I Am A Racist

Me And My RACIST Bird  "KFC"

RACISM, What is it? Hatred, of the different types of people. What does it mean? Cruel and subordinate treatment towards those in the minority. Who does it effect? Anyone not in the majority or the ruling class. And, Is it still around? You bet your ass it is.

Eventually, you know I had to do another op-eds on this topic because it no-longer means what it did 35 to 400 years ago. It now has become something far different from its inception.

In this election season it has lost its identification with the hue of skin color, if you're WHITE. Because since 2009, anyone not some off color of the visible light spectrum is now the SUBSERVENT, that means you're in deep trouble, IF YOU'RE WHITE.

Until the day President Obama was elected to office, it was if you were white, you were in the majority, that's no-longer the case. No one has ever seen politics so charged on the issue of race, from bloggers, commentators, liberal news media and, even me, with myself proclamation as "The Black Conservative", It’s almost impossible to be a conservative and not be called a racist. Seems it just comes with the territory. It is now politically incorrect for a white man to criticize a black man, but put that shoe on the other foot and racism takes on a new meaning. But just so you know exactly what I’m talking about, here is an example of just what it is that I’m trying to convey.

The American economy is in tatters. Unemployment is consistently over 8% and this president has ignored not only the spirit of the constitution but the letter of it. It is his Attorney General who stands in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents that were subpoenaed in the Fast & Furious scandal. It is this president who supported him in his disdain for the people’s representatives.

I’m a racist because Spike Lee and Michael Moore tell me I’m a racist. These are the same celebrities who in different televised interviews admitted that President Obama has not delivered on his promises but they would vote for the president anyway. Why? Simply because of President Obama’s race. I’m a racist because I believe in evaluating on a person’s record rather than their skin color.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

I am a racist because I am offended that this president promised “change you can believe in” but has demonstrated in this election campaign the worst gutter politics of any party on either the right or the left. I’m a racist because I do not support a president who happens to be black because one of his key political supporters admitted on CNN that it doesn’t matter that she deliberately misquoted the Los Angeles Times in a fund raising letter to the American People. I’m a racist because that lack of ethics and integrity matters to me.

I am a racist because I demand and expect all citizens regardless of race, culture, language or heritage to be treated identically under the law. I am a racist because I condemn female gender mutilation, abortion being used to get rid of unwanted female fetuses by some whose culture is highly paternalistic and refuse to accept the right of some cultures to impose their system of law, their values or their faith on others.

I am a racist because I recognize that government does not create wealth or jobs, it undermines both and promoting class conflict as many politicians do these days is nothing more than a cynical strategy to divide the electorate and win votes.

I am a racist because I recognize that the Conservative Party has not been fined, charged or convicted of any ethical breach of the rules or the law during that same period. Even in the fast and furious scandal.

I am a racist because I believe that there are too many entitlements for those who don't need them and not enough real support for the working poor. I am a racist because I believe it is a disgrace to demand free tuition, public sector and union salary increases when there are people sleeping in our streets and children going to bed hungry. I am a racist because I believe that 'treating' ourselves to more entitlements using borrowed money is the road to economic ruin and I am a racist because I believe in less government not more government control of our families and our individual lives.



I am a anti-women racist because I believe that abortion is a highly personal decision that should never be easy for anyone and that the father and the fetus both have rights. 

I am a homophobic racist because I think that pride parades and other outrageous behavior are both unnecessary and insulting. I am a homophobic racist because I fail to see how promoting, or how different it is, the gay and lesbian community expects to be accepted as a normal part of our society, to them I say you can keep your strange and un-natural life style away from me and mine and don’t ask me for shit.

I am proud that I understand that the success of any society is built on the success of the individuals that comprise it and that there is no self-respect or sense of accomplishment to be found in living off paltry government handouts or penalizing others for being successful.

I am happy to be called a racist by those who lack the intellectual ability to fairly evaluate others based on a consistent set of values but who are quick to condemn those who do not agree with them while being slow to condemn the performance and ethical violations of those they support..

