IG Report Shows Viper’s Den at Justice Department

Via Cousin John

The lead two sentences in a Tuesday afternoon Politico story got it right: “A scathing new report exposing bitter divisions and racial hostility at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is certain to complicate the confirmation process for Tom Perez, who currently heads the unit and is expected to be President Barack Obama’s pick as the next Secretary of Labor. The 258-page internal watchdog report out Tuesday resurrects questions about the handling of the controversial New Black Panther Party prosecution and faults Perez for giving misleading public testimony in 2010 when he said political appointees were not involved in decisions about the case.”

The amazing thing is that many more items in the report by the department’s Inspector General are even more explosive than those matters that rightly led the Politico account. While the IG labored mightily to credit almost every excuse offered by Obamite political appointees (and their ideological soul-mates in the career ranks) at Justice, the raw facts unearthed (or confirmed) in the new report make crystal clear the most important aspect of the Black Panther case all along: The dismissal of already-won charges against the Panthers was part and parcel of a long-running hostility within the Civil Rights Division – exacerbated and encouraged by the Obama political team – against race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws.

Liberals in the division were so hostile, in fact, that they tried to make the workplace a living hell for those career employees of a more conservative bent who merely wanted to apply the law as clearly written, to protect the civil rights of Americans of all races, not just minorities. It wasn’t just the outrageous accusations that the centrist or right-leaning employees were so racist that they yearned for days when “everyone wears a white sheet, the darkies say ‘yes’m’ and equal rights for all are the real ‘land of make believe.’” It wasn’t just the repeated harassment of a junior black staffer for daring to work on cases where the civil rights violators were black, including repeatedly calling him a “token” and accusing him of being a “turncoat.”

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