rssThe Secret History of the New Black Panther Case
Friday, January 08, 2010 at 12:00 pm
- 18 Comments
Adam Serwer has a must-read piece on the case against the New Black Panther Party, the thuggish fringe group whose members were detained on Election Day 2008 for waving nightsticks outside of a mostly-black, mostly-Democratic polling place in Philadelphia. The Panthers themselves stopped being an issue long ago; the source of conservative consternation is the decision of Obama-appointed lawyers to drop the case. The story there is more interesting than a few Washington Times editorials have let on.
At the heart of the New Black Panther case was Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which offers legal protections against voter intimidation. It had only been used once prior to the Bush administration — in 1992 to prevent a statewide voter suppression effort initiated in South Carolina by then Sen. Jesse Helms. In this case, the Bush administration wanted to use Section 11(b) against several New Black Panthers who had stood in front of a polling place in a black neighborhood, one of whom wielded a baton.
“There was no pattern and practice, no concerted effort to cage thousands of voters like in the [1992] Jesse Helms case.” said Gerry Hebert, a former senior Voting Rights Section attorney who has served under multiple administrations. “That strikes me as the kind of large-scale voter suppression case that would be more appropriate for Justice Department resources to be spent on.”
The Bush administration filed two Section 11(b) cases, both on behalf of white voters, both supervised by Coates: The Black Panther case and a separate case in Noxubee, Mississippi. The Voting Rights Section had gone from ensuring voting rights for all Americans to focusing on the conservative bugaboo of “reverse racism.”
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18 Comments
Comment posted January 8, 2010 @ 1:23 pm
I knew the administration would have a perfectly logical explanation! I'm just surprised it took Weigel this long to carry water for them.
P.S. You might not want to trust a source that puts reverse racism in scare quotes, like it doesn't exist. It does exist, and it isn't reverse: it's just racism, straight up.
Comment posted January 8, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
“just racism, straight up”
Isn't that what Rush said when explaining Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama?
Pingback posted January 8, 2010 @ 2:25 pm
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Comment posted January 8, 2010 @ 2:29 pm
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Comment posted January 9, 2010 @ 9:07 am
“secret history!” What is the “secret history”? That Chris Coates was no longer a leftist? That's why the case was brought. Boy, when you can't argue the merits, you start to argue against the person. Personalize it. Polarize it. Where have we heard that before???
Comment posted January 9, 2010 @ 9:09 am
This article also has errors. The first 11b case was not in 1992. That is incorrect and any lawyer who tells you that is an idiot. Nor did only other cases come before the 1968 amendments as a certain idiot lawyer argued to another blog. There were 11b cases both before 1968 and after 1968.
Pingback posted January 9, 2010 @ 12:20 pm
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Pingback posted January 9, 2010 @ 12:20 pm
[...] The Secret History of the New Black Panther Case « The Washington … [...]
Comment posted January 9, 2010 @ 2:07 pm
“secret history!” What is the “secret history”? That Chris Coates was no longer a leftist? That's why the case was brought. Boy, when you can't argue the merits, you start to argue against the person. Personalize it. Polarize it. Where have we heard that before???
Comment posted January 9, 2010 @ 2:09 pm
This article also has errors. The first 11b case was not in 1992. That is incorrect and any lawyer who tells you that is an idiot. Nor did only other cases come before the 1968 amendments as a certain idiot lawyer argued to another blog. There were 11b cases both before 1968 and after 1968.
Pingback posted January 10, 2010 @ 2:17 am
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Comment posted September 29, 2010 @ 12:01 pm
You are racism, with a chaser of stupid crazy. Stop trolling for clicks to your batshit birthtard site.
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