Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli overruled career lawyers at the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division to drop a complaint against three members of the New Black Panther Party of intimidating voters in Philadelphia during November’s election — including one member Samir Shabazz who brandished a nightstick.
Career lawyers wanted sanctions against the Black Panthers who showed and had already won a default judgment against the men.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King reportedly recommended dropping the case to Mr. Perrelli who is third in command at the DOJ.
This has become a major story for conservative commentators — some of whom have taken it to an absurd degree to suggest that the Obama Administration is in league with the New Black Panthers. There may indeed to legitimate legal reasons for the decision, but on its face it is hard to discern why career staff would be overruled on this point. It is perfectly appropriate for political appointees to make decisions based on the policy priorities of the Administration. However, this is a straight-forward question under a federal statute. I do not know of any specific Obama policy that would undermine enforcement. This was a limited occurrence. However, the Justice Department seems to suggest this is not actionable conduct. At a minimum, there should be a fuller explanation of why this is not a violation and what are the limits for paramilitary groups parading in front of polling places.
Under the circumstances, the complaint seemed reasonable when it was brought in January, here. Under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits intimidation, coercion or threats against “any person for voting or attempting to vote.” The Department simply sought an injunction preventing any future deployment of, or display of weapons by, New Black Panther Party members at the entrance to polling locations. By dropping the complaint, the Obama Administration suggests that other groups could show up at polling places with such weapons and military-style uniforms. What if this were the Aryan Nation or Soldiers of God? Doesn’t brandishing a weapon have an intimidating effect on voters? I understand that the case was weakened by the fact that a police officer allowed at least one man to remain. However, it seems that the section was seeking a modest sanction to keep this group (or other groups) from showing up in paramilitary outfits and weapons.
I recognized early on after joining this community that were I to continue in it, I would be hurt. So I left.
Mr. Spindell wrote: “There are forces in this country that are working to get the President killed and that isn’t conspiracy madness, but a remembrance of the 60’s and the deaths of 3 very good people.”
When our President was sworn in with Lincoln’s bible, I received a case of deja vu. I perceived that Obama had already had the premonition that his life would be cut short, and accepted it. It was after all Lincoln’s death that healed this country.
It is, in my belief, Obama’s death that will heal the world.
Heineken for everyone.
Patty C,
Thank you for your comment.
“1980; Director, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and New West Magazine, 1976 – 1980; President and/or Publisher, The Village Voice, 1971 – 1976;” from FFLEO.
“It is treacherous water indeed to equate the political views of a lawyer’s clients with the lawyer’s personal views.”
Mespo,
How much legal work do lawyer’s do as magazine Presidents and Publishers? Are you aware of how New York Magazine and the Village Voice changed into Right Wing screeds after Murdoch took over. Do you think that a President/Publisher and member of the board of Directors might have some involvement with their change of political attitude? That wasn’t lawyer’s work he was doing.
“McCain seems an honorable man to me under most circumstances.”
I didn’t discuss McCain’s honor so that is irrelevant. My point all along was that this was and continues to be a setup to go along with the current Republican Talking point that President Obama is a racist. I provided evidence of the reasons for my belief and attacked no one here personally in the process. In return most of the points I’ve made haven’t been answered and I have been called abusive, biased and a twister of facts. My integrity has been definitely questioned. It’s irrelevant whether people agree with my point of view or not, what is relevant is that there was nothing dishonorable in my making my case.
“Mike, I simply cannot read more of your irrational biasedness on this topic. I strive to consider all contrary evidence running counter to any of my claims, but there is no point in trying to counter an ideologue’s nonfactual beliefs and innuendo presented as fact.”
Translation: Don’t present me with any facts my minds made up, oh and by the way you’re a biased liar.
“Regardless, I still like you and consider you a fine man.”
Translation: You may be a biased liar but you’re a good person.
I feel so comforted by that.
Mike S”
“Mr. Bull was an associate of Rupert Murdoch and helped facilitate the purchase of these publications by Murdoch and then was named to significant positions on them.”
“The above link establishes that in the 2008 campaign Lawyer Bull was Chairman of New York Democrats for McCain.”
***************
It is treacherous water indeed to equate the political views of a lawyer’s clients with the lawyer’s personal views. Even more hazardous is to divine why someone supports another for political office given the myriad of entanglements of family, business, past assistance, etc. I tend to judge credibility, inter alia, by relying on manifestations of past character, reasoning that leopards usually retain their spots. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between. McCain seems an honorable man to me under most circumstances. As for Giuliani,… well, anyone can make a bad decision.