We are divided into left and right, not by choice but by blind stupidity. We have traded away our values for entitlements and to willfully embrace politically correct illusions of principled values. Voting for a failed politician simply because he is black is every bit as racist as voting against a successful politician for the same reason.

I am an American, and I will not support Barack Obama based solely on his record, but rather his broken promise to deliver change in which we could believe. I cannot support a xenophobic political party that tramples and restricts the rights of fellow citizens in the name of cultural purity and I have no respect for those who condemn others based on ideology while supporting those who do the very things they condemn. I am even more proud to be called racist by people to lazy to inform themselves and who follow like sheep without thought or application of their own personal values.

                                          must see video                  

Not only am I a racist, but I hate black people so much I’d rather be governed by the three stooges, arguably the most imbecilic men of modern times, than a black person. Don’t laugh at me. Don’t criticize. Because I suspect this wasn’t an indictment only of me, but of every conservative who dares to speak out against Barack Obama’s policies.

According to the left, you are a racist simply because you are conservative.

I understand the political left playbook. It goes like this:

I criticize Obama.

The left calls me a racist.

I back off because I care about my reputation.

Then I apologize.

Hmm, I don’t like this drill.

I’ve been telling you for years now that I’m a racist when I started writing about the Obama administration two years ago. I suspect some of the more perceptive among you are beginning to doubt my claim, but it’s true. You give a racist a college degree, an yer just askin’ fer trouble. To misquote Steve Martin in his farcical movie-comedy The Jerk, “I was born a poor, black child. Of course, that was fifty-three years ago and I haven’t changed all that much. I was raised in the town of Santa Monica California. So, now, when the left assails me with baseless cries of “Racist! Racist! Racist!” I just bow my head and laugh, because I don’t play by their rules, They go something like this:

I criticize Obama.

The left calls me a racist.

I remain secure in who I am.

I counter-attack.

As conservatives we need to be secure in who we are as people, secure with our views, our beliefs and with who we are as human beings. Most importantly, we no longer have the luxury of surrender. This is a war – not a race war – but a war on our freedom.

So, the next time you criticize Obama and someone calls you a racist, just smile and stay the course. 

The Ugly Hidden Truth: Entitlement Crisis 101

Our unfunded-entitlement train is careening down the tracks about to tip over, but the conductor is lecturing us about staying in our seats until we come to a full stop. I hope that this example was a good metaphor for how our economy appears to both us and the rest of the world.

Rep. Paul Ryan



That, among other things, was one of the important problems with the president’s State of the Union speech. It was also what was wrong with the GOP response delivered by Rep. Paul Ryan. Neither party is telling the American people the truth about the coming entitlement crunch which threatens not only our fiscal solvency, but our national security, our economic vitality, and ultimately, our way of life. Every year we delay the bitter medicine we must take to get our fiscal house in order adds trillions in unfunded debt to the entitlement burden we already carry.

We expected President Obama to downplay the problem. He’s got a re-election campaign to win and the hugely unpopular entitlement cuts and tax increases that are going to be necessary to address the problem would be his doom if he proposed them. There were exactly two paragraphs in the president’s speech that dealt with this nations entitlement crisis – as if it should be treated as an afterthought rather than as the 3-alarm fire it is. What’s worse, the president made it seem as if fixing our entitlement problems will be a lot easier than it is surely going to be.

He claimed that Obamacare would “slow these rising costs” for Medicare – an extremely dubious claim unproven by the facts – while assuring seniors that we must “strengthen” Social Security without “putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.”

In other words, some day in the future, a president is going to wave a magic wand and the trillions of dollars of Social Security unfunded liability is going to disappear. No one suffers. No one gets hurt. Presumably, the “rich” will take a hit, but then no one really cares about them.

