Let My People .....................

And

For hundreds of posts now I’ve tried to find a cartoon to introduce the topic but today’s subject cannot be trivialized. So that explains the picture above and now read on.


Sometimes the stars align and the alignment bodes well and sometimes, according to the astrologers, they don’t.


And right now they don’t.


Thank heavens for the US Supreme Court when, however odious, the Court upheld the rights of the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas to be repugnant. The First Amendment prevailed as it should have.


Contrast that with the rightful expectation of American citizens to equal treatment under the law. And it’s not just the law, it’s the Constitution.


After stonewalling a Congressional investigation for two years into accusations of race-based law enforcement, Attorney General Eric Holder finally snapped and started flexing the Black Panther tattoo on his biceps in front of his mixed race interrogators.


The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.


I have not edited the following text and so that which follows is theirs, and theirs alone, without grammatical amendment from me. Even though it needs it desperately.


“Think about that,” Holder said. “When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia; which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people,” said Holder, who is black.


Hmm, is 1960s Alabama on trial today?  Apparently so. Again. As institutionalized white-on-black crime is non-existent these days, Holder feels it necessary to put his thumb on the blind scales of Justice and reconcile the cosmic ledgers against Crackerdom.


Presumably, “my people” aren’t all Americans. “My people” are his people it seems.


Black Panthers making threats and brandishing batons and making racial slurs to voters in front of a Philadelphia polling station on election day are “his people”. Being forced to enforce the laws, that is his function, against “his people” is anathema to what Equal Rights Under the Law means to Eric Holder.


Is Eric Holder the Black Bull Connor? His strident defense of the indefensible grounds would certainly suggest it. Like Connor, his unapologetic advocacy of segregated justice has motivated more people against him than to his side.


This episode, which Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen”—began on Election Day 2008. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia.


One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at the entrance and pointed it at voters and both made racial threats. Mr. Bull says he heard one yell “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!”


In the first week of January, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs. In March, Mr. Bull submitted an affidavit at Justice’s request to support its lawsuit.


When none of the defendants filed any response to the complaint or appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia to answer the suit, it appeared almost certain Justice would have prevailed by default. Instead, the department in May suddenly allowed the party and two of the three defendants to walk away.


Against the third defendant, Minister King Samir Shabazz, it sought only an injunction barring him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years—action that’s already illegal under existing law.


These are the defendants that Eric Holder identified as "my people". 


In a slam dunk case, waiting for the verdict, he dropped the charges and then has refused any inquiries as to why for almost two whole years.


But now we know. He’s righting historical wrongs from 50 years ago. A lifetime ago. And so is his boss who has the biggest chip or chips I've ever experienced on anyone's shoulder.


Eric Holder should never have been given the job in the first place and, absent that, he should be impeached yesterday and his bigoted reign at Justice cannot be over soon enough. 


As long as The Klan With A Tan is lynching the rule of law, there is no faith in the DOJ while Blind Justice swings from its tree.


It's a good job, therefore, that the Judicial branch of our government understands their responsibilities because the Executive surely doesn't.


And bear in mind that Holder did not take this position alone. Read the latest book of Kenneth T. Walsh where Obama is quoted as saying that “racism is a key component of the Tea Party”.


Yep, he really said it! And I'm darned sure he meant it.