Posted on 09/28/2010 10:54:18 AM PDT by jazusamo
ABC, NBC, and CBS refuse to cover him. Left-leaning sources report on him with no integrity. PR tactics get employed at the hearing. And the DOJ spokesperson lashes out.
The testimony was covered by CNN and the Los Angeles Times, and was on the front page, above the fold, in the Washington Post. Yet ABC, NBC, and CBS devoted no coverage to his testimony.
But while the networks were willfully ignorant, some internet media abandoned any pretense of reporting on the story with integrity.
Christian Science Monitor
Law professor Allan Lichtman confessed to the Christian Science Monitor what we have said all along that many, including he, are hostile to equal enforcement of the law:
You can try to force [the Voting Rights Act] to be equal, but its not. If these are the worst examples you can find, then, by God, white people in America are pretty safe.
Lichtman regularly serves as an expert in Voting Rights Act litigation. He is listed as a consultant on voting rights to the United States Department of Justice. Any attorney doing Lichtmans expert deposition in the future should spend a great deal of time developing evidence on his unequal and racialist view of the Voting Rights Act.
Sorry professor, the law is race-neutral.
Main Justice
Perhaps the most intellectually bankrupt commentary on Coates came from Mary Jacoby, writing for Main Justice a blog set up in the halcyon days of early 2009 to be the mouthpiece of the Obama DOJ. Flush with seed money, they became Eric Holders Pravda.
In the last month, Main Justice has lost 30 percent of its readership, and gets approximately 1/200th the page views of PJM.
Jacoby trotted out all of the intellectually bankrupt attacks. Obviously disappointed that she failed in her task at keeping the New Black Panthers story bottled up, Jacoby lamented:
The goal of conservatives who nurtured this story was always to get them validated by a non-ideological respected mainstream outlet. Now theyve done it, thanks to a deluge of calls [to the Washington Post ombudsman.]
Really? That was the goal?
Maybe, in a world where ultimate truth doesnt exist, would publication on the front page of the Washington Post matter. Maybe to people whose lives exist to advance their own agenda, or to be a handmaiden for a government, skewed motives lurk everywhere.
But the New Black Panther case has always been about a simpler, more important question: are we a nation that enforces the law equally?
Jacoby trots out the meaningless question of frequency: Are there massive numbers of white voters in America who are being kept from the polls? Of course, the words massive numbers never appear in the Voting Rights Act. In fact, if there is a number, it is zero the law bans even the attempt to intimidate.
This was an intentional change in 1965, which Jacoby and the other Holder sycophants ignore. Without the change, perfectly successful acts of intimidation would not be illegal. A Klan rally at the entrance to a poll that succeeded in keeping all black voters home would be perfectly fine using Mary Jacobys version of statutory interpretation unless, of course, the race of the victim matters.
Which apparently it does to Jacoby.
This is the dirty little secret we knew all along: people like Mary Jacoby, former Assistant Attorney General Loretta King, and Professor Allan Lichtman really dont believe the protections of the law apply to whites.
Says Jacoby:
Lets not forget that the Civil Rights Division exists because of racial discrimination against blacks.
OK, we havent forgotten. But what would you have us do with that?
Are we to put a thumb on the scale for a black defendant like New Black Panther Jerry Jackson when he breaks the law? Should we allow evidence of the heroism of Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers to excuse the armed thug King Samir Shabazz?
It is refreshing, actually, to see someone who has so steadfastly defended the DOJ at last reveal what we knew all along. Up until the devastating testimony of Coates, it was all about the political views of the attorneys on the case, George Bush, and how career people alone made the decision. Now, they confess the truth: they believe the law should not be used to protect whites.
You would think Jacoby might feel betrayed by the Justice officials who lied to her about who ordered the dismissal, but that is not the case. Over and over, the dismissal was characterized by Justice officials as a mere dispute between lowly civil servants, until Judicial Watch blew that lie up with the release of DOJ documents last week showing the number two and number three officials in Justice were involved in spiking the case.
It is intellectually bankrupt for Jacoby to carry water still for someone who has been lying to her for months. Its also embarrassing.
They claim there was no widespread pattern of New Black Panther voter intimidation, disingenuously adding words to the law, and also ignoring facts: the New Black Panther Party announced a nationwide deployment on Election Day.
It is intellectually bankrupt both to alter the legal standard and to ignore empirical facts.
The American Prospect
The American Prospect borrows a page from the Trotskyite playbook, figuring a personal smear is all it takes to make the story go away: Coates Defends Brad Schlozman, screams their headline.
Of course most people outside of a small inside-the-beltway audience are asking who is Brad Schlozman? What does this have to do with the New Black Panthers?
To the American Prospect, apparently everything. Schlozman was the acting assistant attorney general for Civil Rights during the Bush years. His tenure became an obsession among those now defending the Departments dismissal of the NBPP lawsuit. According to this bankrupt theory, since I was hired in 2005, and since Coates called Schlozman a friend, whether or not we told the truth no longer matters.
