Shades Of Huey Newton--Black Liberator

He who laughs last, laughs best. That cackling sound you're hearing is Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton laughing at the white liberals who thought the Panthers were a civil rights organization and that by supporting their cause, the law would be adhered to without regard to race. It's not easy to guffaw amid the lapping flames of hell, but if anyone could do it, it's Huey.

I have mentioned in the past that the next time I would discuss the New Black Panthers voter intimidation dismissals would be when the report of the Civil Rights Commission on the subject was issued. That sad day has come to pass, and it's a tragically-flawed document. Flawed because it reached its conclusions without having done the honorable thing. It didn't wait until Eric Holder's Justice Department responded to the Commission's many direct questions about the dismissals. Holder stonewalled successfully, and the Commission let him get away with it.

I understand the need to bring matters to an end, but not when the work is incomplete. Unlike the unrelated report from the Commission under Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry in the 90s, this document included a minority report. But that only skewed the conclusions farther. Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom, normally unable to tolerate half-truths, caved in and essentially joined the majority. It wasn't a complete capitulation, but it indicates that she has been fighting the good fight almost alone for so long that she just ran out of steam.

Holder and his minions, under the leadership of the first post-racial President, played a game of hide and seek in which hide worked and seek didn't. When the Department of Justice political lawyers didn't outright lie, they stalled, danced, pretended not to understand what was being asked, and sent any Department dissenters into DOJ Siberia. A few courageous career lawyers simply resigned rather than be part of a massive coverup.

For background on the voter intimidation cases and the sleazy dismissal of charges already proven to a court's satisfaction, go to A Difference of Opinion, Holder's Mouthpiece, Thernstrom Hiccups, The Facts?, and Hold That Tiger. Although I am very concerned with the issue, I'm not obsessed with it despite the numerous past posts. It's simply a matter of the way the information has, from the very beginning, dribbled out. The Holder Justice Department wanted this travesty to come out in small doses in order to keep the whole bloody mess from being exposed all at once. The mainstream media were delighted to help. For instance, how many of you reading your big city dailies even knew the Commission had issued its report?

The sum and substance of my rejection of the report is that it was not only poor investigation and a cowardly Commission retreat, but it spits on the public's right to know all the relevant information and have the Department of Justice held accountable just like any other entity. The Department of Justice investigated itself and found it was doing a wonderful job, protected Obama's and Holder's highly-politicized appointments, denied the distinctly racial overtones of the Department's internal policies, and denigrated the right of the Civil Rights Commission even to ask "what's going on in your department?"

Why did this "internal investigation" take sixteen months? Where did Holder and the DOJ shysters find those phony executive privileges never recognized in law? Why did Holder put purely political functionaries in charge of the investigation instead of competent career DOJ lawyers? Why did Holder and his department stall and obfuscate answers to legitimate questions about the Panther dismissals from Congress, the Civil Rights Commission and a few honest news reporters? None of these questions are answered in the Report, let alone the simple basic question: "Why did your department dismiss cases which had already been won?"

The single question that was directly asked in relation to the dismissals hovered over whether Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes adopted and championed a policy of not enforcing two laws distinctly designed to prevent harassment of voter--without regard to whether the alleged perpetrators are white. Returning to Mary Frances Berry for a moment, as Chairwoman she boldly asserted that the voter intimidation provisions of the Voting Rights Acts were designed solely to protect black voters from intimidation by whites. The law says nothing of the kind, and is designed solely to protect our most precious right--the right to vote our consciences regardless of color. All evidence and testimony that was actually presented at the Civil Rights Commission points to Fernandes as holding precisely the same view of the law as Berry.

Fernandes's name is all over the investigation, and in the only sworn testimony given by any employees of DOJ, Fernandes was shown as clearly determined to enforce racially selective prosecution. But Fernandes didn't testify, Holder buried those dissidents who remained with DOJ, and the political DOJ lawyers simply refused to cooperate with the Commission or Congress. Yet given Fernandes's critical involvement in the core question raised by the Commission, the two liberals who wrote the 23 page comment ending the investigation never mentioned her name--not even once.

That comes as no surprise to me, since one of the two Commissioners is former San Francisco Supervisor Michael Yaki. Those of us San Franciscans who were not drowned in red rhetoric and purple prose referred to him as "Yakkety Yaki." The man could put together half the words in the dictionary to say and prove absolutely nothing. Only his conclusionary sentences were brief, and they usually amounted to "I'm right, you're wrong." He was a master at ignoring the 500 pound evidentiary gorilla in the room in order to concentrate on the conjectural gnat. Nothing has changed, and his joint comments on the New Black Panthers prove it.

As for Thernstrom, she said: "It is simply impossible to believe that Fernandes said anything like what was reported, unless she's a moron." Well, I have my opinion on that, but I'll leave that to you readers to figure it out. Thernstrom went off the rails. It wasn't just "reported." It was contained in sworn testimony, under penalty of perjury, by career [former] DOJ lawyers. And it is unrefuted in any official way since Holder produced no testimony or witnesses directly addressing the issue or the sworn testimony. Given all that, it's a mystery why Thernstrom added in a dissent: "The majority charges that racial double standards govern the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act in the Holder Justice Department. If that can be convincingly demonstrated, it will be a grave indictment of this administration. But that evidentiary showing awaits further investigation by the Department of Justice and Congress (emphasis added).

Well, Dear Abby, unrefuted sworn testimony is regarded as evidence. Further investigation? Are you crazy or just full of anti-depressants? Given the complete disregard for the law and legal ethics demonstrated by Holder and his department so far, why would anyone in his right mind believe that Holder is suddenly going to be struck by pangs of conscience and start cooperating and/or telling the truth? Holder has the same contempt for Congress that he has for the Commission. It's another example of leftist race-baiting thinking: "Nobody should interfere with our doing the right thing, as only we can define the right thing."

Frankly, I don't remember seeing Holder out there with us on the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. In fact, he was in diapers at the time. His head is still wrapped in diapers--dirty diapers. But I can tell you from personal experience, we did not fight to replace white voter intimidation with black voter intimidation. We worked hard and long to assure that the vote was a human right which could not be denied to blacks or whites in a free society. And despite all the Holder shucking and jiving, at the original hearing a civil rights worker who was in the heart of Dixie during the 60s testified that he never observed white intimidation of black voters that was as bad as what he saw in Philadelphia.

The Commission majority simply refused to find even the smallest wrongdoing in the dismissals. It's a good thing that Lady Justice wears a blindfold, or we'd be able to see that nasty black eye. Laugh, Huey, laugh.