New light on the New Black Panther Party voting rights case dismissal? — UPDATED
**Posted by Phineas
Andrew Breitbart at Big Government has posted some very interesting photos of then-candidate Obama’s 2007 visit to Selma, Alabama, for a civil rights march. Here’s one:
The speaker is Malik Shabazz Zulu, leader of the NBP and one of the defendants in a federal voting rights lawsuit brought by the Bush administration Department of Justice, which accused the NBP of intimidating White voters in the 2008 elections. Early in the Obama administration, this case was withdrawn by the DoJ, even though the government had won.
What’s the connection to Barack Obama, you ask? Take a look at the rest of the photos; they show the then-junior senator from Illinois and future President of the United States speaking at the same podium and marching with Shabazz and other NBP members.
It’s almost too easy to do this, but I have to ask: What if, in 2007 or 2008, John McCain had joined in a march with David Duke? What if his running-mate, Sarah Palin, had attended a rally with Klan speakers? What if any Republican at any time shared a stage with White supremacists? The howling from the media would have been deafening and would not have ended until that person had been hounded (rightfully so) from public life.
But Barack Obama could share a podium and march side by side with the functional equivalent of Black fascists and there’s nary a peep.
On the other hand, Rick Perry’s father leased a hunting ranch at which someone years before had scrawled a racial slur —a rock which the Perrys painted over and overturned— and the Washington Post treats it as a national scandal.
Anyone who denies a liberal bias in the MSM must being doing the good drugs.
But I digress.
To get back to the Philadelphia voting rights case (background), what does it say when a candidate for president shares a stage with the head of that organization and marches with its members –implying a certain sympathy or common ground or understanding, at least– and then the Justice Department overseen by the Attorney General appointed by that same candidate-now-president dismisses a won case against that same organization and its head?
Yeah nothing to see here. Move along.
In one sense, this should neither be surprising nor outrageous; we know Obama himself comes from a hard-left background and is most probably a Socialist at heart and, just as important, spent 20 years in the pews of a church run by a racist preacher who taught Black Liberation Theology.
That he could get along with the NBP’s leadership should be predictable.
And yet, it should be profoundly disturbing that a future leader of the greatest constitutional republic in history should feel comfortable in the company of fascists and racialists. And that, once in charge, his Justice Department (irony alert) should refuse to enforce the law in a colorblind manner. And, as Breitbart asks, just who is the “Malik Shabazz” who records show visited the White House soon after the NBP case was dismissed? The White House refuses to say. Hmmm…
Maybe they were just reminiscing about the good time they had on that march in Selma.
Read the whole thing.
LINKS: See also Hot Air. At Big Journalism, Lee Stranahan asks “Who is the New Black Panther Party.”
UPDATE: Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote about this today, and mentioned a stunning fact that escaped me the first time around:
This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office. As Andrew [Breitbart]points out, one of those present with Obama was Najee Muhammed, the Panthers’ “minister of war” who had called for Georgia police officers to be murdered.
Nice friends ya got there, Barack!
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)