Mike S you are forgiven for inadvertently referring to this Bull
character as a Republican since he was, at irst, a Giuliani supporter who to anybody who was paying attention, would consider to be ‘Bush on steroids’ if he ever got the nomination, much less elected.
The NY/Rudy G connection alone smacks of Mukasey and his disastrous stint as Attorney General at DOJ all over again.
That he ended up supporting McCain/Palin doesn’t conjur up ‘Democrat’, exactly, in my mind, either.
Mike, I simply cannot read more of your irrational biasedness on this topic. I strive to consider all contrary evidence running counter to any of my claims, but there is no point in trying to counter an ideologue’s nonfactual beliefs and innuendo presented as fact.
If you post more, please do not do so for my benefit because I will not read your material until some time has passed and on a different subject. Regardless, I still like you and consider you a fine man.
I am glad to read others’ opposing views about this thread because this is a very important issue to me.
“Yes, loyalties change but, as I stated in another thread today, a person must never put loyalty above integrity.”
FFLEO,
Interesting statement that since it avoids the main point which was that Mr. Bull has clearly shifted his point of view from his Civil Rights days. Then too were I of thinner skin I might think that there was a slap directed at me, but how could that be so?
Oh yes, it doesn’t have to be because you already have cast aspersions at my integrity:
“Mike Spindell,
You are as biased and partisan as any other ideologue, Republican or otherwise. You treat all contrary evidence as tainted, you twist facts, and you use ad hominem attacks more than any other regular does.”
“Here is an interview with Attorney Bartle Bull. Now you biased people listen up.”
“Mike is well aware that I like him, but his posts of late are just going to be something that I will skip for awhile.”
FFLEO, with friends like you I guess a man has no need for enemies. What I would have expected from you was a fair reading of what I wrote whether or not you agreed. Instead you chose to cast aspersions on my integrity, my supposed twisting facts and supposed ad hominem attacks. You will notice, if you bother to read this, that I nowhere attacked you or your integrity. The fact is that other than saying that Jill was “Full of it”, in response to her accusing me of being abusive, I never attacked her in the ways you describe. Polls, such as your previous one don’t interest me, especially when I am certain of my position. However, I invite anyone to fair mindedly go back through this thread and first show me where attacked Jill and/or FFLEO and secondly where my reasoning that this is another Republican hatchet job is specious. is specious.
http://www.questmag.com/questmag/200808/?pg=170
The above link establishes that in the 2008 campaign Lawyer Bull was Chairman of New York Democrats for McCain. He had previously backed Rudy G for President but switched to McCain when Rudy G dropped out. Actually if you take the time to fully Google Mr. Bull you discover that he became disenchanted with Jimmy Carter, around the same time. It is curiously that his financial ties to Rupert Murdoch grew. If someone had looked further than that they would see he disliked Bill Clinton and perhaps that is why the “prominent Democrat” also didn’t support Hillary for the Presidency, but more likely it was that he was entwined politically with Rudy G.
This now goes back to his Civil Rights credentials because Rudy G while while Mayor for two terms never would meet with Black civil rights leaders. Many people in the Civil Rights struggle moved away from it as they grew older, initially it was because the “Black Power Movement” eschewed and alienated
white leadership. Even Eldridge Cleaver BPP celebrity became a dress designer in his later years. Clearly, Bull had become more conservative as he aged.
Now to go to the Bill O’Reilly interview, on the propaganda network’s run by Bull collaborator Rupert Murdoch, Bull clearly states in his interview that he was at seven polling sites that day and that this was the only place he saw intimidation. Isn’t curious that the supposedly fair Mr. Bull was chairman of New York Democrats for McCain and visiting voting sites under the campaigns auspices in Philadelphia and came across the one site where a paid Republican blogger video’s the two men? He was hardly a disinterested party. He also mentions further in the O’Reilly interview that the man heading up the DOJ prosecution was one Christian Adams, had someone been interested in looking him up they might have found this about Mr. Adams:
“In his day job, Christian Adams writes legal briefs for the voting rights section of the Justice Department, a job that requires a nonpartisan approach. Off the clock, Adams belongs to the Republican National Lawyers Association, a group that trains hundreds of Republican lawyers to monitor elections and pushes for confirmation of conservative nominees for federal judgeships.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002990.php
Which returns full circle to my premise that this whole thing was a Republican put up job to try to smear the President. Notice to in the O’Reilly interview Mr. Bull said he was never contacted by any other major media except for the Washington Times. So we have the Moonie Washington Times and the propaganda network FOX the only two media outlets interested.
