Fight against so-called voter "fraud" unwittingly targets legitimate voters.

[Felch]

What exactly makes them 'intimidating' whereas other people carrying guns is perfectly acceptable? I'm curious.

Their actions, you ignorant ****.

Video evidence and eyewitness testimony show that these two members standing athwart the entrance of the polling place dressed in paramilitary uniforms with black combat boots. One of them brandished a nightstick. They hurled racial epithets at whites and blacks alike, taunting poll watchers and poll observers, who were there to aid voters and, according to evidence adduced during our hearing last month, caused some voters who sought to cast their votes that day to turn and leave the polling place, rather than have to contend with them.

A black poll worker who happened to be working for the Republican Party was called a race traitor and promised that there would be hell to pay if he emerged from the polling place, according to eyewitness statements. He was so alarmed by the Panthers' presence that he would not leave the polling place until they left.

[MrFun]

Because I'm not a retarded caricature like the three of you. The right to bear arms does not permit you to brandish a weapon at a polling place in order to intimidate voters.

Then I take it you are outraged whenever Tea Baggers attended rallies, openly displaying their arms because it intimidated other people from expressing opinions different from the Tea Baggers??

[Felch]

You equate political rallies with polling places? Do you really not understand the difference between those circumstances? Or are you just a dishonest little piece of ****?

[DinoDoc]

He gets his threads from Facebook. I would say that he does not.

[Felch]

I don't get how having a gun slung over your shoulder is the same as standing at the door to a polling place, and heaping abuse on people as they come to vote. But then, I'm not MrFun.

[giblets]

What exactly makes them 'intimidating' whereas other people carrying guns is perfectly acceptable? I'm curious.

Their skin color. Maybe not for Felch, but probably for Zevico.

[Hauldren Collider]

So you think that if white people stood around polling places holding guns and shouting jeers that wouldn't be considered intimidation?

[giblets]

So you think that if white people stood around polling places holding guns and shouting jeers that wouldn't be considered intimidation?

I doubt Zevico would mention it in every single thread.

[Hauldren Collider]

If white people did that it would be seen (probably correctly) as some sort of neo-KKK and pwned by the feds in an instant. In the meantime, these new black panthers seem to be getting a relative pass.

[giblets]

As far as I know it was two crazy idiots in front of a polling place. It's even more rare than voter fraud.

[kentonio]

They hurled racial epithets at whites and blacks alike, taunting poll watchers and poll observers, who were there to aid voters and, according to evidence adduced during our hearing last month, caused some voters who sought to cast their votes that day to turn and leave the polling place, rather than have to contend with them.

So they were intimidating everyone indiscriminately? Isn't that a bit of a rubbish way to try and rig an election?

[MrFun]

You equate political rallies with polling places? Do you really not understand the difference between those circumstances? Or are you just a dishonest little piece of ****?

Intimidation is intimidation.

[Zevico]

Right, let's try this one last time. HUGE rally of totally respectable people,

Some or all of whom chose to knowingly march with the New Black Panthers.

Obama present, TINY group of nutters turn up.

Tiny group of marchers marches in front of Obama, do the Panther fist bump. Juan Cole gushes at the symbolism.

No, why would it? The only way that is in any way worrying is if you're an idiot and believe that the United States Department of Justice has some desire to protect the New Black Panthers.

And yet you haven't come up with a good reason to explain why they did precisely that.

No, ****ing idiots like you

Courtesy, sir, courtesy above all.

wandering about talking about how Americas first black president is a secret extremist who worships the New Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam

Don't make a strawman of my views. Obama is not a member of the New Black Panthers any more than Rahm Emanuel is a member of the Nation of Islam. For that matter Obama may or may not have coordinated his part of the march with the Panther's. There's no direct evidence to suggest that he did. That's not the point. The point is that there is a broader societal problem. When Juan Cole gushes about the New Black P My point is that each of them adhere to a bigotry of low expectations. Rahm Emanuel is a pretty clear case, frankly. You don't get much lower than inviting the leader of the Nation of Islam to your town to 'calm things down.'

[Zevico]

So they were intimidating everyone indiscriminately? Isn't that a bit of a rubbish way to try and rig an election?

Whoever said they were any good at it? It doesn't matter how competent their thuggery is to the fact that it's wrong.

[kentonio]

Oh what's this? Felch and Zevico were both talking **** again? Who saw that coming..

A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.

But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department’s handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party — a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months — Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.

“This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.

“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

The criticism has focused attention not just on Thernstrom, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, but on the partisan nature of the Civil Rights Commission and on a story that, like the controversy over the anti-poverty group ACORN, has raged almost completely outside the mainstream media.

The facts of the case are relatively simple. Two men were captured on a video standing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood on Election Day in 2008. One of the men had a nightstick, if an unclear agenda — though a member of the black nationalist New Black Panther Party, he had earlier professed loathing for the Democratic "puppet" candidate, Barack Obama, who went on to overwhelmingly carry that precinct.

Three Republican poll monitors filed complaints of intimidation — itself a federal crime — but no voters attested to being turned away. The Justice Department, while Bush was still president, investigated the incident and later, after Obama took office, decided that "the facts and the law did not support pursuing" the claims against the party and against a second, unarmed man, Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.

But the issue galvanized long-running conservative complaints — including by former Bush administration lawyers — that the government doesn’t take black racism seriously, and the incident has become a huge source of controversy among conservatives.

Fox News and other conservative media outlets have turned the Justice Department’s handling of the case into the subject of the sort of intense, contained interest that’s becoming increasingly common in an age of polarized and ideological media.

The liberal group Media Matters has counted 95 segments on Fox at least partially devoted to the story, much of it driven by “America Live” host Megyn Kelly, who focused on it during 45 segments, including one that discussed whether Fox’s own coverage had been racist.

Fox News did not return calls asking for comment on its coverage.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39861.html