Amused Cynic

Via Lucianne, this encouraging and informative piece from Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin:

As was commented upon here at CONTENTIONS, and widely reported and remarked upon elsewhere, the Obama Justice Department took the unusual action last month of dismissing a default judgment against the New Black Panther Party in connection with a case of voter intimidation on Election Day on November 4, 2008. Members of the NBPP were caught on film blocking access to the polls and physically and verbally intimidating voters, even going so far as to wield a nightstick in front of voters and poll watchers. The Justice Department’s lawyers gathered evidence, obtained the affidavit of former civil rights advocate Bartle Bull, and filed a complaint. When the defendants did not respond and the court invited the Justice Department to file a default judgment, the case was inexplicably withdrawn.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has now taken up the issue and sent a letter to Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, demanding an explanation. By a vote of 4-0 (with one member abstaining for reasons not yet clear), the Commission members voted to send the letter seeking to get to the bottom of this. After setting out the facts which gave rise to the original Justice Department complaint, the Commissioners explain:

Though it had basically won the case and could have submitted a motion for default judgment against the Party and its members for failing to respond to the Division’s complaint, the Division took the unusual move of voluntarily dismissing the charges against all but the defendant who waived [sic] the nightstick. Yet even as to that remaining defendant, the only relief the Division requested was weak – an injunction prohibiting him from displaying the weapon within 100 feet of any polling place in Philadelphia. It has since been revealed that one of the defendants had been carrying credentials as a member of, and poll watcher for, the local Democratic committee.

The Commissioners write that the previously announced efforts by the Justice Department to play an aggressive role in enforcing voting rights “ring hollow if they are not accompanied by swift, decisive action to prosecute obvious violators.” The Commissioners ask that the Civil Rights Division advise the Commission of the rationale for dismissing the charges against defendants and of its evidentiary and legal standards for dismissing certain charges in cases of alleged voter intimidation.” They further ask for information on “any similar cases in which CRD has dismissed charges against a defendant.”

Well. It will be interesting to see if the relatively toothless U.S. Commission on Civil Rights can make a dent in the mighty U.S. DOJ, headed by Obama henchman Eric Holder, and internally policed by the DOJ’s own voter fraud enablers, its “Civil Rights Division,” headed by Loretta King. It is worth remembering how helpful these folks were in enabling exactly the kind of voter suppression that occurred in Philadelphia last election:

We’ve all read a lot about the “politicization” of the Justice Department in recent years, and that political pounding is having an ironic effect. The prosecutors who are supposed to guard against voter fraud don’t seem very interested in running the political risk of doing their job.

If voter fraud would ever be ripe for investigation, this would seem to be the year with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) having been caught filing thousands of bogus voter registrations in at least 14 states. Acorn’s history of deceit and the national sweep of today’s scandal demand a federal probe. Safeguarding the integrity of the vote is every bit as important as protecting access to the polls, yet Democrats want Justice to pay attention only to the latter.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers recently sent two letters to Attorney General Michael Mukasey deploring a news leak that the FBI is investigating Acorn, and warning Justice to focus instead on “voter suppression.” Barack Obama has also joined in this political intimidation, demanding in two letters that Mr. Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Justice staff who he claims are engaged in “unlawful coordination” with John McCain’s campaign to pursue “so-called ‘election fraud.’” There is zero evidence that such coordination exists, but it is remarkable that a Presidential nominee would dismiss election fraud as a myth.

The lawyers at the Civil Rights Division are already falling into line. Justice recently decided to reverse a policy in place since 2002 to send criminal attorneys and other federal employees to monitor polling places. The decision came two weeks after a September meeting to which the Civil Rights Division invited dozens of left-wing activist groups to discuss voter “access” to the polls.

It is time to remember this frightening piece, written from within the DOJ, that appeared shortly before the election, and contemplate it as we watch how this latest travesty unfolds.

In the face of the Obama fundraising and media juggernaut, Republicans are worried about losing the presidential election.

They should be even more fearful, however, about being criminally prosecuted by the Justice Department for political speech and activity protected by the First Amendment — a clear effort by partisan career lawyers within the Civil Rights Division to help the Obama campaign.

How did we reach such a disturbing state of events? In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft directed the Justice Department to hold an annual training session for lawyers from Civil Rights as well as Assistant U.S. Attorneys and FBI agents. Its purpose was to educate these individuals regarding the requirements of both civil election laws — such as the Voting Rights Act that guarantee access to the polls — and the criminal election statutes that prohibit voter fraud and registration improprieties.

The recent 2008 conference, according to multiple sources, was a radical departure from prior events and quite disturbing. Unlike the past, all of the Civil Rights Division’s presentations were not made by lawyers from the Voting Section. Instead, some were also made by lawyers from the Criminal Section of Civil Rights. While most of the laws enforced by that Division are civil statutes, a small number provide for criminal prosecution for violations of the law that involve the threat or use of force.

The kind of routine violence, targeting civil rights workers in the 60s who were registering blacks to vote, is long gone. The Criminal Section has not pursued a criminal voting-related case in decades. Yet the presentations at this year’s conference show that the Criminal Section has been given the green light to use these same criminal statutes to harass and prosecute political activists (particularly Republicans) who are engaging in protected political activity, not violence or the threat of violence. No candidate for federal, state, or local office should take this unprecedented threat lightly. The entire apparatus of federal election law enforcement was assembled for this conference including every FBI agent and Assistant United States Attorney responsible for election-related matters.

