Forty seven years ago this week, Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in the biggest landslide since 1936. Today, both left and right see in Goldwater’s defeat the beginnings of the conservative revolution that would bring Ronald Reagan into office in 1980. Missed in this thesis, though, is how 1964 was a prime example of modern Democratic campaigning with its allies — the mainstream media — that we suffer under today. It was also a historic turning point that might have been avoided.

It is fashionable for the Left to co-opt Barry Goldwater as they have Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton called him a “patriot” and James Carville characterized him a “principled conservative,” at odds with today’s “loony right.” But this was not so in 1964. The mainstream media, not called that then, labeled him a fascist. Walter Cronkite said of him that “Goldwater was going places, among them Nazi Germany.” Psychiatrists lined up behind the Johnson campaign, declaring Goldwater “emotionally unstable.” Reporters were aware that LBJ was heightening the conflict in Vietnam, but said nothing while LBJ promised not to send “American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

Journalists on the campaign trail saw Johnson drunkenly board a plane armed with nuclear weapons and then accidentally drop them on the United States. Luckily, by the grace of God, they did not go off. None of this was reported, while newspapers editors worked in overdrive to portray Goldwater as eager to push the button. Today, pundits argue that dirty tricks by Carville and Begalia were something new on the horizon for Democrats and were borrowed from decades of Republican campaigns. But Johnson was a pioneer of the Clinton War Room. He used the FBI to wiretap the candidate, bought political information from Goldwater defectors, and in an eerie foretaste of Watergate, put domestic CIA chief Howard Hunt on the White House payroll to infiltrate, even burglarize, Goldwater headquarters (with Democratic blessing, Hunt filtered his findings and received cash through a dummy corporation called National Press). What is striking about these tactics was how unnecessary they were. Johnson beforehand knew he was going to win, but he wanted “to crucify” Goldwater nonetheless.

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Only in Washington would political appointees think it appropriate to have secret a government workshop on transparency, and only in Washington would a politician promote his efforts on transparency while simultaneously taking steps to keep the American people in the dark about their government. That’s exactly what the Obama White House did on December 7, 2009. Judicial Watch now has the evidence to prove it.

Judicial Watch recently released documents detailing the Obama White House decision to close to reporters a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) training workshop conducted by the Office of Information Policy (OIP) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). JW obtained the documents from the OIP in response to a FOIA request filed on the same day the workshop was held.

The documents consist of a series of emails between White House staff and the Director of the OIP. And here are a few key excerpts from these emails demonstrating what disrespect this White House has for transparency:

• “I am going to touch base with my public affairs office re your suggestion to get their reaction. I, personally don’t object as my message is the same whether the event is open or not. Our concern had been solely with the inhibiting effect it would have on the gov’t ’ees [employees] who might not speak freely if press are there.” — Melanie Pustay, OIP Director, to Blake Roberts, Deputy Associate White House counsel, December 6, 2009.
• “Ok – please don’t have them reach out to any reporters before I clear w/ wh [White House] press.” — Blake Roberts to Melanie Pustay, December 6, 2009.
• “After talking with… ben labolt [then-Assistant White House Press Secretary], the decision is that the training will be closed to the press.” — Gina Talamona, Press Release Deputy Director for the DOJ to Melanie Pustay and Brian Hauck, Counsel to the Associate Attorney General, December 7, 2009.
• “I think you have the right to give closed training when you want it.” — Brian Hauck to Melanie Pustay and Gina Talamona.

The documents also include a statement by OIP Director Melanie Pustay regarding previous FOIA workshops: “So far I have always held parallel sessions, one for agency ‘ees [employees] and then one that is open.”

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Today, Andrew Breitbart published some photographs of an event in March 2007 where Senator and candidate Barack Obama shared a stage with Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party.

It was not, as the mainstream media wants to believe, a mere coincidence. Certainly not to Malik Shabazz himself.

It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at the time of that event, Senator Obama was still considered a long shot for the White House. Hillary Clinton was still ahead in the polls, and had already secured endorsements from civil rights icons like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Meanwhile, Obama’s support among black Americans was weak. Just a few weeks before the event with the Panthers, Steve Kroft of CBS’s 60 Minutes had noted that some black voters were openly questioning Obama’s racial authenticity saying, “There are African-Americans who don’t think that you’re black enough, who don’t think that you have had the required experience.” Obama smiled at such dismissals, but it was clear he had work to do.

Obama’s trip to Selma was obviously intended as a solution to the problem. There, he was able to stake a claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement by participating in the annual remembrance of the famous ‘65 march with Rep. Lewis.

“Don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama,” Obama told the audience inside the Brown Chapel A.M.E. church.”

