The Blog of Record

Justice would have been swift if the races and political parties were reversed:

President Obama’s Justice Department continues to stonewall inquiries about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The 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. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube.)

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.

I am sure there must be Hope and Change in there somewhere.

“High Risk, High Reward”: The Sarah Palin VP selection story.

The McCain campaign did vet Palin well. The vetters simply couldn’t predict that the media, smelling danger for their candidate, would tear her apart in an unprecedented campaign of pure, undisguised hate. But you won’t read that in the Washington Post, of course.

The campaign’s real problem with Palin was that her ”handlers” didn’t have half an idea what to do with the gem they suddenly found in their hands. I think they were scared of her.

 Sensational: the New York Times is dishonest:

The journalistic legacy of Walter Duranty, Herbert Matthews and Jayson Blair is alive and well at the New York Times:

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Read the rest, if your digestion can stand it.

So, where’s the sensation? Did you guys really expect the NYT to publish something that could have hurt Obama’s chances? Seriously? They’re the New York Times, for Christ’s sake. Even their Obama-Ayers article was a total whitewash.

It concludes with this:

To determine what made Obama’s campaign a success, we must look deeper to identify the basic psychological qualities that underlie these strategies. I perceive them to be:

• a finely developed skill in strategy, worthy of a great general [4],
• a tremendous audacity, enabling him to succeed in risky or controversial tactics that his opponents would not dare to attempt [5],
• a stage magician’s skill in misdirection, compelling the public to perceive only what he wishes them to see and ignore what he wishes them to overlook,
• a penchant for evasion and concealment—the very opposite of his much-vaunted desire for “transparency”—often achieved by saying one thing (such deploring “negativity”) while inciting others (such as 527 groups or his “dogs of war”) to do the opposite,
• utter ruthlessness: a willingness to resort to, or at least tolerate, deception and fraud to achieve desired objectives.

These are the qualities that I perceive in the person or persons who planned the Obama campaign, whether it was Obama himself, an associate or mentor, or a combination thereof. However, there can be no doubt that Obama at least assented to the use of the aforementioned strategies and therefore must to some degree possess the qualities that engendered them. Indeed, these qualities virtually define the sort of narcissistic personality that has been attributed to Obama.

If, as I contend, these are the root qualities that created the Obama campaign, then we should expect more of the same from the new Obama administration. For starters, the stimulus Trojan horse is a convincing example. 

Yuval Levin has the best analysis of the Sarah Palin phenomenon I’ve read so far:

Palin did not merit her instantaneous conversion into the Joan of Arc of the American Right, just as she did not deserve the opprobrium that was heaped upon her by the Left.

So why did it happen? What was the Palin episode really about? The answer has much to do with the age-old tension between populism and elitism in our public life, which is to say, between the notion that we are best governed by the views, needs, and interests of the many and the conviction that power can only be managed wisely by a select few.

It’s much longer than that, so read it all.

He didn’t want to “be in the front chair attacking this historic candidacy”.

More Meghan McCain and Mark McKinnon videos here.

I don’t know… I still remember the articles entitled “Why McCain Will Win”.

Did a Constitution Party candidate hand the Minnesota Senate seat to Al Franken?

Chad The Elder:

I have to look around and wonder just what the hell has happened to my fellow inhabitants of the North Star state. Our weather is still cold. Our sports teams are still losing. Our image as lutefisk eating “uff da” doofuses still lingers. Our taxes are still high. But something has changed.

Al Franken is going to represent us in the U.S. Senate. And I can’t be the only one asking, “What’s the matter with Minnesota?”

Plus, what the Coleman campaign could have done better. (Via Fraters Libertas.)

In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken:

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

John Hinderaker:

Coleman’s contest of the returns so far is not, as some have claimed, a “sore loserman” tactic. There are highly legitimate issues surrounding the election which have not yet been addressed by any body. Those issues, some of which appear highly meritorious, will be considered for the first time in the election contest.

Including this one, of course:

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Barack Obama at his most megalomaniacal.

Ann Althouse:

Saxby Chambliss has won.

The Democrats cannot reach 60 in the Senate. So can Al Franken stop trying to steal the election in Minnesota?

Pretty much a landslide, too. I guess Sarah Palin campaigning for Chambliss wasn’t such a drag on him, after all.

Yeah, it’s old, I know.

Source.

The election is over, and boy, what a difference it makes for the Los Angeles Times’ ability to debunk myths about Barack Obama:

Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama’s amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.

Except, it turns out, that’s not really true.

In fact, Obama’s base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush’s in 2004 — Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%.

Makes you wonder how many more surprises about Obama the media will let out now that he’s safe.

Via Bob Parks (Black & Right).

There are people for whom William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are heroes who should be honored.

(Via Deoxy News.)

Mary Katharine Ham:

Fake hate in our newly post-racial society, created to “get a reaction” in the wake of Obama’s election:

A black man from Mississippi has been arrested and accused of sending racist death threats over the Internet to three black students at Louisiana’s Nicholls State University. 

The FBI in New Orleans said Dyron Hart, 19, was arrested Wednesday. He is accused of sending the messages by way of the students’ Facebook accounts. The messages contained racial epithets and death threats and were sent to two black women and a black man at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La.

The author of those messages cast himself as a white man who intended to kill blacks because Barack Obama was elected president.

Don’t let this story become an urban myth about the embers of racial hatred burning afresh in white youth since the election of Obama. Its perpetrator likely knew that myth would be quite easy to create.

He was just using an investigation technique invented by Canadian “human rights” commission investigators, who posted racist messages to “hate sites” so they could accuse site owners of publishing hate speech.

Being the first is great. Now he needs to make sure he is not remembered as the first black president who royally screwed up. That wouldn’t be good for the chances of blacks who will come after him. But I’m sure he understands that.

Aaron Werner has put together 2008 electoral maps for various groups – people aged 65 and older, whites, men, women, moderates, independents and more.

No map for black voters, because it “would be a sea of blue”, writes Aaron. Sure, although I think such a map’s visual impact would give it some educational value.

Daniel Crandall proposes a riddle:

On November 3rd the McCain campaign made a last minute appeal for the women’s vote. How did he do this? According [to] James (don’t call him Jim) Lileks, at Screedblog, the McCain campaign sent out a postcard to potential voters in swing states.

The postcard included the following text:

“As the father of three daughters, I owe _________ a debt for inspiring them and millions of other women to believe nothing in this great country is beyond their reach. . . I share _________’s goal of promoting women to more important roles throughout our government. By the end of my first term, I promise you will see a dramatic increase in the presence of women in every part of the government. You have my word on it. John McCain.”

Here is Senator McCain fondly gazing at the person whose name has been excised from the text above.

The not-so-surprising answer is here.

Daniel’s post continues his earlier conclusion that Republicans should be glad McCain lost.