The Criminal Section is headed by a former ACLU attorney, Mark Kappelhoff, who was actually hired by this Administration. So much for the claim that the Bush Administration only hired “conservatives” in the Civil Rights Division. In apparent violation of a memorandum from Attorney General Mukasey that directed employees to be “particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship,” Kappelhoff has contributed $2,000 to Obama — not exactly the hallmark of “neutrality and nonpartisanship.” But even worse was the presentation by one of his career lawyers, James Walsh, obviously made with Kappelhoff’s approval.

Walsh is a former Voting Section lawyer who transferred to the Criminal Section after working for Senator Ted Kennedy on a detail. Not surprisingly, Walsh is also a contributor to Obama, which is certainly on par with the almost $150,000 that DOJ lawyers and staff who live in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia have contributed to the Obama campaign, including John Bert Russ, the lawyer in the Voting Section who is responsible for the observer program that will send out hundreds of federal observers on election day.

Walsh made it clear that the Criminal Section intends to use the civil rights statutes to criminally prosecute anyone they consider to be engaging in voter “intimidation” or “oppression.” Now, that might sound like a reasonable idea until you realize that Walsh and Kappelhoff’s definition of “intimidation” and “oppression” goes far beyond what you and I would imagine. Walsh stated that because we have an African-American presidential candidate, there would be voter suppression — a baseless assumption that plays on left-wing stereotypes of America as a racist nation. Every single example of wrongdoing that Walsh and other presenters used in their presentations talked about Republicans: there was not a single example of any wrongdoing committed by any Democrats in the entire two-day conference.

One cited example of a “criminal” violation supposedly intended to “suppress” voting was sending mailers informing voters that you must be a citizen to vote, a requirement of state and federal law. One of the deputy chiefs, Mark Blumberg, told FBI agents and federal prosecutors that the individuals responsible for such a brochure should be brought before a federal grand jury to ask them if they belong to any “anti-immigrant” groups. Not surprisingly, this deputy chief also did a detail with Senator Kennedy.

There are so many things wrong with this abuse of our legal process I am not sure where to start.

But start he does….read the whole thing, and be afraid. This wasn’t a normal election, folks, and people who believe in pendulum swings in politics are going to be disappointed when it doesn’t swing back this time.

Related: The American Spectator comments on the Obama firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin and the the transfer of Michelle Obama’s chief of staff to head Americorps, as an obvious attempt by the Obamakins to conceal the transfer billions of dollars to what will become a gigantic version of ACORN. Don’t expect that pendulum to swing back any time soon, unless something dramatic happens with regard to these issues. You about to be ruled by da black man, cracker!

But Republican aides want to step up the pressure on the firing, because, as one senior committee aide put it: “What’s at stake isn’t just one man’s job: it’s how $6 billion in taxpayer money is going to be used by this Administration on an agency with no independent oversight.”

The aide is referring to the Corporation for National and Community Service’s primary entity, AmeriCorps, set up in the 1990s by the Clinton Administration to increase public service among young people — mostly college grads and young professionals — largely via grant-making to a network of state and local community nonprofit groups.

“Just how AmeriCorps is going to be used by the Obama Administration — and what steps the administration has taken to ensure that it can do with AmeriCorps what it wants — is at the heart of our concern,” says the GOP House staffer. “We think that the removal of Walpin was part of that agenda.”

It has not gone unnoticed among some Republicans on Capitol Hill that First Lady Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Jackie Norris, recently stepped down from her White House position to become head of the Corporation for National and Community Service. According to White House sources, Norris and Obama have already discussed how AmeriCorps could fit into the First Lady’s volunteerism projects.

According to White House sources, Norris’s shift to the CNCS was discussed not only with the First Lady, but also with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “Her move was not done just give her a safe landing,” says one White House aide. “We have a very clear agenda and a lot of plans for that organization; we wouldn’t be giving it the resources that we are if we didn’t.”

Those resources amount to more that $6 billion in funds, and those plans include turning AmeriCorps into a supersized, taxpayer-funded ACORN-like organization, focused on the Obama Administration’s policy agenda, including health care reform, targeted stimulus spending, and possible work on the upcoming U.S. census in 2010.

In the past, AmeriCorps volunteers lobbied and organized groups against the “three strikes” rule in California, and had plans in place to identify groups to support a second attempt at health care reform after Hillarycare went down in flames. Some AmeriCorps resources have gone to assist ACORN projects around the country, including anti-Republican demonstrations in state capitals and in Washington, D.C.

“You look at what the CNCS is funding over there: a ‘Social Investment Fund,’ which over the next five years is going to hand out almost a half a billion dollars to young people who start up community activist organizations,” says a Senate Republican aide. “Who the hell is going to be monitoring that kind of underwriting? Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff? Emanuel? I don’t think so.”
[...]
“Finally, we need to see everything that Walpin pulled together. We have people inside this administration trying to smear him. The proof will be in his work product. Everything he pulled together for the investigation in Sacramento against Mayor Johnson, and more broadly, should be made available for review,” says the House aide.

Meanwhile, a White House source says the White House is trying to find out if dispersal of parts of the $6 billion budget for CNCS can be sped up under a Presidential request that the funds be considered part of the economic stimulus program.

One must continue to wonder, where the hell is the MSM in all of this?

Oh, that’s right…..

UPDATE:  “Caution:  ACORN thugs at work“  wherein ACORN sues whistleblower Anita MonCrief to shut her up.