He also said: “I must send greetings from Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. but I got a letter giving me encouragement and saying how proud he was that I had announced and encouraging me to stay true to my ideals and my values and not to be fearful.”

And as the pictures Big Government published this morning show, Obama also shared a podium outside with Shabazz and others.

I did find a radio interview Shabazz gave in May 2008 in which he reflects on his interaction with Obama in Selma. Some of the things he says about Obama are pretty interesting:

Aside from the confirmation that Shabazz did meet Obama in Selma, I’ll just highlight this bit of the conversation: (more…)

During Bibi Netanyahu’s 2010 visit to the White House, in the middle of a tense settlement concession conversation an irritated Obama left Mr. Netanyahu sitting in a room to rush upstairs for din-din with Shelley and the girls. Abruptly walking out of the room, the President said “Let me know if there is anything new.”  Either the Israeli Prime Minister was being officially dissed, or Michelle refuses to tolerate any excuse for Barack showing up late for dinner.

However, in the future, should the Prime Minister desire another sit-down with the President of the United States, he’ll have the option of purchasing a roll of tickets for the “Sometime soon, can we meet for dinner/Reelect Barack Obama” raffle.

Before the “Sometime Soon, Can We Meet For Dinner?” initiative, Netanyahu didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting Barack to sit through an entire conversation.  Now, at least Bibi has as much opportunity as anyone else willing to contribute five bucks.

Now, if by chance Bibi’s ticket is pulled out of the spinning drum, Obama, albeit under duress, will be obliged to endure eating blintzes and can no longer escape a Jerusalem settlement discussion using dinner getting cold as an excuse.

The President of the United States selling dinner raffle tickets may indicate that the man is forlorn and in need of genuine companionship. Begging to be shown love by the people who just three years ago were showering him with confetti and weeping at the mere mention of his name, frankly, is both “creepy” and pathetic.

Barack Obama’s dine-with-me/love-me idea started when the 2012 reelection campaign sent out an email with this subject line: “Sometime soon, can we meet for dinner?” Why would an American president ask such an unusual question? Obviously, to goad supporters into donating money in hopes of winning face time with Mr. Lonely.

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Judicial Watch earned a victory in court on August 4 in its pursuit of documents related to the Obama administration’s Black Panther scandal. (This gets a bit technical, so hang with me.)

In short, a federal court rejected a claim of the “attorney work-product doctrine” by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for documents prepared after the government dismissed its case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense on May 15, 2009. (The work-product doctrine shields materials prepared in anticipation of litigation from release. The Obama administration was using it to try to protect documents sought by JW through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and a related lawsuit.)

Several members of the New Black Panther Party were accused of engaging in voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential campaign.

In his August 4, 2011, decision, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton rejected the Obama DOJ’s arguments that documents prepared after the government dismissed its case (against the Black Panthers on May 15, 2009) could be withheld under the “attorney work-product privilege” exemption. Judge Walton explained:

Although an injunction remains in place in the New Black Panther Party case…the filing of the motion for voluntary dismissal largely marked the end of the litigation. As such, the documents prepared subsequent to that event were not prepared in contemplation of litigation and are thus outside the scope of the work-product privilege.

Because the case had essentially ended on May 15, 2009, Judge Walton found that “it is difficult to see how” the 24 documents created after May 15, 2009, “were prepared or obtained because of the prospect of litigation, which is the testing question the Court must answer in evaluating the DOJ’s work-product claim.”

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Note: This is one part of a running series entitled “Indoctrination Fridays,” a weekly review of leftist propaganda incorporated into public school curriculum and oftentimes geared towards elementary students.  For more of the series, please visit PublicSchoolSpending.com.

The Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s and the New Black Panther Party today are known for employing violence, intimidation and radicalism to get their way.  The Black Panthers were founded in 1966 on Marxist principles, advocating socialism as a solution for the grievances of African-Americans.

Its “Honorary Prime Minister,” Stokley Carmichael, said in a speech that year:

“This country is a nation of thieves. It stole everything it has, beginning with black people. The U.S. cannot justify its existence as the policeman of the world any longer. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want to be part of that system. We must question whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping everybody else.”

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which also has curricula that will be featured in this series, has labeled the New Black Panthers a “hate group.”  That’s saying something.

But that’s of little relevance to Wayne Au.

The Seattle high school teacher-turned-professor taught his students to apply the principles of the Black Panthers to their own problems.  Seriously.

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Cross-Posts listed at: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

The Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) cannot shake the New Black Panther Party scandal. Every week new revelations emerge about the racism and political favoritism that are corrupting our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Last week, Judicial Watch released to the public brand new documents from the Obama DOJ that provide further evidence that top political appointees at the DOJ were intimately involved in the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

And just like previous documents we’ve uncovered, this new evidence directly contradicts sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership participated in the decision.

