When news broke of alleged voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers Party in the 2008 election, Media Matters for America (MMfA) launched a relentless push back against the charges, resulting in almost 8,000 MMfA site specific Google hits in which MMfA attacked virtually anyone who attempted to report on the controversy, while elevating any reporting that minimized it, or the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case.

Meanwhile, a former MMfA Director of External Affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa, who had actually joined the Department of Justice in July of 2009 as a Public Affairs Specialist, took an active role in pushing back against the story from witin DOJ.

Apparently, the Justice Department is going by George Orwell’s famous Animal Farm ending:

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” “We can only take action where we have legal authority,” wrote DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in a December 2010 e-mail to The Washington Times Water Cooler. She continues: “As stated in the website below, we are statutorily authorized to initiate suits under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and under Title III of the American with Disabilities Act.

It’s not unusual for D.C. professionals to move in and out of government positions. Yet given MMfA’s acute focus on the Panthers/DOJ story, Hinojosa’s involvement with and ties to MMfA invite speculation as to what extent MMfA and DOJ might have cooperated in pushing back against a potentially explosive story for the Obama administration.

Indeed, today, MMfA is already attacking J. Christian Adams and his forthcoming book on Obama’s beleaguered Department of Justice, which has shown itself, in the Panthers case and in others, as one of the most politicized DOJ’s in modern history. (For more on new evidence linking Obama directly to the New Black Panthers, see this exclusive at Big Government today: Shock Photos: Candidate Obama Appeared And Marched With New Black Panther Party in 2007.)

Hinojosa has at times been quoted by Media Matters on a variety of stories that pertain to the DOJ.  Yet the organization does not mention that she used to work for it, nor is that information available on MMfA’s current website. This 2009 cached snapshot of the Media Matters website confirms her tenure there:

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Last week, a post I wrote for Big Journalism which, unbeknownst to me, possibly inspired Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points Memo later that evening. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t notice it at the time. I watch Bill and the rest of the Fox guys when I can, but with three kids in the house it’s not every day. In any case, my post and Bill’s memo were strongly worded critiques of this David A. Graham piece for Newsweek in which he downplayed the New Black Panther story. Last Friday, Graham issued a somewhat belated response to Bill and me (okay, I admit, I like saying that). Here’s how his piece opens:

Last week, I found myself in the crosshairs of conservative ire because a news analysis I wrote didn’t take the allegations of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party story as seriously as conservatives felt it should.

Right off the bat we’ve shifted the goalposts. My critique was based on Graham’s biased handling of the material, in particular his use of the hacks and non-entities at Media Matters as a primary source, as well as his failure to get even Media Matters’ highly spun version of the story straight. Here’s a bit of what I wrote:

That second link–the one about questionable testimony–goes right back to Media Matters. David A. Graham summarizes MM’s lengthy hit piece by saying, “there are doubts about whether he was actually present for the incidents he described.” Well, no, there are not doubts about that at all. In his interview with Megyn Kelly (which Media Matters transcribes), [J. Christian] Adams plainly states that he wasn’t there…

That’s not a critique of Graham’s news judgment; it’s a critique of his facts. Rather than address the problem directly or issue a correction, he simply revises his original claim in the new piece: (more…)

Lemme get this straight: the media is talking about context. They want context!

They’ve never cared about context in the past. When a person talked like a racist there were no excuses, no context, no explanation, no recovery allowed or given. Ask any conservative who’s been wrongly accused of being a racist knows exactly what I’m talking about.  The list is long. Limbaugh, Beck, Allen, O’Reilley—on and on.

How about some context with the New Black Panthers, you media kings?

Finally, after years of knowing the video is out there of the New Black Panthers intimidating voters at polling places in Philadelphia and after weeks of seeing video of that same New Black Panther guy urging the murder of “crackers” and “cracker babies,” it’s now okay for the media to start showing the video.

They can now change the context of that video and instead of seeing it for what it is—they now put it in the context of right wing media trying to make race an issue. What the…?

They just needed something to justify changing the context. Because they think they have caught Andrew Breitbart in a racial ruse in regards to Shirley Sherrod they can now unload all their anger on Andrew.

Yes, it is anger, and it has been building for a long time. (more…)

The left is jumping up and down screaming “Gotcha!” over a post at American Prospect by Adam Serwer that purports to debunk the New Black Panther voter intimidation story.

Serwer’s headline:  “When Was the Black Panther Case Downgraded” is an important part of the obfuscation that runs through the reaction to his post as left-leaning media types desperately try to make his “find” mean something that it doesn’t.

First, let’s watch the highest-profile regurgitation of Serwer’s storyline, Keith Olbermann:

Seems pretty cut and dried, right?  The charge that Obama’s Justice Department dismissed the case against the Panthers is patently false because it was actually the Bush DOJ that dismissed them.

Well, at least that’s what Olbermann and his poor, tortured producers and staff want you to think.

Remember I pointed out that Serwer’s headline is the beginning of the obfuscation?  Read it again:  “When Was the Black Panther Case Downgraded.”

Get it? (more…)

Voter intimidation is a serious threat to our democracy – a parasitic anomaly that many Americans have sacrificed a great deal to prevent.  It is unconscionable that we live in a modern society in which such overt thuggery coexists with rational thought and practice.  Even more perplexing and disturbing is a federal government, led by an incompetent Justice Department, which appears more than willing to tolerate such antics.

If you recall (though you may not, as the media have been less than stellar in covering the story), on election day in 2008, two men stood outside a Philadelphia polling location.  One carried a nightstick in what can only be perceived as an effort to intimidate those entering the facility, as the delinquents spewed racial slurs and attempted to prevent individuals from voting.  Lawyer Ashley L. Taylor, Jr. best describes the scenario in her Washington Times piece:

Bartle Bull, a civil rights movement veteran, was there. He says it was “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s.” The crimes Mr. Bull witnessed that day were not committed in 1960s Mississippi, however. Those crimes took place in 2008 in Philadelphia.

And how has the Obama administration handled these men, you ask? (more…)