http://mediamatters.org/blog/201010300002Civil rights commissioner blasts conservative panel's "hatchet job" attack on DOJ
October 30, 2010 2:08 am ET by Todd Gregory
snip//
As we have noted,
allegation that the Obama DOJ engaged in racially charged "corruption" while prosecuting the case doesn't stand up to the facts. The decision not to pursue criminal charges in the case was made during the Bush administration, and the Obama Justice Department successfully obtained an injunction against the New Black Panther Party member at the center of the investigation.
The faulty allegations about the phony New Black Panthers scandal, whose main champion has been Republican activist J. Christian Adams, have been leveraged into a broader, racially charged accusation that the Obama Justice Department won't pursue voting-rights cases against defendants who are minorities. This accusation also falls apart in the face of the facts. In July, the Obama DOJ asked a federal court to extend an injunction against black leaders in Mississippi who discriminated against white voters.As Commissioner Thernstrom, who is a Republican, told Politico, the entire saga has been a manifestation of the conservative majority's "fantasies" that it could use the case "to topple the {Obama} administration":
"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.