Remember this exchange between Perez and the Commission?

COMMISSIONER KIRSANOW: Was there any political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case any further than it was?

ASST. ATTY. GEN. PEREZ: No. The decisions were made by Loretta King in consultation with Steve Rosenbaum, who is the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

Perez also suggested that the dispute was merely “a case of career people disagreeing with career people.”

Not true.

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Those of you who have been following the New Black Panther Party scandal will be very interested in a new article published in The Washington Post last week. It includes some explosive new accusations of racism against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) as documented in a draft report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as a result of a year-long investigation into the DOJ’s decision to drop the Black Panther voter intimidation case.

Of course, much of this report necessarily relates to the specific voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers, who brandished weapons and threatened voters at a polling station during the 2008 elections.

According to Post excerpts, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report reflects a deep and rancorous divide within the DOJ over whether that case should have been prosecuted. Here are a few excerpts from the article, which I suggest you read in full:

•Interviews and government documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that the [Black Panther] 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.
•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.

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Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that politics had anything to do with its Justice Department’s (DOJ) decision to abandon its lawsuit against the Black Panthers, a “civil rights” group that brandished weapons, blocked a polling station and hurled racial insults at voters on Election Day 2008. In fact, at least one Justice Department official swore to it under oath.

But according to evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch, this is yet another Obama administration falsehood.

On September 21, released a draft Vaughn index prepared by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that shows that the two top political appointees at the DOJ were involved in the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense (NBPP).

The index, which we acquired pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, describes documents the government is withholding from the public. Among those documents are internal DOJ emails regarding the Black Panther case between the highest political appointees inside the DOJ, including former Deputy Attorney General David Ogden and the Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, the second and third ranking officials at the DOJ.

Here’s one example: A May 10, 2009, email from Associate Attorney General Perrelli to Deputy Associate Attorney General and former Democratic election lawyer Sam Hirsh. “Where are we on the Black Panther case?” Perrelli asks in the subject header. The email also includes Deputy Attorney General Ogden’s “current thoughts on the case.”

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New information about the violent criminal history of the Philadelphia Black Panthers once again calls into question the Department of Justice handling of this racist hate group.

Records obtained from the Philadelphia Courts document arrests for assault, robbery, domestic violence, and drug dealing by King Samir and Jerry Jackson.

According to one of his victims, King Samir does more than intimidate voters with his baton.  He beat the man in the head with the same type weapon he was seen brandishing outside of a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.

The beating, in 1995, was so severe the man was hospitalized and appeared in court with staples still in his head.

From the court transcript:

Q: Tell the court what if anything the defendant did

A: He hit me with a cane.

Q: What did it have on it?

A: Two D batteries

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Jerry Jackson, notorious member of the New Black Panther Party, who was seen in the video below intimidating and threatening voters in 2008, is running for re-election as a member of the Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia.

Here is the “sample ballot” for the 14th Ward, 4th Division. A sample ballot is posted outside of each polling location. You can see Jackson is listed first in a field of three. The top two vote getters will be elected to a four year term as a member of the Democratic Executive Committee. In 2008, Jackson was issued a certificate by the Democratic Party to be inside of the polling place where he was seen intimidating voters.

Jackson and King Samir Shabazz were originally indicted for intimidating voters, but the Department of Justice spiked the case.

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By Tom Fitton

Documents released today by Judicial Watch reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), as well as the Obama administration’s decision to shut down a criminal investigation into these matters.

Two specific complaints were filed against ACORN for alleged voter fraud in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively. As part of its continuing investigation into alleged criminal activities of ACORN, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents concerning this matter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.” Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…” Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old. By burdening these election officials with fraudulent registrations, ACORN put those who legally registered at risk of not being put on voting rolls at all.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.

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When ACORN was caught stacking voter rolls with fake names leading up to the 2008 election, we stood up and took notice. Maybe an aberration, maybe part of a plan to undermine our system of elections. On Election Day, Black Panthers were inside a Pennsylvania polling station intimidating voters. They ultimately got off and the prosecutor who went after them was “reassigned”. Still, maybe it is simply coincidence. What if a high-profile state Attorney General argued that voters have no right to vote in secret?

I’m not talking about Card Check, I’m talking about the voting all of us do in every election. Consider the following words argued in Champaign County Court in Illinois by the Illinois Attorney General’s office headed by Lisa Madigan:

While plaintiff attempts to suggest to the Court that there is a fundamental right to a secret ballot, no such right exists. (bottom of Page 11 of pleading)

The Attorney General’s office argues that the United States Constitution, nor any fundamental right, protect a voter from being able to vote in secret. In effect, this means that it is only out of mere courtesy that the government doesn’t simply sit in the voting booth with you making sure you are making “fully informed decisions”.

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