Ben Stein, the Black Panthers and James O’Keefe

Ben Stein argues that James O’Keefe — the young conservative who made his name with video stings on ACORN offices — shouldn’t face charges for invading Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office … because New Black Panthers who stood outside a Philly polling station on Election Day 2008 weren’t prosecuted. He mangles a few facts along the way.

During the last Presidential election, a gang of men calling themselves Black Panthers showed up at a polling place in Michigan. They threatened any voter who did not vote for Barack Obama. This was witnessed and documented.

Where this goes wrong:

• It sure sounds like he’s trying to describe the incident of New Black Panthers at a Fairmount polling station here in Philly, not Michigan. A Google search for “Black Panthers” and “Michigan” turns up information more biological than political. I can’t find any reference to any incident in Michigan, in fact, but the incident here in Philly has become a celebrated cause among conservatives who’d like to imply that black nationalists stole the election for Barack Obama.

• In any case, “they threatened any voter who did not vote for Barack Obama” is a rather expansive description of what happened. What the Panthers did was … stand there. And granted, it sure seemed a little scary, and police were right to remove the Panthers along. As far as I know, they never uttered Obama’s name. You might say I’m quibbling on the details, but the details matter. The incident was witnessed and documented, but what was witnessed and documented is a bit different from what Stein describes.

In any case, though, Stein makes the case that the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute O’Keefe and his colleagues for trying to access Landrieu’s phone system is politically motivated. “When was the last time you read about federal charges against a liberal reporter for going undercover?” And if you can’t recall an instance when a liberal reporter “went undercover” in a senator’s office … well, that’s probably your fault.

But it’s worth noting that the Clinton Justice Department in 1997 brought wiretapping charges against a Florida couple who recorded, using a police scanner, an embarrassing cell phone call among leading House Republicans to discuss problems facing then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. John and Alice Martin pleaded guilty, and Congressman Jim McDermott (who publicized the tape) ended up having to pay $1 million to Congressman John Boehner over the incident. You could argue the cell phone conversation was of public interest — I would — but it was illegally obtained. And that doesn’t fly.

Journalists — even those of O’Keefe’s “Candid Camera” loving ilk — are required to obey the law like everybody else. They face legal consequences when they don’t. Using the kerfuffle over the New Black Panthers as a way to justify politically motivated lawbreaking demonstrates more fidelity to politics than to the law.

(Hat tip: Dave Weigel)

The Bush Administration failed to enforce Civil Rights laws. Who to blame? Philadelphia’s New Black Panthers, of course

Somehow, when I started reading this story, I just knew Philly’s New Black Panthers would make an appearance by the end. And I wasn’t disappointed:

When the Bush administration ran the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, career lawyers wanted to look into accusations that officials in one state had illegally intimidated blacks during a voter-fraud investigation.

But division supervisors refused to “approve further contact with state authorities on this matter,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office auditing the activities of the division from 2001 to 2007.

The 180-page report, obtained by The New York Times, is densely packed with statistics about civil rights enforcement by the division’s sections. The accountability office also examined a sampling of matters that were closed without further action, finding several cases — including the curtailed voter intimidation inquiry — in which supervisors rejected the recommendations of career lawyers to go forward.

The report represents a comprehensive review of the division’s litigation activity in the Bush administration. When compared with the Clinton administration, its findings show a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws.

Republicans have signaled that they will use the hearing to accuse the Obama administration of politicizing the division in its own way. They are focusing on a decision to downgrade voter-intimidation charges stemming from an incident in the 2008 election in which two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a Philadelphia precinct in militia uniforms, one of them holding a night stick. The charges were brought in the final days of the Bush administration and were downgraded and partially dropped in May.

I’ve said it a million times, but still: The New Black Panthers who stood outside a Fairmount polling station last November were knuckleheads who acted stupidly. And you can argue the Obama Administration was wrong to drop the charges. (Although, again: Have we EVER been presented with a voter who claims to have been kept from the polls that day?)

