New Black Panthers, Beer, & Our Health Care

Mike Williams' letter today is a "don't miss."

You North Carolinians may recall that about 40 New Black Panthers invaded Durham

during the early days of Duke Lacrosse:

"This is a hate crime, and we want a conviction," declared Malik Zulu Shabazz, the national chairman of the New Panthers, a black separatist group based in Atlanta that is disavowed by the original Black Panther Party. "We are mad and fired up. We demand justice, and we will have justice, one way or the other."

Dressed in black berets and military-style fatigues, several in the group donned bulletproof vests and ammunition belts and holsters that were empty. At least two wore long knives in scabbards strapped to their legs.

This same group intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 elections, and three of its members were subsequently indicted by the Bush Justice Department. But the Obama Justice Department has now dropped the charges. Hans Von Spakovsky:

There is no doubt that this was one of the worst cases of voter intimidation the Department has seen in decades, but it was against militant black defendants, not white defendants. This is exactly the kind of situation that upsets the traditional civil rights community, which does not believe that federal voting rights laws should be used to protect white voters.

The Department’s weak and belated explanation for the dismissal of this suit is frankly absurd.

The Department’s spokeswoman says that “the facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims.” Really?

Then why is the Department refusing to allow the trial team who actually investigated the “facts and the law” or the chief of the Voting Section who supervised the investigation to brief members of Congress?

We all know why – because those lawyers would dispute the spurious claim being made by their political superiors….

The message from the Justice Department with this dismissal is that if you are a member of a black hate group, you can intimidate, threaten, and hurl racial epithets at white voters and poll watchers and the Justice Department will give you a pass.

We all know that if it had been the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Brotherhood at the polls in Philadelphia acting in this manner towards black voters, Associate Attorney General Perelli and Attorney General Holder would never have even considered dismissing the case.

They would be bragging in the press about their pursuit of a civil injunction against all of these defendants, and would be pressing the Criminal Division at Justice to indict them on criminal charges.

Which leads us to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates and Obama’s Thursday evening swill. Bob Weir:

Now that the beer summit is a part of history, let's look at what was accomplished by the foregoing set of events that should have never been more than a routine police assignment. A white police officer, along with the entire Cambridge, Massachusetts PD, was maligned by a black Harvard professor and a black President of the United States.

A white woman neighbor of the professor, who called the police to report a possible burglary, publicly has been termed a racist and has been harassed to the point of breaking down in tears during a press conference.

Professor Gates has plenty of publicity to help him with his upcoming documentary on race relations in America and President Obama had a major photo op in an attempt to spin his shocking comments into something positive.

There was no handshake between the cop and the professor; no apology from the president or the professor; and there was no chance for the Press to interview the parties together. The only words spoken publicly after the beer fest were from Sgt. Crowley, who said: "We have agreed to disagree."

Well, wasn't that the state of affairs before they met over a couple of brews? Unless there were some clandestine plans made to improve race relations in the future, this was a waste of time.

Evidently, Obama, the man who was going to bring us together, didn't even have enough influence with his buddy Gates to convince him to press the flesh with his arresting officer.

And, speaking of that arrest for disorderly conduct, why has so little been said about the charges being dropped?

If there was ever a case in which political influence wiped its feet on the law, this was it….

Let’s end it for today with Cash for Clunkers, an Obama program that has been suspendedone week. Ed Morrissey: after it ran out of gas in

Somewhere in here, there’s a lesson to be learned about government distortion of private markets.

When government artificially inflate the value of a commodity in attempting social engineering, it usually either spends more money than they initially realize, leave the private sector holding the bag, and make themselves look foolish … at best:

The government suspended the explosively popular cash-for-clunkers program, fearing it would go broke before it could pay what it still owes dealers for a huge backlog of sales, according to congressional offices and a dealer group.

Suspension of the program was confirmed by Bailey Wood, legislative director for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which had been called Thursday night by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which administers the program. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., confirmed as well, saying she had been told by congressional leaders.

Why was it “explosively popular”? It made worthless cars valuable again. The vehicles got $4500 for a brief window rather than their previous real value, in many cases a fraction of the government payout.

That inflated value prompted people to rush to their local dealers to use their government subsidy to buy new vehicles.

Unfortunately, Congress miscalculated how many people would be willing to squash their old car for that kind of boost in trade-in value. No harm, no foul, right?

Not exactly. …

Ed concludes:

Of course, no one has really explained why taxpayers should subsidize the destruction of gas-guzzlers (we do remember that we’re paying those ridiculous subsidies, don’t we?) that many of us couldn’t afford when they were sold as new, or that we had better sense than to buy.

No one explained why taxpayers should subsidize sub-prime loans for people who didn’t qualify to buy the houses they wanted ten years ago, either.

It’s yet another example of how government rarely learns from its own mistakes.

This one, fortunately, will be much less costly, but therefore also much less likely to teach people anything.

It’s this same crowd that wants to take over our health care.

Mike