Yesterday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released its report on its year-long investigation into the right-wing media's ridiculous claim that the Department of Justice's handling of alleged voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party indicates racially-charged corruption on the DOJ's part. Unsurprisingly, given the commission's conservative activist composition and its previous flawed draft report, the report largely adopts the right-wing media's storyline as its own.
The three commissioners who opposed the release of the report are not happy with the investigation's direction or the report's conclusions, and are making their feelings known.
Republican Vice-Chair Abigail Thernstrom - who has called the case “very small potatoes” and said that the USCCR majority's investigation “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” - wrote in her dissent:
This investigation lacked political and intellectual integrity from the outset, and has been consistently undermined by the imbalance between the gravity of the allegations and the strength of the evidence available to support such charges. Some commissioners offered serious, principled critiques of the process, and questioned the evidentiary record. Their views were contemptuously ignored by the commission's majority.
Likewise, Democratic commissioners Arlan Melendez and Michael Yaki slam the investigation as “a tremendous waste of scarce government resources” that “squandered” the commission's reputation. They also criticize the USCCR majority and the pseudoscandal's chief promoter, Fox News, for having “given the NBPP more media attention than it ever could have garnered or purchased on its own.” From the dissent:
The Commission's investigation into, and this Report concerning, the New Black Panther Party (“NBPP”) have been a tremendous waste of scarce government resources. They have wasted our own resources at the Commission but those of the Department of Justice as well. In addition to squandering time, money and attention, the majority has further squandered the reputation of the United States Commission on Civil Rights as it spent more than a year on an Ahab-like quest to hobble the Obama Administration and to attempt to rehabilitate the disgraced record of the previous Administration's Department of Justice.
Our dissent does not attempt to make definitive claims about the motives or actions of the United States Department of Justice (“Department”) past or present. We have no special insight into the hearts or minds of the people working at the Department. Where we differ from our colleagues is that we did not enter into this investigation having already made up our minds that there was wrong-doing by the Department. Therefore, we did not interpret all evidence in light of any foregone conclusions or ignore any evidence that flatly contradicted any conclusions.
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Our dissent should also not be read as a defense of the NBPP. The NBPP is a hate group whose views are as ugly as they are outlandish. We would not even bother to include this disclaimer were it not for the fact that a good deal of this Report relies on sources who maintain absurd beliefs in the out-sized significance and influence of what is in reality a tiny fringe group. Among the many ironies surrounding this NBPP hullabaloo is the fact that the NBPP's exaggerated sense of its own importance (or menace) and its conspiracy theory mentality is matched (or even exceeded) by the Commission's majority and its ideological allies in the news media and in government. A further irony is the fact that, but for the constant promotion of this partisan investigation by FOX News and the USCCR, the NBPP might well have vanished into even further obscurity these last two years. We must posit that the USCCR majority has given the NBPP more media attention than it ever could have garnered or purchased on its own.