Posted on 03/06/2014 1:56:23 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said Wednesday's rejection of a nominee for the Justice Department revealed a racial "double standard."
Harkin said the Republican opposition to Debo Adegbile, President Obama's choice to lead Justice's Civil Rights division, was hypocritical, given their support for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who had defended convicted criminals before joining the bench.
Here is the message we sent today: if youre a young white person and you go to work for a law firm, youre a lawyer sworn into the bar and a law firm assigns you to defend a person who killed eight people in cold blood you might wind up to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."
"However, if you are a young black person and you go to work for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and they assign you to appeal a case of someone who committed a heinous murder the message sent today is dont do it if you keep your legal obligations with your profession you will be denied the opportunity to be an assistant Attorney General.
Shame on this Senate, Harkin said. We have a terrible double standard.
The nomination of Adegbil, who is black, was rejected in a 47-52 vote. Seven Democrats broke ranks to oppose his nomination.
Republicans argued Adegbile was unfit to serve because of his legal work in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted in 1981 of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Adegbile was the director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) when it worked to commute Abu-Jamals death sentence. Faulkners widow, the Fraternal Order of Police and Republicans argued this should disqualify him from the Justice job, while supporters warned a rejection would set a dangerous precedent of punishing lawyers for doing their jobs.
Obama called the vote against Adegbile a "travesty," and accused lawmakers of succumbing to "wildly unfair character attacks against a good and qualified public servant."
"The fact that his nomination was defeated solely based on his legal representation of a defendant runs contrary to a fundamental principle of our system of justice and those who voted against his nomination denied the American people an outstanding public servant," Obama said.
Harkin said Adegbile's work on the Abu-Jamal case was irrelevant to his nomination.
The Supreme Court Justice defended someone who committed mass murder, Harkin said. Did we here one peep from the [Republican] side? No
and rightfully so. It should never have been an issue.
Environmental racism: New frontline of human rights "Environmental justice activists are calling attention to what they say is the new frontline of the human rights struggle chemical contamination of communities of color what some groups have dubbed environmental racism.
When corporations decide where to build chemical plants, landfills, or water treatment plants where chemicals leach, they most often choose low income communities of color, Richard Moore, a long-time civil rights and environmental justice leader with the Environmental Justice and Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, said in a statement.
This is the next frontier of the Civil Rights Movement, Michele Roberts, co-coordinator for the alliance, told the Afro American Newspaper. People of color and the poor have borne the brunt of exposure to toxins and have a disproportionate share of health issues because of the prevalence of chemical sites in their communities. You even have people migrating because they are losing their communities.............
imo, “The left” has never even HAD an argument.
Lying,
Legerdemain,
Appeals to base passion and covetousness,
Then the bootheel.
It has been so for a hundred years.
Good points.
How about, “the Left is stuck on stupid?”
Well yeah, insofar as evil IS inherently “stupid”, because evil is basically “selfish”.
Selfishness imposes blinders - where the evil one(s) can see ONLY “ahead” - toward their (usual) goal of acquiring power, and are unable to grasp, consider, or even “look at” that which is whole, beautiful, or true. They fear that which is “good” - because it is “other” to them. (the blinders having restricted them to other views). Having chosen to turn their heads, harden their hearts for so long, “good” ultimately escapes them...
Gahh! I’m a ramblin idiot today! Forgive me!
Too much coffee :)
(more dissection of exactly what mental disease possesses them is in my profile)
Cheers!
That's because the rich lawyers (of color or not) don't want to live next to a landfill. It gets NIMBY'd along until someone just doesn't have the juice to stop it.
He should say that to the relatives of the police officer killed by Mumia Jabal(sp?).
He (a civil rights attorney) filed an Amicus Brief along with others regarding the incorrect jury instructions during the sentencing phase of the convicted cop killer. Furthermore, they filed that brief some 20 years after the conviction and reportedly based on new evidence. There is nothing wrong with that.
