New Black Panther Party News

Conservative Abigail Thernstrom Destroys The Conservative BS On New Black Panthers

10:51 am EST July 27th, 2010 | Conservative | 69 Comments

Thernstrom sits on the Civil Rights Commission and is no fan of the left.

McCarthy is thrown into a tizzy by my mild observations. Apparently, I am to be excoriated for feeling that the allegations of ‘armed’ and jackboot-clad Panthers invoke inappropriate images of Kristallnacht. His fulminations on this question quickly elide from the Panthers’ attire to their comments; he quotes them as saying things like ‘you’re about to be ruled by the black man,’ ‘kill some crackers,’ and ‘kill some of their babies.’ But who said what to whom — and when? 

The first statement was indeed made at the polling place, but it was directed to Bartle Bull, a Republican poll-watcher, not a voter. Bull later claimed that the conduct he witnessed that day in Philadelphia was ‘the most blatant form of voter intimidation’ that he had encountered in his life, dating back to elections in Mississippi in the 1960s.

McCarthy and Bull can’t be serious. In Mississippi, before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed, fewer than 7 percent of eligible black voters had been allowed to register to vote. They were disfranchised by fraudulent literacy tests, widespread (and often lethal) violence, and intimidation. Whites in the Jim Crow South did not need to stand around polling places looking menacing to keep blacks at home on voting day: Would-be black voters knew they were putting their lives, their homes, and their jobs on the line if they approached a polling booth. 

The actions of two Black Panthers in one Philadelphia precinct in 2008 were not remotely equivalent to the effort to keep blacks from exercising their democratic rights throughout the South; the equation is breathtakingly ignorant. The Panthers are a tiny fringe group — a handful of racist nuts. The KKK was a serious criminal conspiracy that terrorized millions of black Americans, and only massive intervention by the federal government could stamp it out. No competent historian would possibly endorse McCarthy and Bull’s contention that the actions of two Panthers in one little corner of Philadelphia were more blatant than what went on in Mississippi in the 1960s. If this ludicrous and poisonous idea gains acceptance in conservative circles, it will do more damage to American race relations than anything the Panthers could possibly do.

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Conservative On US Civil Rights Commision: Black Panther Case Is About Getting Holder

5:59 pm EST July 16th, 2010 | Conservative | 383 Comments

Surprise

But when it comes to the investigation 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.

And this goes hand in hand with the agenda:

Six Fox News shows have discussed the phony New Black Panthers scandal during a total of 95 segments since Megyn Kelly’s June 30 interview hyping the unsubstantiated allegations of right-wing activist J. Christian Adams. In all, these Fox shows have devoted more than eight hours of airtime to discussing the New Black Panthers.

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VIDEO: The Fox Cycle: How Fox News Fakes A Story

12:33 am EST July 13th, 2010 | Media | 9 Comments

Stir, rinse, repeat.

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VIDEO: Countdown Shreds Fox’s Fake New Black Panther Story

12:24 am EST July 13th, 2010 | Media | 71 Comments

The right has a fail. Again.

ALSO READ: Why Didn’t Obama’s DOJ Go After The New Black Panther Party For Voter Intimidation?

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Why Didn’t Obama’s DOJ Go After The New Black Panther Party For Voter Intimidation?

3:42 pm EST July 11th, 2010 | Conservative | 234 Comments

New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia

The case of the New Black Panther Party’s activities in Philadelphia during the 2008 election has been exploited by the conservative movement – including Fox News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Instapundit – in order to make a false association between black supremacists and President Obama. In fact, the Obama administration followed the law and the Bush administration dismissed similar charges.

Department Of Justice closed The New Black Panther case because nobody came forward to indicate a pattern of intimidation. The law requires that witnesses come forth to indicate that there was a pattern of voter intimidation. No witnesses did so from this polling place. None. Nada. Zip. The Department of Justice can’t just go ahead with a prosecution because they feel like it if they lack the required evidence. It would in fact be an abuse of legal power to do so.