Newsflash: All the easy fixes for our entitlement nightmare have already been tried several times. We’ve raised the retirement age, raised the eligibility age for Medicare, raised Social Security and Medicare taxes – doubling them over the last 30 years. We’ve fiddled, we’ve tweaked, we’ve performed all the dishonest accounting possible, hiding the truth from the American people for as long as we could, and yet – here we are at the gates of fiscal hell, the devil is opening the door and hells fire is the debt that is ever growing and there’s nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, the GOP is riding high at the moment and doesn’t want to sour the mood of the voters with blood curdling tales of $100 trillion plus in unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. But that’s the reality of our situation and someone, somewhere, somehow is going to have to take the bit in their mouth and lead us out of this house of horrors we’ve constructed for ourselves.

Protection For the Elderly

Rep. Ryan, who’s “Roadmap” at least offered an alternative to business as usual, was strangely quiescent about the entitlement mess. Not once in his response to the president’s speech did he mention Social Security or Medicare. Ryan at least had the courage to point out that we were in a major crisis headed for fiscal disaster, but the man who has offered a politically poisonous but realistic alternative stopped far short of endorsing what he so bravely put forth just a few months ago.

Cosmetic gambits like “spending freezes” and “doc fixes” can’t even begin to address the danger. This is political gamesmanship and it should anger us that the politicians know it but do it anyway. It’s not that the crisis is hidden, or has come upon us suddenly. We’ve known for decades where we were headed, but Washington chose the easy way: the politicians ignored the problem, kicking the can down the road, assuming they would be well into retirement — living off their extravagant congressional pensions — before history forced our hand.

 The can has now been kicked into a cul de sac and there’s no way we can start kicking it back down the road. It may not be our fault, but we’re the ones who are going to have to pay for all of these promises so recklessly made by previous generations. One way or another, a solution will be found (or imposed) on us. Those are the only alternatives. Either the politicians will find the political courage (that they won’t get credit for) to start cutting and slashing at the monster or the monster will solve our problem for us by devouring us. To know this just look back through history, The Roman Empire, Ancient Eygipt, Great Britain. That's only three to give an idea as to the severity of this crisis, So, "Will we be the next to fall like Grease?

A few bare bones numbers are needed to prove that this is not hyperbole or political exaggeration. If we were to fulfill the promises made to every American from those born as I write this to the oldest citizen regarding Social Security and Medicare, it will cost us at least $130 trillion. Long before then, the entitlement crunch will have destroyed our economy. By 2016, 71% of the federal budget will be dedicated to paying entitlements of one form or another, the vast percentage of that being Social Security and Medicare.

There are 78 million baby boomers set to retire over the next 20 years, all expecting that monthly Social Security check for the rest of their lives. The significance of this is a matter of demographics. The number of workers paying into Social Security was 5.1 per retiree in 1960; this declined to 3.3 in 2007 and is projected to decline to 2.1 by 2035. We are currently in hock to the Social Security Trust Fund to the tune of $2.5 trillion. This number is expected to rise to $3.8 trillion by 2019. But by 2015, payments to Social Security beneficiaries will begin to exceed tax receipts. And by 2037, payments to recipients would start declining automatically – whether we wanted them to or not. The Trust Fund would be exhausted and Congress would be unable to tap any other revenue streams from the government to pay for it.

Medicare is in even worse shape. Bruce Bartlett read the last report from the Medicare trustees and noted that it would take an increase in personal income taxes of 81% to pay for the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare:

• To summarize, we see that taxpayers are on the hook for Social Security and Medicare by these amounts: Social Security, 1.3% of GDP; Medicare part A, 2.8% of GDP; Medicare part B, 2.8% of GDP; and Medicare part D, 1.2% of GDP. This adds up to 8.1% of GDP. Thus federal income taxes for every taxpayer would have to rise by roughly 81% to pay all of the benefits promised by these programs under current law over and above the payroll tax.

Is it any wonder that President Obama or Rep. Ryan chose not to mention how serious the problem really is, and that addressing the crisis is going to be extraordinarily wrenching?

It took our politicians four score and five years to begin to address the evil of slavery. In truth, America deals with insoluble dilemmas by working around the edges of the problem, refusing to confront the roots of what ails us. The great compromises of 1820 and 1851 on slavery kept the nation from flying apart but did not address what was eating away at the body politic: that slavery was a wrong that needed to be righted.