The conviction was upheld, the sentence commuted to life in prison, appealed by the state, remanded back to the lesser court for reconsideration. Commutation upheld ... end of story.
Now, what’s not being pointed out and becomes obvious once you read the history of this case is that both the murderer and the rejected nominee are both very very well connected on the left and there was an international effort to have the murderer’s sentence commuted.
Now, after a day of reading regarding this case I surmise that the rejected nominee was being groomed to eventually replace Holder, and that he was chosen because of his philosophical similarity with Holder and would toe the current line — that blacks cannot be racist, that most whites are racist whether they know it or not and that he was going to go up there and *not* represent all the people, just merely the black ones, just as holder has.
All politics in America is not local but ultimately racial
More and more people don’t play the racist game anymore.
There is a lot of truth in that. Hence the hundreds if not thousands of racial political and lobbying groups.
The dead are already piling up under obama and the democrat's healthcare disaster. The voices of the dead and dying cry out for justice.
Man, those Republicans are looking good---without even half trying......doing nothing IS a good strategy.
WHO KNEW Dumbocrats were so adept at self-immolation? ROTFLOL.
In other words the cause - whether inner city blacks or women - is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. That was the all consuming focus of Alinsky and his radicals.
Guided by Alinsky principles, post-Communist radicals are not idealists but Machiavellians. Their focus is on means rather than ends, and therefore they are not bound by organizational orthodoxies in the way their admired Marxist forebears were. Within the framework of their revolutionary agenda, they are flexible and opportunistic and will say anything (and pretend to be anything) to get what they want, which is resources and power."....... 2009 Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model by David Horowitz
The Fraternal Order of Police LEANED REAL HARD on those Democrats. Imagine interfacing with this Obama pick as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division? What’s shocking to me is after those vulnerable Democrats saw how things were falling apart - that the Democratic Party Caucus wasn’t holding together, why in the hell didn’t they change their votes to “No?” Must be that the race-baiters and Harry Reid have a bigger lock on them than the FOP.
As fate would have it just seconds ago this headline popped up on the thread:
Is racism making you FAT? Victims of prejudice are at greater risk of obesity
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3130133/posts
Apparently fat people had not got the memorandum.
Whats shocking to me is after those vulnerable Democrats saw how things were falling apart - that the Democratic Party Caucus wasnt holding together, why in the hell didnt they change their votes to No? Must be that the race-baiters and Harry Reid have a bigger lock on them than the FOP.
My take if that during the vote, the Dumbos were still in lock-stepping formation. Poor things were blind-sided b/c they were smartly saluting der leader. ROTFLOL.
"Information on environmental justice has become bountiful in the past decade. Although a great deal of attention has focused on the literature pertaining to this subject, there is also an emerging field around videos related to Superfund, hazardous waste, toxins, facility siting, environmental justice, and environmental racism. For example, productions from organizations such as Greenpeace, the Video Project, and Bullfrog Films have made videos on environment and race, poverty, and political disenfranchisement. In addition, grassroots activists, community groups, environmental organizations, social justice, and civil rights advocates have captured environmental justice struggles on film. Several university lectures and panels are included in an attempt to demonstrate the role of educators and students in the environmental justice movement.
Environmental justice issues go well beyond the anti-toxins campaign to include public health, housing, land use, transportation, energy, political empowerment, pollution prevention, etc. The environmental movement is no longer considered the sole domain of the middle-class and elites. Today, grassroots activists, civil rights leaders, and environmental justice advocates are demanding fair treatment and equal enforcement of the nation's environmental, health, housing, transportation, energy, and civil rights laws.
The videos listed in this directory attempt to highlight some of the diverse problems linked to environmental injustice. Many of the videos show communities taking direct action to address their specific problem. The listings are by no means exhaustive. However, they can be instructive in educating the public about major environmental problems in or near people's homes, neighborhoods, and work places.
This video directory will be updated and expanded as additional material is retrieved. This material was compiled by Christopher Weldon, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Sociology and Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia 30314. Any new listings or video announcements should be sent to his attention....................."
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