and this Fox interview, J. Christian Adams names Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King.  Still, the Wash Times claims several sources, one of whom may be Adams, or I may have missed testimony elsewhere.  [MY BAD - John Fund reported on July 8 2010 that:

J. Christian Adams,, a former career Justice Department lawyer who resigned recently to protest political interference in cases he worked on, made some news yesterday in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

As expected, he claimed that Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation in an incident I detailed here yesterday.)].

Let's press on to Mr. Serwer's second breakthrough:

Adams also said that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes declared, “Never bring another lawsuit against a black or other national minority, apparently no matter what they do.” But according to the Raben Group, a progressive PR firm Fernades worked for prior to the Justice Department, she didn't leave her job with them until June 22, 2009, more than six months after the criminal case against the NBPP members was dropped. Even if she did say that -- and none of my sources in the Voting Section ever heard her say anything of the sort -- it wouldn't have had any bearing on the NBPP case, because she wasn't there when it was dismissed.

Great find!  Now, a day may come when Serwer/Weigel/Sully realize that the full scope of the Adams complaint is that DoJ has adopted a policy of reverse racism going forward - under Bush, various black-on-white instances of voter fraud were investigated, but that allegedly won't be happening under the new regime.  The day may also come when the Wade/Bosh/James of journalism realize that Adams has not linked Ms. Fernandes to the New Black Panther case specifically, but to this new 'no whites' policy generally. 

Until that day, we soldier on.  Here is Mr. Adams on Fox, while he was still coy about naming names:

ADAMS: Well, I mean, there is a pervasive hostility to bringing these sorts of civil rights cases. I’ve worked on other ones at the Justice Department. I’ve worked on cases in Mississippi. I’ve represented both black victims of racial discrimination and Hispanic victims and in this case a white victim of racial discrimination. There is a pervasive hostility within the civil rights division at the Justice Department toward these sorts of cases.

KELLY: Do you believe that the DOJ has a policy now of not pursuing cases if the defendant is black and the victim is white?

ADAM: Well, particularly in voting. In voting that will be the case over the next few years, there’s no doubt about it.

KELLY: There isn’t?

ADAM: None, I mean, instructions were, if you had all the attorneys that worked on this case I am quite sure that they would say the exact same thing. And that other attorneys gave instructions that the voting section would not be pursuing these sorts of cases.

KELLY: Who specifically has issued that mandate?

ADAMS: Well, you know, there’s some things I’m not going to reveal as far as who they are. They know who they are. They’ve said that if somebody wants to bring these kind of cases that’s not going to be done out of the civil rights division. If a U.S. attorney wants to do it, that’s up to them, but it’s not going to happen out of the civil rights division.

Since then, he has named Ms. Fernandes, but he has not linked her to the New Black Panther case.

Over to Mr. Weigel for his savvy insider insights:

The conservative narrative goes like this: Eric Holder's DOJ got into office and skunked a successful case against the racist fringe New Black Panther Party because it doesn't want to defend white voting rights.... A simple issue -- whether the Panthers should be prosecuted further for briefly showing off their nightsticks and glowering at voters outside of a mostly-black Philadelphia polling place -- has been conflated into a catch-all storyline that really makes no sense.

Well, it makes no sense when the facts are utterly jumbled and the timeline is turned into a plate of capellini.

BECAUSE IT FEELS SO GOOD WHEN I STOP?  What sad son of a gun told me I need to stay apprised of the other sides latest and greatest insights?  Bring back epistemic closure!

FUNNIER EVERY TIME I READ IT:  I look into my heart and see blackness, but I just have to clip these bits from the original Serwer post:

When Was The New Black Panther Case Downgraded?

I did an interview with New York Daily News Columnist Errol Louis about the New Black Panther Party case today and realized that there's a specific data point that has been lost in all the breathless coverage of this case and whether or not it represents a racist agenda from the Obama administration: The decision not to file a criminal case occurred before Obama was even in office.

As noted above, yeah, it was a civil suit.

All of which kind of puts a rather large wrinkle in the right-wing fantasy that the decision to pursue a civil rather than criminal case against The New Black Panther Party members was a racist decree handed down from the racist leadership of the Obama administration. None of the Obama administration's political appointees who have been attacked as having mandated this decision were even working at the Department of Justice at the time the case was downgraded!

Uh huh.  Now tells us about May 2009, when DoJ moved to drop the case.

UPDATE: I should make it clear that I'm not the first person to mention this (Media Matters has been pointing this out for a while) Perez revealed the date the case was downgraded in his public testimony to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in May. It's been part of the public record for weeks--which is why I don't understand why so little of the coverage of this story mentions it. I'm simply pointing out that none of the political appointees being blamed for dismissing the case were even at the DoJ when the case was dismissed.

Wow.  And this is after Serwer investigated the case.  I know we can't expect him to read Fox or the WSJ, but my goodness, if he could even have brought himself to read the week-old Times...

Comments

[MarkO]

Bring it on, Whitey.
White on, baby.
This ain't no Ebony and Ivory.
Race relations have not been this strained throughout the country since, say, Watts. Can you say Watts. Of course you can, cracker. Cracker pride. Cracker studies.
We'll be drinking out of white fountains here shortly. Oh, complaining about an ungrateful, unmannered black man is--by definition--racist. The Cleveland owner acted stupidly. That is an adverb, right? Just axing. Hey, I'm only trying to get along. Can't we all just get along? Burn, baby. Oakland, 2010. Were those Tea Party racist there in the street complaining about the verdict? Just the way ole Whitely took to Sixth Street when O.J. was set free.

There's somethin' happenin' here. Don't stand in the doorways, don't block off the hall. I went through all of that, happily, but not to get to this. Not this.

