I guess I owe you an apology.

I was wrong about the New Black Panther case being a matter of the New Black Panthers having black skin.  It turns out there was a very good reason why, after winning the case again the Panthers, the case was dropped.

And it had nothing to do with the race of the defendents.

I know this because an appointee of Attorney General Eric Holder did an internal investigation of the Department of Justice and found everything to be ship-shape.

Again, my bad:

The Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdog on Tuesday told Congress that it had cleared all department lawyers of wrongdoing in relation to a much-disputed voter-intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party, a black-nationalist fringe group.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility said it had found no evidence that officials involved in decisions about the case acted inappropriately out of political or racial motivations.

So there it is.  The Department of Justice took a good hard look at the Department of Justice and said, “Um, nope.  Nothing to see here.”

So I guess I was all wrong.

“We determined that the attorneys involved in the NBPP case made good faith, reasonable assessments of the facts and the law,” wrote Robin Ashton, a counsel in the office.

Again, this is the Department of Justice investigating the Department of Justice.  Are you surprised they found no wrong doing?

Sam Foster writes at Left Coast Rebel:

Robin Ashton is not part of some nonpartisan commission. She works for and reports to Eric Holder. She’s an Eric Holder appointment who was given the job of exonerating Obama since just last December right before Republicans took hold of the keys of executive oversight.

The DOJ findings stand in stark contrast with the nonpartisan Commission on Civil Rights which in January found that Obama’s administration was in fact, overtly culpable in the New Black Panther proceedings. But, since the commission issued this preliminary finding, Obama has appointed Democrat and Chicago attorney (as if there could be an Obama appointment from some other city) Martin Castro to chair the commission. Do you think we’ll ever get an official report now?

I do.  And it will read exactly as Eric Holder and President Obama want it to read.

It seems the Holder DOJ has installed the Memory Holes.  Time to put them to work.

The Washington Post has taken a look at the story behind the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

A good look.

Here’s what they found:

Interviews and government documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that the case tapped into deep divisions within the Justice Department that persist today over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race.

The dispute over the Panthers, and the Justice Department’s handling of it, was politicized from the start, documents and interviews show. On Election Day, the issue was driven by Republican poll watchers and officials and a conservative Web site.

At the department, Adams and his colleagues pushed a case that other career lawyers concluded had major evidentiary weaknesses. After the Obama administration took over, high-level political appointees relayed their thoughts on the case in a stream of internal e-mails in the days leading to the dismissal.

That decision to pull back the lawsuit caused conflicts so heated that trial team members at times threw memos in anger or cursed at supervisors.

That first paragraph is a game changer.

How is it justifiable to look at legal cases through the lens of race?  How is it acceptable to have a division of the Justice Department that doesn’t know if they should prosecute a case because the defendant is a minority?

There is no justification.  There has to be some serious changes made.

And no, I don’t blame this all on Eric Holder.  It’s obvious this is a culture that has been established over time.  It was like this when Holder arrived.  Oh, he made of emboldened some of the veterans there, so cases like this one were dropped solely on racial reasons, but he didn’t create the culture.

Some weapon’s grade housecleaning is in order.  There are people there, and no doubt someone knows who, that need to find employment elsewhere.

Comments like this show a culture that sees race as a reason to tolerate criminal activity against whites:

“The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around,” said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil rights protesters such as Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia.

Whether Holder or anyone else in this administration has the backbone, or motivation, to make the necessary changes is the question.

On June 30th, I wrote the following about the first claim of racism at the Department of Justice.  Megyn Kelly had just interviewed J. Christian Adams and the word was out about the lack of concern when white folks were victims of voter intimidation.

“There is a pervasive hostility within the civil rights division at the Justice Department toward these sorts of cases,” Adams told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.

Adams says the dismissal is a symptom of the Obama administration’s reverse racism and that the Justice Department will not pursue voting rights cases against white victims.

“In voting, that will be the case over the next few years, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

J. Christian Adams was dismissed as a partisan hack, a right winger with an agenda.

Today, his supervisor, Christopher Coates, went against the orders of the DOJ, who told him to ignore a supoena, and spoke truth to power.

His message was disturbing.  He described a division of the Department of Justice that was hostile toward defending white people and prosecuting the minorities who intimidate them:

He said civil rights attorneys stick to cases that involve minority victims, and he said the Black Panther case was dismissed following “pressure” by the NAACP and “anger” at the case within the Justice Department itself.

“That anger was the result of their deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against,” he said.

He said a 2005 case against a black official in Mississippi over voter intimidation claims had stirred a backlash in the department and from civil rights groups — and that the New Black Panther case was no different.

The Department of Justice dismissed the testimony, calling the investigation “thin on facts and evidence and thick on rhetoric.”

“The department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved,” department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said. “We are committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of the federal laws that prohibit voter intimidation.”

Then why was the case dropped?  It was already won.  What was the reason to let the New Black Panther Party members off the hook?

Coates called it a “travesty of justice.”

Now before you left wing trolls start sounding off about how this guy is just another wingnut, read this:

Christopher Coates is a U.S. Justice Department official and former ACLU lawyer.

Coates’ testimony, combined with the testimony of J. Christian Adams, need to be investigated.  If there are DOJ lawyers who are refusing to provide Americans the best service they can because of the color of their skin, they need to find other work.  If supervisors are creating a culture where this is allowed, or even encouraged, there needs to be action as well, perhaps prosecution for civil rights violations.

But one thing is clear.  There are problems in the Department of Justice.  And someone needs to take a microscope to the place.

Further reading in the Rightosphere:

• Pajamas Media – Full text of testimony
• Hot Air
• Flopping Aces
• The Corner
• Confederate Yankee
• J. Christian Adams at Pajamas Media
• Gateway Pundit
• Michelle Malkin
• Power Line

Cross posted at Right Wing News.