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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (586661)	9/21/2010 10:04:32 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1570760

Top Justice Dept. Official Lied Under Oath About Dismissal of New Black Panther Case, Ex-DOJ Lawyer Says Published July 01, 2010 \| FoxNews.com Video at Link foxnews.com A former Justice Department attorney who resigned last month in protest of the Obama administration's handling of a voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party accused a top Justice official of lying under oath about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the case. J. Christian Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a blogger for Pajamas Media, told Fox News in an exclusive interview that aired Wednesday that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez provided false testimony in May to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which is investigating the department's decision to drop charges against three members of the radical group in a case that the government won. Perez told the commission that the facts and the law didn't support the case against the group. "I know about the truth…and I know what the truth is and I know to say the facts and law don't support the Black Panther case is not true," Adams said, adding that Perez ignored his warnings not to provide false testimony. "We made it very clear that continuing to say that the facts and the law don't support this case would not be consistent with the truth," he said. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler called Adams' allegations "baseless." "It is not uncommon for attorneys within the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda," she said in a written statement provided Wednesday. 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 a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 when the Black Panthers didn't appear in court to fight the charges. But the administration moved to dismiss the charges in May 2009. Justice attorneys said a criminal complaint against one of the Panthers, which resulted in the injunction, proceeded successfully. The department "is committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of both the civil and criminal provisions of federal law that prohibit voter intimidation. We continue to work with voters, communities, and local law enforcement to ensure that every American can vote free from intimidation, coercion or threats," Schmaler said. But Adams told Fox News that the department's decision to dismiss the case reeked of racial politics and corruption. "I don't think the department or the fine people who work there are corrupt, but in this particular instance, to abandon law-abiding citizens and abet wrongdoers constitutes corruption," he said. Adams said he quit last month after the department ordered attorneys to ignore a subpoena from the commission. "After being ordered not to comply with the lawful subpoena, after hearing the lies that are being said about the case, after the corruption that we had witnessed in the case, I just said that's it, that I resign and now I'm no longer there," he said. Adams also said the department has been caught lying about the case, including the assertion that the decision to dismiss the charges was made only by Loretta King, acting head of the civil rights division, and Steve Rosenbaum, an attorney with the division. Citing a Washington Times article, Adams said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the department, was responsible for the decision. He also said a written response from the department to the commission revealed that Attorney General Eric Holder was also briefed on the case. "The initial statements of the department are being proved in hindsight to be false," he said. When asked whether Holder signed off on the decision to dismiss the case, Adams said, "I can't answer that. We were just doing our job. We didn't even know these things. We thought we had a good case. We thought it's all going to be over with soon and we're going to win. And then it wasn't." But Adams noted that a former Justice Department official testified to the commission that it would be "unheard of" for a decision like this to be made without the attorney general's blessing. * * *

To: bentway who wrote (586661)	9/21/2010 10:27:00 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570760

The Politics of Resentment By Thomas Sowell September 21, 2010 Few things have captured in microcosm what has gone so painfully wrong, where racial issues are concerned, like the recent election for mayor of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, under whom the murder rate has gone down and the school children's test scores have gone up, was resoundingly defeated for re-election. Nor was Mayor Fenty simply a passive beneficiary of the rising test scores and falling murder rates. He appointed Michelle Rhee as head of the school system and backed her as she fought the teachers' union and fired large numbers of ineffective teachers-- something considered impossible in most cities across the country. Mayor Fenty also appointed the city's chief of police, Cathy Lanier, who has cracked down on hoodlumism, as well as crime. Either one of these achievements would made mayors local heroes in most other cities. Why then was he clobbered in the election? One key fact tells much of the story: Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote. Both men are black. But the head of the school system that he appointed is Asian and the chief of police is a white woman. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black. There were also bitter complaints that black contractors did not get as many of the contracts for doing business with the city as they expected. In short, the mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently expected to. He also didn't spend as much time schmoozing with the folks as was expected. So what if he gave their children a better education and gave everybody a lower likelihood of being murdered? The mayor's faults were political faults. He did his job, produced results and thought that this should be enough to get him re-elected. He refused to do polls and focus groups, and he ignored what his political advisers were warning him about. No doubt Mayor Fenty is now a sadder and wiser man politically. While that may help him if he wants to pursue a political career, Adrian Fenty's career is not nearly as important as what his story tells us about the racial atmosphere in this country. How did we reach the point where a city is so polarized that an overwhelming majority of the white vote goes to one candidate and the overwhelming majority of the black vote goes to the opposing candidate? How did we reach the point where black voters put racial patronage and racial symbolism above the education of their children and the safety of everyone? There are many reasons but the trend is ominous. One key factor was the creation, back in the 1960s, of a whole government-supported industry of race hustling. President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty"-- a war that we have lost, by the way-- bankrolled all kinds of local "leaders" and organizations with the taxpayers' money, in the name of community "participation" in shaping the policies of government. These "leaders" and community activists have had every reason to hype racial resentments and to make issues "us" against "them." One of the largely untold stories of our time has been the story of how ACORN, Jesse Jackson and other community activists have been able to transfer billions of dollars from banks to their own organizations' causes, with the aid of the federal government, exemplified by the Community Reinvestment Act and its sequels. Racial anger and racial resentments are the fuel that keeps this lucrative racket going. How surprised should anyone be that community activist groups have used mau-mau disruptions in banks and harassed both business and government officials in their homes? Lyndon Johnson once said that it is not hard to do the right thing. What is hard is knowing what is right. We can give him credit for good intentions, so long as we remember what road is paved with good intentions. realclearpolitics.com