An injunction was filed against the New Black Panther Party member with a nightstick. The only weapon at the scene (conservative media has tried to claim there was a gun there, there wasn’t) was a nightstick wielded by a New Black Panther Party member. The DOJ did file an injunction against this man.

9mm glock

Bush administration didn’t prosecute an anti-immigration activist who went to the polls with a gun. The Bush administration in 2006 declined to file charges of voter intimidation against an anti-immigration activist who brought a gun to the polling place in Arizona and said he planned to photograph latino voters.

The “kill crackers” video is from before the election. The National Geographic Channel video of a New Black Panther Party member yelling about killing “crackers” and white babies was made before the 2008 election, not after as Fox and other outlets have falsely promoted.

J Christian Adams

J. Christian Adams is a GOP hack and his testimony is all hearsay. J. Christian Adams, the former DOJ lawyer who is the right’s star witness in this case, was part of the Department Of Justice’s attempt to stack the office with politically motivated lawyers during the Bush administration. Lawyers like Adams were hired by Bradley Schlozman not based on their legal abilities, but rather their loyalty to the Republican party and advocacy for conservative causes. In his testimony, Adams cites a lot of hearsay but nothing he directly observed. In other words, office gossip at best, possibly completely fabricated stories at worst.

Bartle Bull was a McCain poll-watcher and supports the GOP. Bartle Bull, an author cited by the right as a previous supporter of Democratic campaigns, was working as a poll watcher for John McCain on the day of the incident, and is currently in favor of Rudy Giuliani running for governor of New York.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commision is currently run by conservatives. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, designed as a nonpartisan body, is currently dominated by conservatives after George W. Bush stacked the deck. Even so, one of the Republican commissioners is on the record as indicating that the New Black Panther Party inquiry is without actual merit.

Fox News, Glenn Beck, New Black Panthers

There is no connection between President Obama and the New Black Panther Party. President Obama has no connection to the New Black Panther Party. He does not support their mission or their rhetoric. President Obama has repeatedly denounced racial hatred. The only (false) connection between Obama and the New Black Panther Party is that outlets like Fox News keep trying to connect the two in a cynical, dangerous attempt to play racial politics to aid the Republican party.

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Bartle Bull: Another Right-Wing Cog In Fox’s Made Up New Black Panther Story

12:55 pm EST July 8th, 2010 | Media | 24 Comments

bartle bullFox usually gets things wrong in service of their bosses at the GOP, but in the case of the Department of Justice and the New Black Panther story, they are working overtime to try and make a racial controversy around the Obama administration where there is none. It’s almost as if they’re invested in demonizing the president as some sort of scary black nationalist. You don’t say?

Like any good Fox-generated controversy, Bull brought something else to the table–a way to tie this incident to ACORN. That’s right. He claimed that the New Black Panther Party members “were largely there to intimidate the poll watchers. The critical thing here was that the previous week, on October 27, the New York Times reported that ACORN had registered over 400,000 illegal fraudulent voters. So what these guys were doing was they were protecting the illegal ACORN voters by intimidating the poll watchers.” (Note: the Times did indeed report that 400,000 of ACORN’s voter registrations had been thrown out for various reasons, but that ACORN estimated only 1 to 1.5 percent of them were fraudulent registrations. The Times did not in anyway report that those 400,000 rejected registrations translated into attempts by some to vote illegally.) Fox & Friends ate this claim right up.

No doubt, Fox’s largely conservative and low-information viewers ate up the claims as well.

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J. Christian Adams: Conservative Hero On Black Panther Party Case Isn’t Credible

1:20 am EST July 6th, 2010 | Conservative | 38 Comments

But you could probably have guessed that on your own.

As Fox News continues to dishonestly hype GOP activist J. Christian Adams’ hearsay-laden accusation that President Obama’s Justice Department is guilty of racially charged corruption, information continues to emerge that submarines his credibility to discuss why the Justice Department chose to obtain judgment against a member of the New Black Panther Party for carrying a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008, while not pursuing charges against additional members of the party not accused of carrying weapons. According to Abigail Thernstrom, Republican vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Adams “doesn’t know why the decision was made.”

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