[Rob Crawford]

They really don't care about those pesky things called "facts", do they?

[I think you've got it.]

Hey, spaghetti graphs hide a multitude of crimes and declines in climate science, too. Must be the lefty brain.
==========================

[Clarice]

What's criminal is that they've allowed the Atlantic to sink so far so fast.

[narciso the harpoon]

He's working for Andrew Sullivan, doesn't that prove he has no integrity

[Comanche Voter]

Dave you're a dipstick. Forget the fancy timelines since they're a bit complicated for you.

Focus on this as I spell slowly so your dinosaur sized pea brain can understand.

T-H-E-R-E--I-S--A--D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E--B-E-T-W-E-E-N --"D-O-W-N-G-R-A-D-I-N-G"--A-N-D--A--D-I-S-M-I-S-S-A-L.

There, got that? I won't hold it against you that your lips moved while you were reading it.

[narciso the harpoon]

It was still good, when Michael Kelly was on it, then they forced Steyn out, Sullivan went
crazy, Yglesias followed suit in his own way, Douthat became thoroughly useless, as he let
nazgul strength trolls flood the zone

[bgates]

T-H-E-R-E--I-S--A--D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E--B-E-T-W-E-E-N --"D-O-W-N-G-R-A-D-I-N-G"--A-N-D--A--D-I-S-M-I-S-S-A-L.

His confusion is understandable; he was essentially dismissed from the WaPo, and now he's at Sullivan's place, which is a downgrade.

[Jim Miller]

Here's a post on one of the cases of black discrimination against whites in -- of all places -- Mississippi. Here's what John Fund, quoting Justice Department officials, said about the case:

'The U.S. Justice Department, which sued Noxubee officials under the Voting Rights Act, has called conditions there "the most extreme case of racial exclusion seen by the [department's] Voting Section in decades."'

If Adams is telling the truth, the Justice Department will no longer investigates these kinds of cases.

[Rob Crawford]

From the link Jim posted:

The local political machine is run by Ike Brown, a twice-convicted felon.

Um, WTF? A twice-convicted felon?

I realize this guy is playing king-maker and not actually serving in any elected office, but, again, WTF?

[srp]

Come on, give 'em a break. All the other Dem apologists are ignoring this case and they are bravely rushing into the burning building. OK, they appear to have passed out from smoke inhalation, but still...

[Panerai]

This is all very new to me and this article really opened my eyes.Thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.

[peter]

Comanche, have you ever read the
Education of Hyman Kaplan?

[Janesquaredance]

Finally! This case could easily bring down Holder and even the entire administration - unless of course it is totally ignored by the people who decide what is important in this country - Katie Couric, Bob Scheiffer and Keith Olbermann.

[Some, at least, have seen the light. He's no lightbringer, he's a darkdamner.]

I labelled him a racebaiter in the middle of his breakout Phillie(?) speech. I hope all those who assumed white liberal guilt are proud of themselves.
==================

[And, since he seems to have bought the DoJ.]

Jane, I'm waiting for Schumer to figure out that the Clintons are better for the future of the Democratic Party than this crew in charge, now.
============

[Janesquaredance]

Boy I'd give a lot to see Schumer defeated. He really grosses me out.

[fdcol63]

The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that Bill Ayers is behind all this.

He basically groomed Obama and promoted him, through Michelle and the Chicago system, and basically wrote at least one of the "autobiographies" that propelled Obama to the presidency.

All with the intent to destroy America and start the race war that the Weather Underground always wanted.

Obama, Holder, Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Van Jones, and a whole host of appointees, advisers, and the usual race baiters like Farrakhan and Malik Shabazz are driving a racial wedge between Americans that we haven't seen since the days of the Rodney King event.

Post-racial? Hardly.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

I don't get it. Can someone help me out?

What is wrong with reading Media Matters' take on "conservative misinformation" and then having liberal bloggers, by which I mean liberal bloggers that edited a conservative newspaper in college which is sort of like a Russell Kirk Conservative Record of Live Birth, use Media Matters as their source to construct a straw man case taking down a claim never filed?

Please don't waste too much energy trying to help me. I know this sort of question is like asking for liberals to no longer be alive since asking them to study primary sources is like asking them to plug their oxygen tank into Dick Cheney's tailpipe.

But do humor me.

[narciso the harpoon]

True, Fd, but Ayers on his own isn't a big enough player, he was a self proclaimed revolutionary, like Lenin, except his brother
was killed by "the man," like Che, so Soros and /or Strong has to be the ones pulling the strings

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Oh yes. This nugget deserves it's own head banging session.

Julie Fernandes is a former student of sort of, quasi, make believe, titled, deeded, fast tracked, personally created, "professor" Obama.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julie-fernandes/8/891/652

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Don't think of Ayers as "just a revolutionary". Ayers opens his doors to all the time so it doubles as a radical cocoon incubating the next generation of progressives that, god willing, won't have to practice backyard bomb assembly.

To them, the state is always flawed unless they're in charge. Then it becomes perfect. It can do no wrong.

[narciso the harpoon]

I went over to the Guevara wiki to check on a detail, it really does show the results of the handiwork of the Cuban Institute of Cybernetic Science, no one would understand
that Guevara did anything wrong except for some pre Minitrue Time clippings from the Luce era

[Janet]

The lie of Ayers being "just someone in the neighborhood" showed America just what our "newspapers" were good for. They are just tools for the hard left.

[Pagar]

"Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." "

"A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state Across the nation.

The project has all ready proven it's self, with the Ohio SOS fracas in 2008 and now it has again been proven in Minnesota.

[Bring down this wall. Where's Gunga Din?]

We are banging our heads, G, trying to put out the hair on fire.
======================