This morning, Jerry Seper of the Washington Times has an extensive report detailing how top political appointees at the Obama Justice Department, including the No. 3 official, Thomas J. Perrelli (a supporter who raised half a million bucks for the Obama '08 campaign), dismissed a civil-rights voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party after the government had already won the case when the defendants defaulted. (For background, see prior posts from Hans here on the case, and me here on how the case fits more generally into the politicizing of the Justice Department.)
The setting was a Philadephia polling station on election day. Some of the defendants were captured on videotape wearing paramilitary uniforms — one wielding a two-foot nightstick — and witnesses reported that the Panthers used racial epithets and created a thick atmosphere of intimidation, particularly against white voters (a DOJ memo also recounts that an African-American couple, Republican poll-watchers, described how they feared for their safety).
The Obama political appointees overruled experienced line prosecutors, experienced civil-rights division supervisors, and the Justice Department's appellate division. Not that the Justice Department under AG Holder is politicized or anything.
The decision has Congressman Frank Wolf (R., Va.) asking, "If showing a weapon, making threatening statements and wearing paramilitary uniforms in front of polling station doors does not constitute voter intimidation, at what threshold of activity would these laws be enforceable?"
Here's video of the incident, for those who don't remember.
The Obama Administration is ok with the Black Panthers establishing Jim Crow law against white people in Philadelphia.
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