Careful Reading Tuesday

Marc Ambinder dove into the tank for Adam Serwer of The American Prospect with his "Myth-busting Monday" round-up, which included this:

No, the decision not to pursue the Black Panther case from election day was not made by political appointees. The political appointees who would have made the decision had not been confirmed yet, reports Adam Serwer

Seriously?  Adam Serwer completely fluffed the timeline and the allegations, and is back-pedaling faster than the Knick officials who promised their fans LeBron.  [And Bonus Backpedaling from Dave Weigel, who was my target of scorn yesterday.]

A brief recap of the Serwer contribution:

His first Big News was that the case was downgraded to a civil charge by BushCo before it was filed in Jan 2009.

No kidding - mainstream reporting (e.g., NY Times, Fox, John Fund of the WSJ, Fox from May 2009) have described it as a civil suit. The real controversy revolves around the DoJ decision in May 2009 to more or less drop the suit *after* they had won a default judgment. Needless to say, by May 2009 some of the Obama people were in place.

2. Serwer's other Big Breakthrough is that Ms. Fernandes, who allegedly told the Voting Rights division not to pursue black-on-white fraud or intimidation cases, could not have been part of the Black Panther decision since she wasn't at DoJ in May 2009.

Again, who cares? J. Christian Adams, the aggrieved DoJ source, never said she was part of that specific case; he has specifically alleged she was part of other decisions, such as not pursuing motor voter fraud or felon purges.

Here is a Serwer UPDATE to his original post where he digs in a bit:

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.

Then a follow-up retreat:

A few commenters on my previous post about the Obama administration not being in office when the decision was made not to pursue a criminal case against the New Black Panther Party are arguing out that conservative outrage is over the subsequent decision, made in May, not to further pursue the civil complaint after obtaining an injunction against the individual who was holding a baton. That decision was made by a career official at the Justice Department after an evidence review and reportedly approved by an Obama political appointee, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli. The decision was still made by career lawyers in the section; there's no evidence, beyond J. Christian Adams' statements, that Perrelli had the case dismissed.

Mr. Serwer then goes on to explain that, well, even though Obama appointee Perrelli was in place, no one has proved he was involved (and he won't testify), and anyway, it was a reasonable decision.  Gee, that is almost the same as the first story, except for being utterly reversed.

On Ms. Fernandes (a former Student of Barack) we get this cursory confusion:

At any rate, the decision to approve not going forward with the civil case was still made a month before Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes joined the DoJ and sometime afterward supposedly issued a decree against cases involving minority defendants.

So contra the Ambinder summary, Serwer now admits that the Obama people were just where the critics said they were in time to do what they are alleged to have done.  For whatever reason, that new post is not getting as much play. 

RELATED BASHING:  Keith Olbermann does the full swan dive into the tank with Serwer's non-news.  Larry O'Connor of Big Journo and Battlin' Bob Somerby have more.

LET'S HAVE A QUICK 'DASH TO DUMB':

The first entrant in our moral inequivalence watch will be Dave Weigel, explaining why the New Black Panther case is No Big Deal:

All that said, the problem I have with the new obsession with this is, really, that there's no evidence the NBPP's clownish Philadelphia stunt suppressed any votes, or that they'll try such a stunt again.

Ben Smith is a strong entrant:

As I noted on the day, the two uniformed Panthers were staking out a heavily Democratic polling place -- it had gone 95% for Kerry -- and you don't typically intimidate your own voters.

So this November, if a few rednecks waving Confederate flags in a mostly white district chase away a few stray ethnics, these two will be OK with it?

Please - no news outlet will cover anything else, and Weigel and Sully will race each other to blame Sarah Palin.

3:10 TO PIMA:  In a bold attempt to get ahead of, or at least alongside, the next likely sally from the Serwer/Weigel duo, what about the 2006 incident in Arizona that was never pursued by Evil BushCo?  Over to Media Matters:

Christian Adams' case continues to implode: Bush-era DOJ declined to charge Minutemen for voter intimidation

July 01, 2010 12:44 pm ET - by Jeremy Holden

Conservative media figures are busy hyping the unsubstantiated allegations of GOP activist and former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams that the Obama administration improperly dismissed voter-intimidation charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for racially charged political reasons. As Media Matters previously noted, Adams' allegations are based on hearsay and on charges made by others. But his allegations become even flimsier when considering the fact that he worked in the Bush Justice Department in 2006 when attorneys declined to pursue charges that members of the Minutemen were intimidating Hispanic voters in Arizona, charges based on nearly identical circumstances.

"Nearly identical" circumstances?  Nearly!  We will uncover a difference or two before the end.

