Posted on 12/14/2001 11:28:39 PM PST by tank_sherman
Embarrassing Berry
Incivility on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Saturday, December 15, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
Will some adult Democrats please inform Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, that last year's election is over and George W. Bush is President? Maybe then she will do her job and seat Peter Kirsanow, Mr. Bush's choice for the Commission's vacant slot.
Instead, Mr. Kirsanow had to suffer the ignominy of trying to participate in the Commission's proceedings while Ms. Berry blithely pretended he didn't exist. A "member of the audience" may not address the Commission, she intoned, when Republican Commissioner Jennifer Braceras asked that he be allowed to present his credentials.
We fully understand that Mr. Bush's election must have been a shock for Ms. Berry, who has spent the past 20 years diligently using this "bipartisan" body to advance the political and social agenda of the most partisan liberals. She has made the most of the 5-3 edge that Democrats currently hold on the eight-member panel. If civil rights veteran Mr. Kirsanow is allowed to replace Victoria Wilson, whose term expired November 29, that advantage would shift to 4-4, and Ms. Berry's activism would no longer go unchecked.
Ms. Berry's claim that Ms. Wilson is entitled to a new six-year term defies precedent and logic. Ms. Wilson was appointed by President Clinton to finish the term of Commissioner Leon Higginbotham, who died in 1998. The Clinton White House even stated this at the time of her appointment, though it didn't have to. The 1983 statute is clear: "Any member appointed to fill a vacancy shall serve for the remainder of the term for which his predecessor was appointed."
In 1994, when the statute was last amended, this aspect wasn't changed in letter or spirit. Members of the Civil Rights Commission, like members of other federal commissions, serve staggered terms. The purpose is to protect the Commission's independence and integrity, which would be compromised if each Administration were permitted to clean house and bring in its own people. We know Ms. Berry is familiar with this rationale, because it's hers. Staggering was put into the 1983 statute at her urging for these very reasons.
But we guess Ms. Berry is having too good a time playing in her partisan sandbox to care much about a little matter like the law. In April 2000, smack in the middle of the Presidential election campaign, Ms. Berry issued a report attacking efforts to end race-based college admissions policies in Texas, Mr. Bush's home state, and Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother Jeb is Governor. The timing and the targets were pure coincidence, of course.
So, too, was her decision to investigate the New York City Police Department in the middle of the Rudolph Giuliani-Hillary Clinton Senate race. Al Sharpton was kind enough to inform the media at the time that her report, highly critical of the mayor and the police, was "exactly what we asked for." We're not sure which was more disturbing: Mr. Sharpton's knowing remark, which he voiced before the report was made public, or the revelation that Ms. Berry had donated to Mrs. Clinton's campaign.
The results of election 2000, however, were too much for the Chairman to bear. In August the Commission drafted an unsubstantiated report charging that black voters were discriminated against in Florida and that Mr. Bush's victory was due to "a pattern and practice of injustice."
The Civil Rights Commission was created to promote racial coexistence, but Ms. Berry has turned it into a partisan tool of racial division. Her decision to fight the White House in court over Mr. Kirsanow's appointment is nothing more than a last-ditch effort to stir up more racial animus. Mr. Bush would do the country a favor by dismissing her, but then Ms. Berry would travel the country claiming to be a racial martyr. This is one case in which Democrats should police their own.
I can only hope I am correct, but one thing is for sure, OTommy bin Daschle is doing everything he can to obstruct the Bush appointee's and his Domestic Agenda. With the President enjoying a approval rating in the high 80's and low 90's for the way he is doing his job as President, The RATS might be in big trouble next November, because most Americans do not like sore losers, and considering bin Daschle has risen to power by the way of a back room deal and big promises in order to get Benedict Jeffords to jump ship and join the RATS so he could assure himself in becoming the "majority leader" of the Senate. A move like this can only be considered as cheating the people who elected Jeffords, and bin Dascle is once again to blame.
The RATS will pay!
Gary Condit
Mary Francis Berry
< snip > Ms. Berry is having too good a time playing in her partisan sandbox < /snip >
The beginning of a hate crime based on an old racist's jokes about kitty cats...how much you wanna bet Ms. Berry takes a run at the WSJ???
Needless to say...she has made her agenda very clear..and she is just setting herself up to be on the DEFENSIVE no matter direction this case goes. She knows the fine art of playing "victim" while being the "smartest" black woman in DC...she can't have it both ways...can't be a perpetual victim and intelligent person at the same time.
Perhaps not in reality, however, she will do every thing possible to ensure that that perception is in the mind of every liberal touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy do-gooder, ala Sharpton, Jackson, Cochran, etc.