“Folks, regardless of our opinions, Prof. Turley’s ‘#1 LEGAL THEORY AND LAW PROFESSOR BLOG OF THE TOP 100 LEGAL BLOGS BY THE ABA JOURNAL’ must demand the highest standards of discourse possible when discussing a person’s character and honesty.”
Yes it should FFLEO and frankly your “research” might no have met that test.
“As a nonlawyer, I take every declaration I have signed as a solemn oath. I would assume that any attorney who is a full partner in a law firm and with 42 years of lawyering experience would not risk his career or reputation by falsifying his declaration in this matter, or any other.”
People have a tendency to hear what they expect to hear and clearly Mr. Bull came there expecting to hear something. Beyond that though the point is not well taken because Bull risked nothing in making his statement, there was no way to prosecute it if it were a lie, or a convenient mis-hearing.
Now does it seem like I mis-characterized Bull as a Republican, well yes it seems so, or else why would he be the New York Chairman of Democrats for McCain? As I stated:
ME: “Isn’t it interesting that the prominent Bartle Bull, whether pere or fils, was a Republican who happened to be poll watching?”
Yes I was wrong to call him a Republican, but the man clearly had a vested Republican interest.
Me: “The group, by the facts was not allowed to intimidate, nor is there any evidence except by the Republican operatives involved in this, that any one was actually intimidated, leaving this a well handled local matter.”
This is the essence of the point I’ve been making and I find that no one has directly answered any of my relevant points except to canonize Mr. Bull, who I don’t think has yet attained saintly status.
Who is Bartle Bull? Surely, you are not confusing him with ‘Bartlebee’…!!!!!!! LOL
I never heard of this lawyer, professionally or otherwise, when I was part of the established Boston legal community, before med school, and I lived in downtown Boston for the better parts of 20 years!
He looks just like a lot of other Boston lawyers I do know, though.
No question about that.
Yes, loyalties change but, as I stated in another thread today, a person must never put loyalty above integrity. I am not loyal to Obama, as my next vote will demonstrate if he does not quit his own duplicities. I am steadfastly loyal to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights et al. but I would never be loyal to any man under any circumstances who abrogates those foundations of our Republic/Democracy.
“Director, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and New West Magazine, 1976 – 1980; President and/or Publisher, The Village Voice, 1971 – 1976; Associate, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, 1967 – 1970.”
FFLEO,
Before you accuse me of duplicity, which you just did, you should realize that I don’t make accusations lightly, or without research. Below you will find a references and link to Mr. Bull and his attachment to Rupert Murdoch, yes that Rupert Murdoch the prominent “liberal” publisher. I’m going to write this rebuttal in consecutive posts because I’m afraid if I put in more than one link it will be held for moderation and I did want to get back to you and your charges quickly, before
“Rupert Murdoch” By Jerome Tuccille pp.58 through 62
http://books.google.com/books?id=2mj1FcArTE8C&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=Village+Voice+Rupert+Murdoch+purchase&source=bl&ots=jIagzgSnAy&sig=kDl4eB6hijvnpmRGOkp0dcS8Dm8&hl=en&ei=Irh1SoP0ENH7tgemxdyWCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Mr. Bull was an associate of Rupert Murdoch and helped facilitate the purchase of these publications by Murdoch and then was named to significant positions on them. That is how I knew about Bartle Bull, because I was a Liberal NY’er through those years and watched these two formerly excellent
liberal outlets, deteriorate under Murdoch’s reign, of which the estimable Mr. Bull was a tool. This first happened to the NY Post, which for 130 years had been the leading liberal newspaper in NY, only to become a rag under Murdoch. The purchase of New York Magazine was described by former owner and up to that point friend of Murdoch as a “rape” and as the link showed Mr. Bull, the honorable attorney, was a key participant for which he was later rewarded with positions.
Now Bull does claim credentials in the Civil Rights battles and did later even support Bobby Kennedy. However, loyalties change through the years, since you FFLEO have even said that you a loyal Republican voted for President Obama. See next post.
Mespo,
Your comment reflects my overall judgment of you.
FFLeo:
“As a nonlawyer, I take every declaration I have signed as a solemn oath. I would assume that any attorney who is a full partner in a law firm and with 42 years of lawyering experience would not risk his career or reputation by falsifying his declaration in this matter, or any other.”
*************
We make a grave error assuming that men of honor and integrity do not exist. That is another one of those self-fulfilling prophesies. Thanks for serving as a counter-example to the cynics among us.