I am reminded of Solzhenitsyns observation of the mad world around him. Guilt or innocence no longer mattered in Solzhenitsyns world, truth and falsehood were obsolete:
The heart of the matter is not personal guilt, but social danger. One can imprison an innocent person if he is socially dangerous. And one can release a guilty man if he is socially friendly.
Never once do the intellectually bankrupt at the American Prospect contest the veracity of Coates testimony. No mention about what Coates said about Schlozman namely, that accusing Schlozman of ideological hiring is high hypocrisy. Both the Clinton and Obama administrations had no standing to criticize Schlozman: it would be akin to Jersey Shores Snooki complaining about the flamboyant dress of Lady GaGa, Coates said. The American Prospect made no mention of the hiring practices in both Democratic administrations.
No mention of those transgressions after all, they were committed by the socially friendly.
Partisan Spin from Michael Yaki
At the hearing, Commissioner Michael Yaki tediously sniped at the contents of an email I sent in December 2008 to a person who managed the eyewitnesses in Philadelphia. My email discussed the need to obtain a narrative as soon as possible.
What Yaki doesnt mention is that the narrative I sought was, literally, a narrative: a written statement from a witness in the conventional sense, not the PR definition of narrative. We knew there was an African-American witness inside the polls who might testify about a tiny part of the case, over and above what we already had as evidence.
I was trying to figure out who the person was. A narrative timeline naming everyone involved would allow us to focus our investigation. Its called being thorough.
But Michael Yaki, clearly rattled by the bombshell testimony of Coates, used the email to paint a disingenuous portrait of an incomplete and rushed investigation. His portrait represented more intellectual bankruptcy from defenders of the racialist policies of the DOJ.
DOJ Spokesperson Tracy Schmaler
Tracy Schmaler, the DOJ press spokesperson with the assignment of defending the indefensible, has become unhinged.
I have spoken with numerous media sources who say that she acts unprofessionally. She explodes, yelling when discussing the scandal. Another individual with personal contact with Schmaler reports she becomes irrationally agitated when the New Black Panther scandal is brought up, even in casual conversation.
Schmaler has done what none of her predecessors have ever dared do criticize and run down the institution of the DOJ.
People are paying attention. Former officials have told me that Schmalers criticism of the Bush Justice Department as being politicized and corrupt has crossed a line nobody ever crosses: criticizing her client. She represents the same client that Mark Corallo, for instance, represented when he served as the spokesman at DOJ in the Bush administration Corrallo would never have attacked decisions made during the Clinton administration.
Let the DNC or White House be the attack dog Schmalers job is to represent the DOJ, not a political agenda.
Schmaler also attacked the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Eric Holder should teach her some manners, respect for the institution she represents, and the importance of not misleading reporters.
None of the water-carriers for Holder discuss the facts as laid out by Coates.
There was no mention of Loretta Kings corrupt command not to ask interview questions of attorney applicants if they can enforce the law fairly. Nobody discussed the bombshell that instructions were given that racially equal enforcement of the law was not allowed. Apologists are still futilely advancing the spin weve heard for months but after Christopher Coates, nobody is paying attention to it anymore.
These intellectually bankrupt tactics overlook the central question in the controversy does it violate federal law to block the entrance to a poll while brandishing a weapon and shouting racial slurs?
After the testimony of Christopher Coates, the answer is yes to nearly every American.
J. Christian Adams is an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. His website is www.electionlawcenter.com.
The Obama-Holder Department of Just Us, Cracker.
The lame questioning by Yaki at the USCCR hearing was hilarious. He tried to infer that what the Black Panthers did at the polling place wasn’t really voter intimidation. I guess he never saw the video or he’s brain dead, probably the latter.
My god!!! The LSM is all OVER this!!...do I really need a /s?
BUMP
Main Justice’s Mary Jacoby:
“The goal of conservatives who nurtured this story was always to get them validated by a non-ideological respected mainstream outlet. Now theyve done it, thanks to a deluge of calls [to the Washington Post ombudsman.]”
The goal is equal justice under the law, Mary. You seem to be projecting your own shallow character and paltry ambitions onto those who oppose.
Other than blogs, there really is a media black out (no pun...or maybe a pun should be intended). I want to know, when does the testimony continue? What is the next legal step??? That seems lost to me...hearings AFTER the new Congress is sworn in?
It was said right after this hearing that a report would be written by USCCR and forwarded to Congress in a month or so.
The majority on the panel are not happy at all with DOJ and what took place with the NBP, the report should be scathing.
Nothing will be acted on before the election and we’ll have the House in January, I believe much popcorn will be needed.
I doubt they watch networks, and I certainly don't think they read a newspaper. The MSM's hold is vanishing. Soon it will be gone altogether.
The right side doesn't own the internet, but I think the ideological split is about 50-50. At least we have a level playing field.
Mary Jacoby again, wife of Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson?... Black Panther/voting rights case
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