Mr. Holden does a bit of legwork and provides this contemporaneous coverage from the November 8, 2006, Arizona Daily Star:

A crew of anti-immigrant activists, meanwhile, visited several South Side polling places in what one poll-watch group called a blatant attempt to intimidate Hispanic voters.

Anti-immigrant crusader Russ Dove circulated an English-only petition, while a cameraman filmed the voters he approached and Roy Warden stood by with a firearm in a holster.

Diego Bernal, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said the trio was trying to intimidate Hispanic voters. "A gun, a camera, a clipboard before you even get to the polls - if that's not voter intimidation, what is?" he asked.

If it's not intimidation, what is it?  Possibly street theatre:

Bernal said his group encountered the men at the Precinct 49 polling place at South 12th Avenue and West Michigan Street and began documenting the scene with their cameras. "There was an interesting period where they were taking pictures of us taking pictures of them."

Hmm, did the monitors outnumber the intimidators?  In a first class example of the power of blogs, a Kossite actually took to the streets on election day 2006 to track down these scary guys.  The story:

"Men With Guns Harass Latino Voters" blared the headline on Daily Kos. I clicked and read a quote from a TPM Muckraker post:

I just spoke with a Latino election monitor in Arizona who said that a trio of men, one with a handgun visible, is harrassing Latino voters as they go to the polls in Tucson, Ariz.

Tucson? That's where I live. I read more and found that this incident took place "at a polling place in Tucson's Iglesia Bautista precinct." Which is less than 2 minutes from my home. I jumped in the car and grabbed my camera. I'm a photographer and a student of photojournalism at Pima Community College.

And the gist - the three agitators went to heavily Latino/Democratic districts with lots of Dem monitors around, observed the 75 foot rule, and asked a few people to sign an 'English-only' petition.  That seems to be legal; as to whether it is intimidating, well, I am trying to imagine two or three of the New Black Panthers pulling their shtick in a 95% white neighborhood while surrounded by local cops and monitors. 

In that scenario, and speaking as a middle-aged white guy, the only fear I would have is that I would lose a contact lens while giving them the eye-roll.  Perhaps I am made of sterner stuff.  OK, perhaps not.

ON TO POST C AND PLAN C:  Adam Serwer is back with yet another clarification; his latest gambit is to simply insult the intelligence of his readers:

So, I just wanted to clear something up: I wrote my post yesterday about the Justice Department's decision not to pursue criminal charges against the NBPP during the Bush administration because I had seen conservatives arguing that it was made by the Obama administration. It wasn't. I did not mean to suggest that the civil case, which the DoJ dropped in May of last year after receiving a preliminary injunction against the only NBPP member in Philadelphia who was walking around with a baton, was dismissed during the Bush administration. I apologize if any of my writing has been unclear on this point or any confusion has resulted because I misstated the accusation of who wanted the criminal case dismissed.

He's sorry it was unclear, but his response was really directed at one episode of The Factor and one Washington Examiner editorial that complained about the dismissal of charges in May 2009 and could be fully corrected by changing one word from "criminal" to "civil" (they mischaracterized the initial filing).

Let's see - the lead of his first post was this:

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.

So really, when he wrote "lost in all the breathless coverage", he meant, and were supposed to know, that he meant 'misstated occasionally'.

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.

How could that confuse or mislead anyone?  Surely a knowledgeable reader will know that, hmm, Perrelli was in office when the case was dismissed, so I am not sure what a knowledgeable reader would conclude.

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.

A civil/criminal "right-wing fantasy" held by few in the right wing, since the real objection is to the dismissal of charges in May.  But Mr. Serwer intended that passage to be clear.

And from his first Update:

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.

Other than, of course, the ones who were, by May 2009.  Uh huh.  And I am simply pointing out that either Serwer was absolutely at sea as to the facts and should admit it, or he should come back with an even more creative Plan D (Maybe the dog ate his notes?  Or maybe BP spilled oil on them!  Yeah, that's the ticket!).  But this apology for being unclear?  He was perfectly clear - he was also perfectly wrong.

And lest you wonder, Mr. Serwer has not built up so much credibility that I am interested in his insights into the customary application of these laws.  If the right Dem flack told him they only applied to extra-terrestials, that would leap from TAP to Olby by Friday.

Comments

[boris]

How does allowing gay marriage "eliminate" the "traditional form?"

The traditional definition, 1 man 1 woman, has to be replaced with one "allowing gay marriage".

In states where there has been the traditional form and an inclusive form, those couples who can choose between them overwhelmingly opt for the traditional form.

Removing that choice so all who marry must use the less favored contrivance, is what I accurately term "eliminate".

As noted earlier, judges ruling to eliminate that choice cited the value difference as a reason to do so. Kinda hard to try and maintain that value difference is something I made up ... but you will probably try.

