To: Alighieri who wrote (708391 ) 4/10/2013 5:26:32 PM From: joseffy 1 Recommendation Respond to The New Black Panthers’ Unpunished Threats nationalreview.com Bartle Bull, a former civil-rights lawyer who had been arrested in the South in the 1960s and later went on to become publisher of the liberal Village Voice , actually witnessed the intimidation and reported the Panthers’ actions to Justice. When the defendants failed to answer Justice’s lawsuit, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a default judgment against them. The Holder Justice Department responded by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, suddenly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two defendants. The third defendant was merely barred from displaying a weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years. The bizarre decision prompted congressional outcries and a formal investigation by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which sent a letter to Justice in August 2009 saying, “We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law.” The Commission later issued a harshly condemnatory report of Justice’s behavior in the case. Could Justice’s leniency encourage the Panthers to think they can act with impunity in the future?Bartle Bull says he is very concerned that Justice is practicing a double standard when it comes to enforcing civil-rights laws. “When he took office, Attorney General Holder stated that America was a ‘nation of cowards’ when it comes to race,” he told me in 2010. “But who are today’s ‘cowards’ on race? This kind of double standard is not what Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy stood for.”
