If you follow me on Twitter, you know I spent a chunk of the weekend reading through the minutes of meetings from the #OccupyWallSt protests. While the time spent shifting through the mind-numbingly inane discussions among these twits is time I’ll never get back, I did learn a few interesting things. Among these is the fact that the protesters are obsessed with process. Actually, obsessed doesn’t really capture it. They are singularly focused and consumed by discussions of “how” they are going to go about doing things. They are so concerned that any one person may feel ‘left out’ or that any other person may exercise too much “control”, that they spend countless time discussing and debating “how” they are going to conduct meetings; often during the meetings themselves.

Which goes a long way to understanding how the situation in the video above happened. Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of real protests to win real freedoms and rights, asked to be able to address the young, overwhelmingly white, protesters in Atlanta, during one of their “General Assemblies.” So far, so typical. Anytime a group of people gathers for a political event, politicians of all stripes will often want to speak to the crowd. And, invariably, accommodations are generally made to let this happen. After all, an elected officials adds a certain amount of ‘legitimacy’ to the meeting.

Instead, some of the protesters objected to Rep. Lewis speaking. Partly because it wasn’t yet “time” for speeches, but also because letting him speak at that time would suggest he was “above” or “more important” than anyone else there. (The second obsession of these protesters.) That the whole farce played out WHILE Rep. John Lewis was standing there is delicious. The awkwardness is palatable.

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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…)

New photographs obtained exclusively by BigGovernment.com reveal that Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007.

The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media’s failure to examine Obama’s extremist ties and radical roots.

In addition, the new images raise questions about the possible motives of the Obama administration in its infamous decision to drop the prosecution of the Panthers for voter intimidation.

The images, presented below, also renew doubts about the transparency of the White House’s guest logs–in particular, whether Panther National Chief Malik Zulu Shabazz is the same “Malik Shabazz” listed among the Obama administration’s early visitors.

Tomorrow, J. Christian Adams, the Department of Justice whistleblower in the New Black Panther Party case, will release his new book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery).

The book exposes Obama administration corruption far beyond the Panther dismissal, and reveals how the institutional Left has turned the power of the DOJ into an ideological weapon.

Adams’s book also describes, in detail, the Selma march at which then-Senator Obama was joined by a group of Panthers who had come to support his candidacy.

Among those appearing with Obama was Shabazz, the Panther leader who was one of the defendants in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed. Also present was the Panthers’ “Minister of War,” Najee Muhammed, who had called for murdering Dekalb County, Georgia, police officers with AK-47’s and then mocking their widows in this video (7:20 – 8:29).

Injustice includes a disturbing photo of Shabazz and the Panthers marching behind Obama with raised fists in the “Black Power” salute.

There are even more photographs.

I have learned that Regnery initially received approval from a person who took pictures of the events in Selma to publish these additional photographs in Injustice.

After the photographer wrote Regnery reversing his permission to include the photographs in Injustice, the images were removed from the photographer’s Flickr account.  Yet we were able to capture them before they disappeared.

The photographs show Obama sharing the same podium at the event with the Panthers.

In the first image, Shabazz stands at the podium, surrounded by uniformed Panthers, including Muhammed. In the second photograph, Obama commands the same podium.

Here are the images:

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The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day. (more…)

Remarks of President Obama at Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Dinner, as prepared by the White House:

Hello CBC! It is wonderful to be back with all of you. I know you’ve spent a good deal of time talking about what the future holds for the African American community, and the United States of America as a whole. I’ve been spending time thinking about that, too. And at this time of great challenge, one source of inspiration is the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus.

I want us all to take a moment and remember what was happening forty years ago when 13 black members of Congress decided to come together and form this caucus. It was 1969. More than a decade had passed since the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education. It had been several years since Selma and Montgomery, since Dr. Martin Luther King told America of his dream, all culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

The founders of this caucus could look back and feel proud of the progress that had been made. They could feel confident that America was moving in the right direction. But they…. (more…)

As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.

On Saturday, during the peaceful and patriotic tea party protest at the Capitol, the Democrats staged a series of symbolic acts meant to manipulate the media to do its bidding. The Congressional Black Caucus pulled the Selma card and chose to walk through the crowd in the hopes of creating a YouTube incident. This is what it looked like:

and this:

There is no reason in 21st century America on an issue that is not a black or white or a civil rights issue to have a bloc of black people walk slowly through a mostly white crowd to make a racial point. The walk in and of itself — with two of the participants holding their handheld cameras above their heads hoping to document “proof” — was an act of racism meant to create a contrast between the tea party crowd and themselves. (more…)