Mespo,
Thank you. That is the point I was trying to make and it helps to have an attorney weigh in with a general comment. We may disagree with what he states, but we must not outrightly disparage his credentials or possible associations with whomever or malign whatever political persuasions he espouses.
As a nonlawyer, I take every declaration I have signed as a solemn oath. I would assume that any attorney who is a full partner in a law firm and with 42 years of lawyering experience would not risk his career or reputation by falsifying his declaration in this matter, or any other.
FFLeo:
Attorney Bull seems credentialed enough to me to listen to what he says. We liberals should guard against the natural human tendency to canonize our allies and demonize our opponents. Every event rises or falls on its own merit.
There is one thing I would like to add. I think Glenn Greenwald’s post goes to the heart of what is going wrong in this nation. When people are willing to trade out other people’s rights, they may believe this is O.K. because it’s only trading out someone else’s rights. This belief never turns out to be correct. Once a right is taken, it is gone. For a time, it may only be taken away from those we consider our enemies, aka, our fellow citizens. But power changes hands, if not parties and the favored group becomes no longer favored. The right wing militias became offended by govt. intrusion into their lives only after it effected them. Up till that point, govt. surveillence was acceptable because they believed it was only happening to groups they didn’t like anyway-liberal peace and progressive groups. In the milita mind, taking away the rights of progressive groups was justified because they were the bad guys.
One of the things that has most shocked and angered me about Democrats after the election of Obama has been their willingness to trade out the rights of others, because the person abolishing those rights is their candidate. Just from a practical standpoint, this is unwise. Obama will not be in power forever, but the rights that have been abolished will remain abolished.
Glenn Greenwald is pointing out that there are rights, innumerated in our Constitution and our laws that no citizen should be willing to trade out for any reason. I think it is a powerful statement and truly worth serious consideration.
FFLEO,
Thanks for finding this interview. Another aspect of this story that has been really bothering me is the lack of reporting on it. Besides the WT article I was able to find the DOJ original report and a short interview CNN did with the NBPP. I was wondering why I couldn’t find anything in the NYTimes and Washington Post that would give an analysis of the issue.
The politicization of the DOJ has been a hugh problem for a long time. I would like to hear what the career people said about the case and I would like to hear what the political wing has to say, then I would like to hear someone really dig into the matter.
I find that many important stories do not show up in our news. This is worrying and Glenn Greenwald was speaking to the muzzling of Bill O’Reilly and Olberman, just yesterday, by their corporate news owners. Our news appears completely managed and controlled.
The other thing that has just startled me is the reversal taking place in the right and left wings in this nation. I don’t believe Bill O’Reilly every cared about Republican operatives engaging in all kinds of voter intimidation, now suddenly he cares. While his conversion to “caring” is obviously insincere, I’m glad he will do this story, even with bad motives, because someone needs to look into it. On the other hand, liberal groups who complained loudly about Republican voter intimidation, seem completely unconcerned about the issue in this case. It seems like few people are operating from priciple–that being, the intimidation of voters is unacceptable, no matter who is doing it, because the right to vote is a precious right which deserves our protection, each and every time. There seems to be the idea that if my team is doing it, it’s O.K. While Republicans were in power that is how many of them acted. Now Democrats are in power, and that is how many of them are behaving. But Glenn Greenwald was correct to point out that certain things are above politics and they are called rights. What he said bears repeteing:
By the design of the Founders, most American political issues are driven by the vicissitudes of political realities, shaped by practicalities and resolved by horse-trading compromises among competing factions. But not all political questions were to be subject to that process. Some were intended to be immunized from those influences. Those were called “principles,” or “rights,” or “guarantees” — and what distinguishes them from garden-variety political disputes is precisely that they were intended to be both absolute and adhered to regardless of what Massing calls “the practical considerations policymakers must contend with.”
We don’t have to guess what those principles are. The Founders created documents — principally the Constitution — which had as their purpose enumerating the principles that were to be immunized from such “practical considerations.” All one has to do in order to understand their supreme status is to understand the core principle of Constitutional guarantees: no acts of Government can conflict with these principles or violate them for any reason. And all one has to do to appreciate their absolute, unyielding essence is to read how they’re written: The President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” “[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Even policies which enjoy majoritarian support and ample “practical” justification will be invalid — nullified — if they violate those guarantees.”
Eric Holder’s Justice Department
It’s all politics, all the time.
by Jennifer Rubin
08/10/2009, Volume 014, Issue 44
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/799hlime.asp?pg=1