We have spent a quarter of a century tinkering with Social Security and Medicare, stretching out the day of reckoning without addressing the fundamental math that underpins both programs: that someday, they would become unsustainable and drag us all to economic calamity.

That day has arrived. But you’d never know it listening to the president the other night with his new spending schemes and “things are getting better all the time” rhetoric. It hardly matters. One way or another, our fiscal crisis will be solved — either through bold and courageous actions that save us or our total collapse which will ruin us.

Why Islam Is Fractured

Islam is fractured for a variety of reasons. A major problem with Islam is that there are as many different versions of it as there are Islamic pundits and there are legions of them.

Another reason why Islam is fractured is that it is all things to all people. Even a cursory study of the Qur’an, the immutable word of God, as Muslims see it; the Hadith, the authoritative sayings of the Prophet; and, the Sunna, the Prophet’s life conduct, presents a body of contradictory and even outright erroneous information.

This body of Islamic doctrine enables a person to pick and choose the parts he likes and ignore those he doesn’t. This feature explains why some of the good as well as the most beastly people are Muslims. Amazingly enough, both types justify themselves and their behavior by selectively citing from the Qur’an, the Hadith and the Sunna.

Here is only one example of taking an Islamic teaching as you prefer it. The Qur’an admonishes the believers: Make jihad for the cause of God. Literally translated, this phrase directs the believers to exert themselves in service to the cause of God. The catch is in the word “exert.” Some Muslims understand it as spiritual exertion. Other Muslims take it as a commandment to exert themselves by the sword. And both can be right because the rest of the Qur’an not only fails to clarify the statement, but adds further substance to each position. It is in cases like this that the pronouncements of the Islamic high divines can sway the balance in favor of one or the other. Unfortunately, not many voices of Islamic authorities are raised on the side of tolerance, peacefulness and other positive teachings and denounce the barbaric passages in Islam. The most one hears from Islamic apologists are time-worn and banal pronouncements such as “Islam is a religion of peace.”

It is a sad fact that generation after generation of Sunni Muftis—highest ranking Sunni clerics—and Ayatollahs—highest ranking Shiite clerics, over the years have indoctrinated their underling clergy as well as the masses with selective teachings that promote intolerance, exclusion and hostility toward non-Muslims—people labelled as heathens, infidels, unbelievers and apostates. Selective choice of the scripture, combined with a siege mentality endemic to the cradle of Islam, the Middle East, generates a fury of hatred that has the potential of devouring the world. If only Muslims could purge the negative aspects of its scripture and practice its positive teachings, the world would become a diverse community of humanity at peace with one another. The question is: Is that possible or are we headed for a clash of civilizations?

There are some non-violent verses in the Qur’an too. One, for instance, says: The most beloved amongst you in the sight of God is the one who is the most virtuous. Not the rich, not the powerful and not the hateful. The most virtuous is most beloved, it says. Yet, the radical Islamists have come to interpret killing and maiming the infidels as great acts of virtue, acts that would make them most beloved by God.

In an attempt to polish Islam's image, Muslim apologists usually quote verses from the Quran that were written in the early days of the Islamic movement while Mohammad lived in Mecca. Those passages make Islam appear loving and harmless because they call for love, peace and patience. Such is a deception. The apologists fail to tell gullible masses that such verses, though still in the Quran, were nullified, abrogated, rendered void by later passages that incite killing, decapitations, maiming, terrorism and religious intolerance. The latter verses were penned while Mohammad's headquarters was based in Medina.

Reforming Islam is unfortunately not a realistic possibility. About the only universal agreement that exists among Islamic authorities is that every word of the Qur’an is the word of God and is not subject to human modification, ever. The ‘Hadith’ also enjoys a similar sacrosanct standing. And of course, the faithful Muhammad’s conduct as recorded in the Sunna is the model to be emulated. Hence, one can pick and choose, but one can not discard or revise any part of the scripture. For this reason a Martin Luther type reformation has not happened and will not likely ever happen within Islam.