But…

On one hand, you’ve got a couple of guys from a fringe group who did something dumb for an hour or so. On the other hand, you’ve got state officials — using the power of the state — allegedly intimidating African American in a voter-fraud registration case. Which case did the Bush Administration pursue? And which did it ignore? But which one represents the greater danger to liberty and civil rights?

Republicans keep focusing on the New Black Panthers, though, because it’s a handy way to direct people away from their own shortcomings. And since there’s video of the Panthers — not so much of behind-the-scenes bureaucratic shuffling — it’s easier to make a bigger deal about them on TV. But Americans shouldn’t be duped into thinking there’s any real equivalence here. There’s not.

Republicans have to police their side’s extremism

Garry Wills was hanging out with William F. Buckley back when Buckley marginalized the Birchers out of the conservative movement. Wills doesn’t really hang with the National Review crowd anymore, but he makes an important point at the new blog of the New York Review of Books:

In the past, extremism was checked by people who were partly or nominally on the side of the extremists. Barry Goldwater dissociated his 1964 campaign from the John Birch Society. William F. Buckley rebuked the anti-Semites on the right. On the other side, there were plenty of liberals who denounced the Weather Underground or the Black Panthers.

But now supposedly responsible Republican leaders, commentators, and congressmen—Iowa Senator Charles Grassley and Arizona Representative Trent Franks—encourage the citizenship and euthanasia screamers. A recent vice-presidential nominee endorses the death panels myth. There is little or no determination to dissociate the right in general from the right-wing fringes….

This situation cannot be reversed until and unless the Republican Party begins to recognize that keeping these people in the camp will destroy the camp, that the party cannot pretend to respect and responsibility before the electorate so long as they coddle the crazies. Barry Goldwater was considered an extremist in his day, but his movement went on to prevail for a time because he did not temporize with Birchers, anti-Semites, or religious fanatics.

The New Black Panthers are just like the Taliban

I don’t think I can say often enough that the New Black Panthers who briefly stood menacingly outside a Fairmount polling station last November acted like a couple of knuckleheads. But we also know their presence there was brief, and I still haven’t heard evidence that anybody was kept from voting.

Still, the folks who kinda want you to believe Obama is president because of a Black Power conspiracy are still hard at work, keeping the issue alive. Hans A. von Spakovsky does it again, equating two or three Black Panthers with the whole of the Taliban.

The anti-reformists (the Taliban) have been engaging in violence and threats of violence in the lead up to today’s elections in Afghanistan. They may want to consider hiring the New Black Panther Party to implement their version of a “ballot security program” at the polls. After all, the NBPP is very experienced in the type of voter intimidation that the Taliban are trying to carry out. Best of all from the Taliban’s point of view, since the U.S. is responsible for security in Afghanistan at the polling places, Eric Holder and the Justice Department have already reviewed and approved the type of voter intimidation that the NBPP is so skilled in carrying out. No matter what they do at the polls, the NBPP can use their DOJ “get out of jail free” card with the Pentagon.

Riiiight.

You’ve got to remember, von Spakovsky is mostly notorious for a government tenure in which he chose to enforce election laws in such a manner as to keep African Americans and other Democratic constituencies from getting to the polls. It’s ok to lock people out of the voting process, apparently, if you’re using the power of the government to do it — and not just freelancing like the Panthers.

Will Joe Sestak’s town hall turn into a war?

Dan U-A posts over at Young Philly Politics:

Joe Sestak is going to hold a meeting on universal health care this Wednesday. Like every other town hall meeting on healthcare, insurance companies will partner with crazy, racist, nut jobs to try to disrupt any actual meeting from taking place. It is a holy alliance of the fringes of society, spurred on by Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and a too compliant national media, with the power and money of the insurance companies goading them on. All to stop every American from getting to see a doctor.

