Could it be that President Obama's legal team is imploding due to a voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party? So many new developments regarding the Black Panther case occurred in the latter half of last week that it is hard keeping up with them all. But none of them look good for the Obama administration or for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s Justice Department.
The case involves paramilitary-garbed Panthers caught on videotape (which was backed by copious testimony) engaged in what observers say were intimidating and racially charged activities outside a Philadelphia polling booth on presidential Election Day in 2008. Even though a judge was ready to enter a default judgment against the Black Panthers, based on a case brought by career attorneys at the Justice Department, the Obama administration suddenly decided last spring to drop three of the four cases and punish the final one with an incredibly weak injunction.
Controversy, accompanied by continued administration stonewalling, has ensued ever since.
The new developments last week were as follows:
First, a Web site called "Main Justice" reported on Wednesday (and we have since confirmed) that the Justice Department has, for now, ordered two key career attorneys not to comply with a subpoena about the case issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission, by law, has explicit power to issue subpoenas, and the law mandates that "all federal agencies shall cooperate fully with the commission." The Justice Department, however, is citing internal regulations stemming from a 1951 case to support its order to ignore the subpoena.
One of the attorneys, J. Christian Adams, has been advised by his personal attorney, former South Carolina Secretary of State Jim Miles, that failure to comply with the subpoena could put him at risk of prosecution. "I can't imagine," Mr. Miles told The Washington Times, "that a statute that gives rise to the power of a subpoena would be subjugated to some internal procedural personnel rule being promulgated by DoJ." In short, the department is stiffing the commission and unfairly putting its own employee in a legal bind.
Second, that same day, the two Republican House members with top-ranking jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, issued a joint statement calling Justice Department delays "a cover-up," and "a pretense to ignore inquiries from Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights." At a hearing on Thursday, Mr. Smith said that "continued silence by the Justice Department is an implied admission of guilt that the case was dropped for purely political reasons."
Third, at the same hearing, Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, accused Justice Department Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez of not being "truthful" while under oath, to such an extent that "there are people who have gone to jail" for such a level of purported "dishonest[y]."
The disputed statement, from what appeared to be prepared remarks by Mr. Perez that he later repeated insistently, was that "the maximum penalty was sought and obtained" against the one Black Panther for whom the charges were not entirely dropped. The bizarrely weak penalty consisted of a mere injunction for the Black Panther not to brandish a weapon near a polling place, within Philadelphia, through Nov. 15, 2012. In short, he is prohibited, only within Philadelphia and only for four years, from doing something that is illegal anyway.
Such a slap on the wrist is far from the "maximum penalty" allowable for such voter intimidation. Most directly, the injunction could be far broader, not just limited to Philadelphia for four years. Also, harsher penalties than mere injunctions could conceivably be available. If the Justice Department sought a criminal indictment, for instance, Title 18, Section 245 of the U.S. Code provides that those found guilty of voter intimidation "shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
As all of this was going on, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, the No. 2 man in the whole department, was announcing that very morning that he will resign after less than 10 months in office. Mr. Ogden - whose possible involvement in the Black Panther case had been specifically mentioned in the Civil Rights Commission's subpoena - became the third high-ranking Obama legal official to announce a resignation in the last month. He was preceded by White House counsel Gregory Craig and deputy White House counsel Cassandra Butts.
"Holder and them have done a terrible job on this," Mr. Wolf told The Washington Times. "This has just been handled so poorly.... You can't hide these things. There is something wrong here. There is something very wrong. When it all comes out, I think it will be very bad."
#1
Tell you what, Sarah, I'm reading your book Going Rogue and it's kinda lightweight, kinda easy-reading if you know what I mean. So here's a suggestion for you if you want to be taken seriously as presidential timber: Do the research, objectively, and write a serious book about energy and the environment. Take into account the international politics, in particular our reliance on people who want us dead or subjugated. Take a few trips abroad and talk to people in other countries. That's what Nixon did. Then, when your book is done, go on a speaking tour. Time's a wasting...or you could just do what your skeptics are saying and become a talk show host.
As noted by Bill Kristol
"proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale....
"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
"But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation,...I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.
"So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace....
"But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war."
-- President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize speech, Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009
"Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction....
"North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
"Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom....
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
"We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction....
"We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
-- George W. Bush, State of the Union speech, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2002 I have read elsewhere, that Obama studied Bush's speeches before his lecture to the West Point Cadets.
... In a piece titled "Copenhagen's Political Science," the former Alaska governor charged that "leading climate 'experts'" have "destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals."
Gore bit back during an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell to air Wednesday afternoon. The former presidential candidate said "the deniers are persisting in an era of unreality. The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our eyes ... what do they think is happening?"
... Gore said Wednesday that the scientific community has worked intensively on the issue for twenty years. "It's a principle in physics," he told Mitchell. "It's like gravity, it exists."
... Gore attributed the partisan divide over climate change to the leadership of the modern Republican party, which he feels has adopted a stronger stance on denying global warming.
Gore emphasized that climate change should be a bipartisan issue. "It used to be," he said.
He cited Lindsey Graham as one example of a Republican leader who accepts the science.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I suspect that algore thinks that Palin is an easy mark hence the response. algore remains unwilling to debate anyone with half a brain on the issues on which he presents himself as an authority. I would like Palin to challenge him to a debate and see if he will accept. If he did, it would be fascinating.
#2
Al gore refuses to debate with anyone who would have the intellectual advantage. as anyone with half a brain will easily out class the mental powers of poor Al by an order of magnitude they are to be avoided at all costs.
notice his choice of venue... NBC news... he needed to rub shoulders with Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams to prop up his flagging self esteem and look the part of (comparative) cognitive giant.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
12/10/2009 2:35 Comments ||
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#8
The correct word is refute. Rebut is a synonym. Al Gore did neither.
Posted by: ed ||
12/10/2009 9:21 Comments ||
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Ice cap's there, Al. Number's a little low again for the season this month, but it's probably equipment failure again - they've been insisting on using a narrow set of squirrely satellites. Well, more like satellite, IIRC.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
12/10/2009 9:57 Comments ||
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#10
The correct word is refute. Rebut is a synonym. Al Gore did neither.
Which is what g(r)rom said. Gotta read the subtlety.
By Sarah Palin
With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.
"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.
The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.
This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.
Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.
But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.
In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax program. Meanwhile, Australia's Parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate e-mail scandal continues to unfold.
In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.
Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