Islam’s detractors point out numerous absurdities in the Islamic scripture. In fairness to Islam, we can find just as many perceived absurdities in other religious scriptures. Many of the scriptures’ absurdities may, in fact, be allegories, metaphors, similes and symbols. Islamic scripture, for instance, records that Muhammad split the moon in half with his sword. Clearly, splitting the moon must be taken symbolically. Some claim that in this case “moon” stood for high ranking religious divines of the time and Muhammad destroyed them by the sword of his new faith. It was the material sword that sallied forth out of the Arabian desert and forced Islam on people far and wide.

The fact that Islam is a splintered house complicates matters greatly. The faith is divided into Sunni and Shiites sects with numerous sub-sects. The divisions and contentiousness are so profound that members of one sect consider the other Muslims as apostates worthy of death. The division goes back to the time of the Prophet himself. Shiites believe that the enemies of true faith subverted its chain of authority at Muhammad’s death.

They claim that the Prophet, while on his deathbed, asked for a parchment to dictate his will and to appoint Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, as his successor. The Shiites claim that Omar, an influential disciple and commander of the faith, declined the request saying to the Prophet: hasbena ketab-ul-llah—sufficient unto us is the book of God. Before long, division and infighting started in earnest and continues to this day. Oppression of Shiite minorities in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are only two glaring instances of this longstanding and irreconcilable intra-faith hostility. The Shiite majorities in other lands return the favor to the Sunni minorities, as is the case in Iran. The recent horrific sectarian killings in Iraq represent glaring instances of irreconcilable differences among the various claimants to the mantle of true Islam.

The Bible says, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” The fruits of Islam are there for everyone to see for himself. Islam may have given the world some choice fruits. It has assuredly given the world many poisonous fruits as well.

Some claim that Islam is inherently good, the majority of Muslims are good and only a small minority has hijacked the good faith of Muhammad by engaging in acts of intolerance, hatred and violence. The question is: why is it that the good Islam is not ruling in the world and the bad Islam is engulfing it in fire? Human nature is the culprit, in part. We humans are attracted to hate like flies are to honey. Hate is an easy sell. It is appealing and little effort is required to hate. Hate gathers up the person’s or the group’s frustrations, anxieties, fears, paranoia and many other negative emotions in one handy bundle and hurls it at a convenient target. History is replete with instances of hate energizing the masses into commitment of small and large scale atrocities.

Sell hate and people queue several blocks to buy. Sell love and you will be mostly by your lonely self. Is this a cynical view? No, it is a realistic one. It describes human’s lower and primitive nature which must be painstakingly overcome through persistent education and awakening of man’s higher nature.

Religious high authorities play a critical role in steering the masses toward or away from hate. The late Pope’s public pronouncement, for instance, absolving the Jews as the Christ killers has reduced anti-Semitism among the rank and file Christians. Fatwas—religious decrees—by Islamic Muftis and Ayatollahs carry considerable weight with their respective followers. Sadly, most decrees and adjudications of these high Islamic authorities are exclusionary and even hostile toward the out-groups. These high divines are the suppliers of opinions as well as the teachers of the rank and file clergy who take the same ideas to the masses in villages and cities. Madresehs in Pakistan, schools in Saudi Arabia and Maktabs—religious schools—in Iran, as well as numberless mosques serve as places where the disease of hate can be transmitted with considerable success to the just too willing believers.

This virulent disease of hate of “others,” is now leaving its traditional Muslim lands and infecting cities, towns and villages of the larger world. Muslims believe that the earth is Allah’s and all of it rightfully belongs to the Muslims. Non-Muslims in any land are simply usurpers and occupiers who must either convert to Islam or give way to the legitimate people—the Muslims.

In Islam’s theocracy, religious authority is conferred by an informal consensus of the peer group. One becomes an Ayatollah, for instance, by demonstrating to other ayatollahs his undeviating devotion to the dogma they hold. If one deviates from the accepted line, he is not likely to make a village mullah, much less an Ayatollah. This is a systemic problem that is not amenable to change. It is a pathological theological inbreeding.