I personally do not think this woman has the political acumen to accomplish(?) the things that the race-baiting poverty pimps have, nor the intelligence, but she will be very effective in playing the victim; she knows there are enough sympathizers out there to give her at least some of the "credibility" she seeks.
I think that the President is convinced that she is a snake that can turn and bite at any moment, and is attempting to handle her accordingly.
I think that his actions and responses to date with her are designed to defang the snake, thus allowing her to crawl around ineffectively thereafter and I think he will be successful.
If I could give my advice to him, though, it would be to treat her as the rabid old bat that she is, to simply throw her to the floor and stomp her.
No matter what his actions, she will be the victim to someone. I am gratified, though, to see that she has not become the cause celebre to the idiots on DU(ng) and the Barfcrap bunch. Perhaps even they would rather not deal with a rabid old bat.
OTOH, this editorial by the WSJ may serve to stir that pot to a boil-over.
No such individuals have been located.
Ms. Berry's little dictatorship should be stopped now. Please call or contact your representatives somehow and get rid of this festering canker on our lives and our taxes!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Like jesse jackson, the clintons and a host of other genuinely sick people, she has USED her own race and the black population at large to weave unhappiness, dis-spiritedness, anger and to fuel racial division. After all, without keeping us separate, she is OUT of a JOB. Like jesse, like the clintons and other sick liberals who smash our blacks under the horrendous title of helping them by killing their own, God given independence and selfworth. Never has anyone EVER gifted another with selfworth, it ALWAYS has to be earned. Liberals take away this opportunity and form purposeful wedges between groups with their nasty tactics. Of course, it DOES keep their voting block intact (if hurting and angry inside).
...in the minds of some DemocRATS, George Bush isn't the President. In their twisted "logic" Al Gore is THEIR president ...
In my opinion, it wouldn't have mattered if their candidate had been Al Gore or Daffy Duck. They lost POWER. If the libs had truly believed in Al Gore and the causes he espouses, they wouldn't be treating him like a pariah now and letting their lackeys in the media make jokes about his beard and how fat he's become.
The great thing about Ms. Berry (from the conservative point-of-view) is that she shows what's really behind the curtain -- the naked ruthless power grabber and despot-wannabe. Maxine Waters and Hillary, like Ms. Berry don't get it. If you show your real totalitarian agenda before you have achieved total control -- the sheeple will recoil in horror.
Daschle is much much smarter. He masks his true agenda in soft-sounding concilliatory-seeming empty platitudes to try to misdirect the public's attention from the real agenda. Only if the liberals achieve domination through Daschle's method and subtle cheating at the ballot box, is it safe for the Berrys, Waters', and Hillarys to speak.
(I just realized that all the examples I've cited are liberal women. Perhaps the fact that the women appear more strident than the men of similar philosophy is a function of the fact that women have only recently been allowed into the backroom where the deals are made -- I don't know.) I do know that if Daschle is smart (and he is and therefore more dangerous than Ms.Berry could ever be), he will muzzle this bunch, starting with Ms. Berry, or the "rules" by which the liberals play will become obvious to the people and the liberal agenda will be overwhelmingly defeated. The lid came off a little during the post-election period last year. It was shocking to see the liberals in action. There was no time for subtlety and they came across like drugged-out street punks brazenly trying to steal the candelabra from the altar of St. Patrick's in broad daylight. They have no shame. I think they believe that they are entitled to rule the rest of us.
2000 not only cost them power -- it cost them the appearance of legitimacy and I don't think they can ever get it back to pre-2000 levels, no matter how softly Daschle, Edwards, Kerry, and Lieberman coo. Hallelujah!
No such individuals have been located.
Hilarious! I think they haven't been located, because none exist! The term "adult Democrat" is an oxymoron.
In the past, I have been just as guilty of this as anybody else. 2000 woke me up -- GWB was cheated out of several hundred thousand votes in my state alone. I felt angry, frustrated stunned, shocked and powerless. I will NEVER feel that way again.
We need EVERY vote we can get. In 2002, we have a chance to make significant gains -- but we have to start volunteering for what we believe NOW -- not the week or the month before the election!
2000 not only cost them power -- it cost them the appearance of legitimacy and I don't think they can ever get it back to pre-2000 levels, no matter how softly Daschle, Edwards, Kerry, and Lieberman coo. Hallelujah!
Right you are! They rule us! How dare we think it the other way around. And if they rule us, George Bush cannot possibly be President, can he? all I have say to them is dat be whacked!
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