[MayBee]

I stand by my claim that people who didn't condemn Reagan's approach to King MIGHT be racists.

Again, I am going to ask you about the people who actually did the work of wiretapping Martin Luther King.
Who did that?
Why?

[bunkerbuster]

Threadkiller ponders: ``So they can go to church with "bigots", vote with "bigots" and not be "bigots"?
My view is that people who voted for Prop. 8 are very likely to be bigoted against gays. Their skin color would never be an issue for me, though it clearly is for Threadkiller. It's kind of funny, and telling, that he really seems to think that should matter...

[bunkerbuster]

Ignatz: ``His approach was nothing like what you described.''
Reagan had a long record of playing the "Southern Strategy" and famously launched his presidential campaign with a speech in Mississippi in which he proclaimed support for state's rights. Moreover, he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime. He also opposed the Martin Luther King holiday. Those are facts, Ignatz, whether you like them are not, and they help define Reagan's approach to race relations. He was also opposed to affirmative action. There is a reason almost no black people ever voted for Reagan. Whether or not Reagan himself was a bigot, he demonstrated an untoward tolerance of bigots in his party and around the world...

[bunkerbuster]

Boris spins (desperately): ``Removing that choice so all who marry must use the less-favored contrivance, is what I accurately term "eliminate".
You'll have to explain how allowing two men or two women to marry "removes" someone else's choice for anything. That's like saying the legalizing divorce "removed" everyone's choice to have have a traditional Christian, ie forever, marriage.

[MayBee]

Whether or not Reagan himself was a bigot, he demonstrated an untoward tolerance of bigots in his party and around the world...

Well, it's a good thing the Somalis and the Hutus weren't and aren't and weren't tolerated because of their bigotry.

[bunkerbuster]

Maybee: maybe you were out smoking PCP during history class, or asleep. But if you've come down now and are well-rested enough at last, check the record: You'll find that JFK was an unreconstructed chauvinist on the Cold War, not one bit less anti-communist than Reagan was. Not only did JFK try to match Nixon witch-hunt for witch-hunt in chasing communists and "fellow travelers'' he also happens to have basically started the Vietnam war, and to have used the phoney "missile gap'' to get elected. True, some historians claim that JFK was considering pulling out of Vietnam, having envisioned the deepening quagmire, but that's somewhat speculative. The fact is, he started the war and did so for nakedly political reasons, ie demagoguing the threat of communism to win votes. Bobby Kennedy as well started his career as Joe McCarthy's right-hand man in the sleaziest witch hunts since Salem. The fact that JFK tolerated Hoover's attempts to frame MLK as a communist because anti-communist witch hunts were part and parcel of JFK's political formula. In fact, when Hoover issued his report on MLK -- replete with innuendo and allegations that MLK was sleeping around and all manner of third-hand hearsay -- JFK demanded it be withdrawn. JFK's tolerance of Hoover, a famously paranoid homophobe/anti-communist, was more a matter of political convenience and necessity (Hoover was a very scary guy), and had zero to do with his views on race…

[boris]

"You'll have to explain how allowing ..."

Allowing has nothing to do with it. Of course any competent adult is allowed to marry a member of the opposite sex because the definition of marriage is 1 man 1 woman.

The identical institution that allows 2 men or 2 women or 1 of each is called (variously) domestic partmership or civil union.

Apparently people want the first one and not so much the second. Since that is an observable fact it's up to you to explain to THEM how what they want is bad and what you want and they don't is for their own good.

BTW in case you didn't know JFK also assisted the filibuster of the Eisenhower 1957 civil rights bill and voted against it.

[narciso the harpoon]

You know I did not know that Boris, what a cynical SOB, he turned out to be

[Ignatz]

--Reagan had a long record of playing the "Southern Strategy" and famously launched his presidential campaign with a speech in Mississippi in which he proclaimed support for state's rights. Moreover, he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime. He also opposed the Martin Luther King holiday. Those are facts, Ignatz, whether you like them are not, and they help define Reagan's approach to race relations. He was also opposed to affirmative action.--

What is not a fact is your characterization of any of those things as either bigotry or tolerance of bigotry. It is quite possible to take a principled stand on every single one of those items without the slightest racial animus. In fact the only illegitmate bias demonstrated in your claim is your own knee jerk inclination to smear any disagreement with your positiion as motivated by bigotry so that you can avoid discussing the issues on a level playing field where you lose and so you can affect a moral superiority you don't possess.

--There is a reason almost no black people ever voted for Reagan.--

Indeed there is. And between the success of the left reestablshing the plantation through government dependence and the kind of incessant smears and lies you've promulgated on this thread regarding anyone who might think government dependence and preferential treatment are counterproductive for those ensnared in them, we can see the two most prominent reasons why.

