This elitist scumbag Berry really makes my blood boil.
Posted on 01/03/2002 10:19:40 PM PST by Pokey78
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:50:24 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 19, 2001
It may be time for new leadership on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Mary Frances Berry, who has been chairwoman of the bipartisan federal investigative agency since 1993, seems to have let power go to her head.
Neither Berry, the commission's staff director, Les Jin, nor Edward Hailes, its general counsel, returned my phone calls. A public relations firm that has been paid more than $130,000 by the commission to represent Berry did return the call, but couldn't answer any of my questions. I also received a faxed copy of a memorandum from Hailes' office, saying in effect that just because Berry may have violated the no-compensation law in the past doesn't mean future violations should be tolerated.
This fight is clearly not over the technical legal point of uncompensated experts. Had Berry approved of the dissenters' views, she would not have dusted off this never-used and inapplicable statutory provision to thwart them. Yet, Congress wanted a diversity of opinions on the commission and prohibited any one political party from holding a majority of its seats (a provision Berry has helped the commission slip around by changing her party affiliation from Democrat to independent.)
Berry, an academic and former assistant secretary for education under President Carter, has been accused in the past of using her post in a dictatorial and repressive manner. In 1995, when I was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, she used the commission's subpoena power to try to force the leaders of grass-roots anti-immigrant groups to turn over all internal documents discussing their groups' philosophy. A clear violation of the First Amendment. After the ACLU got involved, the commission backed off.
Berry also has a reputation for coming to issues with pre-set ideas. She is supposed to be chairing an impartial, fact-finding body, but her behavior at hearings often makes her appear to be a bulldog advocate for one side. When about a year ago, the commission was investigating the New York City police force and whether it was engaging in racial profiling, Berry rudely and repeatedly interrupted the testimony of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, even as he displayed a chart showing the relatively low use of force by police in New York City compared with others. Yet, Berry had a very different persona when the Rev. Al Sharpton appeared. With him she was deferential and generous with praise. In a dissent to the commission's final report, commissioners charged that the majority offered "a one-sided portrayal of the NYPD . . . based not on evidence, but on conjecture (and) opinion."
If Berry is not going to be a fair arbiter, if she's not going to allow a full airing of controversial issues, then, sadly, the commission will have little legitimacy outside radical left-wing circles. It is ironic that, in Berry's house of civil rights, minority viewpoints are not welcome.
Any news on where these people go? A very public and noisy protest should greet these people every second of every day.
Fire Jin.
This guy got the point made by the joke about the old bull and the young bull. I'd tell it here, but the language is a little colorful, and the post would get deleted.
Certainly jaded about the race baiting intimidation tactics practiced by Berry, Jackson, Sharpton, Mfume, et al.
Oh I hope you are right!!
Foreign terrorists know that swift justice will be visited upon them when they attempt to subvert our way of life. The same rules apparantly don't hold when it comes to swift justice for domestic terrorists and lawbreakers such as Berry, the Clintons, Torrecelli, etal, who subvert our justice system.
Immediate action should have been taken by the administration when President Bush's appointee to this commission had to suffer the indignity and embarrassment of not being seated by Berry when he was in the very room. I realize a law suit has been filed, but this could take months to adjudicate. In the meantime, Berry is able to mount legal terrorist counterattacks while rather effectively using her bully pulpit to turn this whole thing into a major racial crisis.
The ongoing coup and flouting of law by Berry and her leftist gang of thugs is becoming a cause celebre due to the dithering of the administration. For the life of me, I can't figure out how these people are getting away with their illegalities for such a long period of time. I wish our president and attorney general would go after Berry with the same passionate zeal they're going after Bin Laden and Omar. They're making matters worse through inaction and letting this fester. The sooner this tempest is over, the better for the administration and the country.
C'mon, Mr. President, get behind your appointee to the commission. Take back the bully pulpit from this crazed dictator! Stop knuckling under to her!
Leni
Is that their justification for her unbridled disregard for the laws of this country?
How ridiculous. But I guess you really have to try hard to come up with ANYTHING to justify their agenda/views, huh?
PC will not get you one vote from these people, GW -- do something! (And for God's sake, stop telling us that Islam is a "religion of peace," or that you'll be "mad as heck" if your traitorous SS Agent was "discriminated" against.)
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