Welcome to the weekend edition of your open thread. The thread is yours.
Fox News and the far right have worked themselves into a frenzy of the New Black Panthers. It’s beginning to creep into the mainstream news, which is a shame because it’s a fake controversy.Even conservative Bush appointees agree that this is a fantasy.
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 “controversy” is so absurd it’s hard to describe it. During the 2008 elections, two men who identified themselves as members of the New Black Panthers Party stood outside a precinct. One had a nightstick. Republican poll-watchers complained. The Bush Justice Department did not pursue any charges because no actual voters complained.
That’s it. That’s all I know. I find it rather telling that Republicans somehow think this will bring down Obama and Holder. Why? Because the NBP are African-American? Because Holder didn’t pursue the case after Alberto Gonzales didn’t either?
You’ve probably already heard about the Utah “illegal immigrant” list that got sent to law enforcement and media outlets. Two state workers have been suspended pending investigation. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Two employees with the Department of Workforce Services have been put on leave after an investigation revealed that they apparently accessed records on hundreds of Utah residents to compile a list of 1,300 names of people purportedly in the country illegally.
A handful of other DWS workers also may have been part of the effort and are the subject of an ongoing probe.
“This tactic by these rogue employees to go out and single out individuals and their families and, in some cases, falsely accusing people of an illegal status is in fact deplorable and is in fact counterproductive to the issue that ought to be the focus, which is the illegal immigration issue,” Gov. Gary Herbert said at a press conference.
The two workers were escorted from the state office building where they worked and are on administrative leave pending the completion of the full investigation, said Kristen Cox, Department of Workforce Services executive director. She said it is uncertain if their leave would be unpaid.
“We feel very confident that we have identified the core group,” she said. “The people we’ve identified certainly have strong political opinions and have frustration around the issue of immigration. … If they want to go rogue, they need to quit the department.”
I think what will be interesting to learn is how the compiled the list and how they determined that these people were in the country illegally (at least some were legal immigrants).