IMO, it is a stretch to describe as factual that "billy club carrying members of the New Black Panther Party were intimidating voters" given that no voters filed any complaint about voter intimation.
As to the US Civil Rights Commission, the conservative Vice Chair would disagree with the assessment in your links:
Quote:
A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.
But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department’s handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party — a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months — Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.
“This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.
“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO....
...Three Republican poll monitors filed complaints of intimidation — itself a federal crime — but no voters attested to being turned away. The Justice Department, while Bush was still president, investigated the incident and later, after Obama took office, decided that "the facts and the law did not support pursuing" the claims against the party and against a second, unarmed man, Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said....
...And other conservatives have weighed in on her side.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39861.html
|
A column from the Vice Chair herself in the conservative National Review:
Quote:
Forget about the New Black Panther Party case; it is very small potatoes. Perhaps the Panthers should have been prosecuted under section 11 (b) of the Voting Rights Act for their actions of November 2008, but the legal standards that must be met to prove voter intimidation — the charge — are very high.
In the 45 years since the act was passed, there have been a total of three successful prosecutions. The incident involved only two Panthers at a single majority-black precinct in Philadelphia. So far — after months of hearings, testimony and investigation — no one has produced actual evidence that any voters were too scared to cast their ballots. Too much overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges has been devoted to this case....
...There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general — his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters — but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics
http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ail-thernstrom
|
IMO, the Commission "investigation" is partisan political theater conducted by the conservative majority. Much like the investigation of voter intimidation in Florida in 2000 conducted by the liberal majority on the Commission at the time.
As a critic of political theater on both sides, I would give this one a
- highly partisan, boring and predictable.