Islam or religions in general are sources of energy. The energy can achieve magnificent things or destroy anything. It is up to us to put religion to good use, as people have done for millennia, and to avoid using it as a weapon of death and destruction—again, as people have done so for millennia.

In the Islamic theocracies, everyone pretends publicly his undeviating belief in the faith, as preached and promoted in his locality. If there are any unbelievers, doubters or atheists, they have to hide, not in closets, but in deep subterranean holes. Pressure to be religious is so great that pretending piety is an art form. Yet, much of religious ado is pro forma rituals.

Admittedly, things are hardly any better in the non-Islamic lands. People, once a week, go to a religious service, repent of their sin, pay up and go back to a life of sin for the next six days in a sinful world.

Perhaps there is a way out of the present impasse with Islam. The Islamic Republic selected President Ahmadinejad had invited President George W. Bush, albeit in a convoluted eighteen page epistle, to embrace Islam. Ahmadinejad seemed to think that Bush is the most powerful man in the world. He must have concluded that if Bush were to embrace Islam, the masses of infidels would follow his example.

Let us for a moment accept Ahmadinejad’s summon. Question: Which sect of Islam and which one of its numberless sub-sects should we join? Beside the two major branches of Sunnis and Shiite, there are dozens and dozens of sub-sects, and schools, each of which is mortally convinced they represent the only true Islam. Ahmadinejad’s own brand of Islam is alien to the majority of even the Shiites. He is reportedly a devout member of a remodeled and secretive hate-based Hojjatieh which is presently operating under the guise of the Haghani sect under the leadership of a most close-minded fanatical leader—Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi.

Further complications present themselves. Space limitation does not allow presenting all of them here. Only one should suffice for now. One of the issues Muslims, worldwide, are in general agreement on is the status of women. It places women squarely under the thumb of men.

It says in the Quran: Alrejaalo qawaamoon al-alnesa—men are rulers over women. Women of non-Islamic world have valiantly worked to attain a degree of equality with men. They are not likely to barter their hard-earned rights for the privilege of becoming head-to-toe covered second class citizens, deprived of education and opportunities. We, non-Muslim men, are not going to leave our emancipated, fully participating and contributing members of our society behind and subjugate ourselves to a barbaric set of Sharia laws which were enacted by stone-age mentality.

In conclusion, Islam is not only fractured, it is shattered and has gone long past fixing itself, much less ruling the rest of the world. It is time that Muslims, those who consider themselves good and peaceful, as well as those who want us to accept their ideology of barbarism at the point of the sword, take the fateful step and join the free and emancipated family of humanity. There is no going back. Barbarism is in our past.

Inside the Black Panther case

      On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered the attorneys to dismiss the case.


      The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law in recent Justice Department history. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month several attorneys resigned their positions as  Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys.

      The federal voter-intimidation statutes used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial inequality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam.

     The dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share this assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.

     The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered them to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing those attorneys in an unacceptable legal limbo.

     The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.

     Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina.

     Mr. Perez also inaccurately testified to the House Judiciary Committee that federal "Rule 11" required the dismissal of the lawsuit. Lawyers know that Rule 11 is an ethical obligation to bring only meritorious claims, and such a charge by Mr. Perez effectively challenges the ethics and professionalism of the five attorneys who commenced the case. Yet the attorneys who brought the case were voting rights experts and would never pursue a frivolous matter. Their experience in election law far surpassed the experience of the officials who ordered the dismissal.

     Some have called the actions in Philadelphia an isolated incident, not worthy of federal attention. To the contrary, the Black Panthers in October 2008 announced a nationwide deployment for the election. There were indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. In any event, the law clearly prohibits even isolated incidents of voter intimidation.

     Others have falsely claimed that no voters were affected. Not only did the evidence rebut this claim, but the law does not require a successful effort to intimidate; it punishes even the attempt.




     Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

     Some of the D.O.J attorneys argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.

     Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are now at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, knowledge after the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, we should all begin to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.