For example, word got out that Sestak’s meeting would actually be held in Philly, and so, there was this tweet:

CON SESTAK PA 7TH DISTRICT IS NOT HAVING MEETING IN AREA OF VOTERS THAT ELECTED HIM HE IS MAKING US GO 2 PHILLY WHERE THE BLACK PANTHERS R

Oh, where the black panthers are!?

And, if that was a little to subtle for you, it was followed by this one:

@glennbeck iTS A BLACK CHURCH IN ANOTHER DIS. SESTAK IS GOING TO SAND BAG US

Um, yeah. It is even directed at Glenn Beck. That is too, too, too perfect. That is who will be at the town hall, hoping to drown out any conversation from actually happening.

For what it’s worth, Sestak is running for U.S. Senate now. That’s to represent the whole state. So I don’t see any conspiracy in Sestak holding an event outside his district.

Anyway, Sestak will be speaking at 6:30 Wednesday at Broad Street Ministries, 315 S. Broad. It should be a barn-burner.

The Black Panther case just won’t go away

Well, since nobody’s going to make a federal case against the Black Panthers who stood outside a Fairmount Avenue polling place on Election Day 2008, it seems that somebody’s going to … make a federal case out of the whole thing.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, is now asking the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on why the Justice Department isn’t pursuing voter intimidation charges against the Panthers. He wrote a letter to Chairman John Conyers:

I write to urge the House Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation on November 4, 2008.  The dismissal of this case, which civil rights activist Bartle Bull called, “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s,” merits congressional attention, if only to force the department to explain its decision to dismiss this case.

Bartle Bull is, well, full of bull. Anybody with a cursory knowledge of history — or a love of Gene Hackman movies — knows that civil rights workers trying to help black people vote in Mississippi were brutally murdered in 1964. Black Panthers acting like fools in front of a polling station for a few minutes doesn’t really amount to the same thing.

And here — once again — is a critical point: Nobody can point to a single voter at Fairmount Avenue who didn’t vote because of the Panthers.

But Republicans would have you believe that this is just as serious than the murders of Mississippi campaign workers.

I don’t think they believe this. But I think they believe it helps to paint President Barack Obama as a secret radical who somehow owes his presidency to the Black Panthers. It’s foolish.

Frank Wolf’s full letter after the jump:

More »

Obama, the New Black Panthers and Fox News

I’ve got a column in the newest print edition of Philadelphia Weekly, my fleshed-out thoughts about the conservative media and their coverage of Philly’s New Black Panthers story. An excerpt:

Barack Obama is no black-power radical. Sure, the GOP and its army of pundits spent 2008 trying to fit the then-nominee with a dashiki and a bomb-making kit, but the portrait never stuck because it was manifestly untrue. It doesn’t matter: Fox News and the conservative media are still trying to peddle the “scary black guy” story.

That’s the lesson I take, anyway, from last week’s orgy of conservative anger about the dismissal of a voter intimidation lawsuit against Philadelphia’s New Black Panther Party and two of its members. The incident was relatively minor—in fact, there’s never been any evidence that a single West Philly voter stayed away from the polls because of the Panthers. Still, conservative pundits used the news to suggest Obama was somehow in thrall to the Panthers.

“If it’s true, it reflects very poorly on the president and his administration,” Bill O’Reilly said on his show Friday night. But it’s not true. The real story is that Fox News blew a mundane incident out of proportion in order to embarrass the president and score political points.

The rest of my screed can be found here.

Justice Department drops voter intimidation charges against the Black Panthers. Fox News is very angry. Again.

Hey, remember these guys from Election Day? The Black Panthers who were out front of a polling place on Fairmount looking menacing? Thanks to Fox News, they briefly became the most famous Panthers since Huey Newton:

Apparently, a voter intimidation lawsuit was brought against them after the election. And now, The Philadelphia Bulletin reports, the Obama Administration has quietly dropped the suit — mostly, it seems, because defendants Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson never responded to it. This, of course, has lead to all sorts of outrage from the right — including (yay!) Bill O’Reilly.