[Threadkiller]

"Their skin color would never be an issue for me..."

and

”the employers are typically respected middle-class whites with legal power to defend themselves and make life difficult for their harrassers, while the illegally workers are poor, defenseless Mexicans or Latin Americans.”

Liar. Skin color is the basis for your arguments. The fact that you are blind to your own hypocrisy doesn't make you "color-blind."

[bunkerbuster]

``It is quite possible to take a principled stand on every single one of those items.''
Sure it is. So you opposed the MLK holiday. Maybe you're not a racist. You tolerated apartheid -- maybe you're not a racist. You dog-whistled "states rights" to start your presidential campaign in Mississipi -- maybe you're not a racist. You chose not join others in your party who condemned smears on MLK -- maybe your not racist. You oppose affirmative action -- maybe your not racist. But do the math. Maybe you are... This is the math Afro-Americans have been doing for decades. And the sum they reach is voting Democratic. As I've explained her before, my view is that everyone is racist in one way or another. It's the human condition and it's virtually biological. The question is, how are you racist and to what degree and what kind of suffering does your racism cause. As far as I can tell, most Republicans and most conservatives aren't racist. But they are more willing to tolerate racism than are liberals and Democrats. That's why real racists are almost sure to vote Republican...

[bunkerbuster]

``the plantation through government dependence.''
Welfare slaves? That's priceless....

[boris]

You tolerated genocide -- maybe you're evil.

[bunkerbuster]

Boris: Where are you getting that people are suggesting marriage is bad? The idea is that some gay couples WANT TO MARRY. They think marriage is good. They CHOOSE MARRIAGE. Where are you getting the idea that gays don't want to marry? You seem very, very confused on this issue. Ok, granted, you may not be confused, just stupid, ie dumb enough and dishonest enough to think that anyone above the age of 5 would buy into your junior-high semantic game playing with the definition of marriage.

Threadkill: I don't suggest that employers of illegal workers should be targeted for enforcement of immigration laws because they are white. I suggest it because it is a much more efficient, effective use of public resources. It's clear that you are unable to fathom any political view that isn't binary.

[JM Hanes]

bunkerbuster:

"Maybee: maybe you were out smoking PCP during history class, or asleep."

You have no idea how much that explains. Really, no idea. Most of the folks you're haranguing actually lived with all those "historical" figures and events that you think you know something about because you took a history class -- and have managed to suck up every superficial stereotype in the book since then. I really suspect you know almost as little about liberals as you do about conservatives.

[Ignatz]

--As I've explained her before, my view is that everyone is racist in one way or another. It's the human condition and it's virtually biological. The question is, how are you racist and to what degree and what kind of suffering does your racism cause. As far as I can tell, most Republicans and most conservatives aren't racist.--

Not only are you idealogically rigid and the most tedious of pedagogues, you seem almost utterly incapable of sustaining a coherent thought, so I'm afraid it's largely pointless trying to converse with you.

[MayBee]

JFK's tolerance of Hoover, a famously paranoid homophobe/anti-communist, was more a matter of political convenience and necessity (Hoover was a very scary guy), and had zero to do with his views on race…

Ah. I see.
I guess he was probably really friendly with Sammy Davis Jr. or something and that's how you know.

[Threadkiller]

"I don't suggest that employers of illegal workers should be targeted for enforcement of immigration laws because they are white."

You just suggest illegal workers are targeted by whites.

”It's all about white people who feel put upon and it's especially essential to the GOP formula because, while they want to project the idea that they favor the powerful over the weak, they also know need the votes of weak, vulnerable white people. So having someone even weaker and more vulnerable than your working-poor white person is essential to the GOP's political formula....”

I try to stay binary with you because I believe that when you can truthfully master answering a yes/no question without suggesting that the President can be from Mars, we could have a serious dialog.

[boris]

"playing with the definition of marriage"

Since the subject is prop 8, against changing the definition of marriage, seems to be more than just my game. But that is the bubu fallback ... losing on facts and logic resort to blah blah stupid yadda dumb yadda ...

As long as marriage is defined as 1 man 1 woman it seems unlikely that gays want to "marry".

[Clarice]

You guys ought to charge bubu tuition and help him sue the thieves he paid tuition to.

[MayBee]

To be fair, I learned something from bubu today. I did not know one smoked PCP. I'm always happy to be schooled on drug delivery methods.

[cathyf]

I've identified your error, TK:

I believe that ... we could have a serious dialog.

Thinking you can have any meaningful dialog with bb is your mistake...

[narciso the harpoon]

You can't have a dialog with "Otto" it's a waste of time