Amusingly, the Bulletin quotes Hans von Spakovsky, “a former career Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” saying that the Obama Administration’s action is “unprecedented.” I say “amusingly,” because Spakovsky in that role somewhat famously overrode career Justice Department officials to support a Georgia voter ID law that the officials agreed would disproportionately keep poor, elderly and minority voters — Democrats in other words — away from the polling places on Election Day. Look into Spakovsky’s record and you’ll discover that his concern for making sure all eligible voters have access to the ballot appears to be a very recent development.

Here’s the thing: The Panthers you see in the video above were acting like jackasses. If the Justice Department dropped the suit because Shabazz and Jackson simply couldn’t be bothered, that’s more than a little lazy.

But I also can’t help but suspect that the Fox News-driven reaction to the Panthers was worse than what the Panthers did.

For one thing, I’ve never heard of any actual voters who were kept from voting on Fairmount Avenue on Election Day because of their fear of the Panthers. Perhaps there were; I’ve never heard of them. Fox reporter Rick Leventhal even admitted as much during his breathless live coverage of the matter:

“There’s been no disturbances that I’m aware of, except what we’ve encountered here. But again, I want to make very clear, we don’t know that any voters were denied entrance to this polling facility. We don’t know that anyone was intimidated to the point that they decided not to vote here, but that was what some people were concerned might be happening with two Black Panthers, one of them holding a nightstick, out front.”

Right. The problem is that two Black Panthers at one polling place in Philly quickly morphed into … well, I think this screen grab of a YouTube video description I captured on Election Day shows what the story became:

Riiiiiiight.

So we have a couple of equations in play here.

• Two Panthers + Fox News = Suggestions that somehow the election was stolen by black radicals for Obama.

• Dropped charges + Fox News and a few other crazies = Suggestions Obama is giving special treatment to black radicals.

It’s late on a Friday night. I’d like to dig deeper into the court files and get a better eyeball on the details of the case against Shabazz and Jackson. But from this vantage point, the story looks a lot more mundane — conservatives blowing up a small incident into a big case to make Obama look bad — than the play it’s getting. Go figure.

Good job people

ABC and NPR are calling Pennsylvania for Obama. Good job, people. You know, except for you Black Panthers. John McCain’s job is getting much more difficult.

Voting in West Philly

PW music editor Brian McManus sends along this report:

My polling place is the Light of the Elmwood Lodge No. 45 in West Philadelphia, a Black Mason’s lodge where you’ll find pictures of its distinguished members hanging on the wall from as far back as 1930. Before I’d gotten there I’d heard many disturbing things about voting in West Philly today—everything from long lines to  Republican election officials being driven out of poling places to intimidation by the Black Panthers. My mother even called from Texas to ask if everything was alright here as she’d heard “all sorts of stories” via the national news and, presumably, by reading Joel’s blog which is no doubt a part of her RSS.

Despite the stories, everything seemed to be on the up and up at the Elmwood. Much to my surprise, there was no line when I got there, but the relief I felt because of this was short lived: they’d moved it inside to combat the fits of rain spitting through intermittently. Still, it wasn’t that long—about 15 or so in front of me—and it seemed like I’d be in and out. The line moved slower than expected though, and the entire trip took close to an hour. This could be because two women twice McCain’s age were manning the election, and neither seemed to have too huge a grasp of the alphabet. The skimmed over my name—McManus—half a dozen times, going back and forth, back and forth over it, one time even skimming through the “L”s. A young woman behind me cracked a smile and said, “This is funny” under her breath. “I don’t know if ‘funny’ is the word,” I replied. After what was—no exaggeration—15 minutes of flipping through the book, we got it sorted and I was sent to my booth.

That was the frustrating part. But on the flip side of the coin the woman in front of me waited to vote until her kids got out of school so she could bring to Elmwood and they could bear witness  to this “historic moment” and after voting many people from the community milled around out front and exchanged familiarities. Good vibes all around.

On a final note: Black Masons make good coffee and had a hefty supply of graham crackers to keep those in line satisfied during their wait.