Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

NAACP Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 05, 2014 25 Comments
The U.S. Senate has rejected the nomination of Debo Patrick Adegbile, a former NAACP official who acted as lawyer for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, to become head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Adegbile represented Abu-Jamal on appeal. The widow of officer Danny Faulkner along with police organizations and other groups, objected to the nomination, arguing among other things, that Adegbile became a champion of Abu-Jamal beyond being his appellate lawyer. A change.org petition started by Faulkner's widow, Maureen, garnered widespread support and stated in part as follows:
Mr. Adegbile previously led the Legal Defense Fund at the NAACP. In that position, Mr. Adegbile chose to throw the weight and resources of his organization behind Abu-Jamal. Attorneys working under Mr. Adegbile’s supervision have stood before rallies of Abu-Jamal supporters and openly professed that it was “an extreme honor” to represent the man who put a hollow based bullet into Officer Faulkner’s brain as he lay on the ground wounded, unarmed, and defenseless. While Mr. Adegbile may be a well-qualified and competent litigator, through his words, his decisions, and his actions he has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that he is not the best person to fill this position. Clearly there are others with similar qualifications that would be better choices. The thought that Mr. Adegbile would be rewarded, in part, for the work he did for Officer Faulkner’s killer is revolting. Please set aside any partisan feelings you have and do the right thing when you vote on Mr. Adegbile’s confirmation. Please vote “no.”
In early February, Faulkner's widow was interviewed about the nomination: In a key procedural vote today, the nomination failed to advance, by a vote of 52-47 against, with 7 Democrats voting No:

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 29, 2013 32 Comments
This morning Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois held a US Senate hearing nominally on the subject of Stand Your Ground laws. Here I'll just share an overview of the testimony, along with my own general observations. (More detailed posts will likely follow.) [caption id="attachment_69289" align="alignnone" width="450"]US Senate hearing: "Stand Your Ground: Civil rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force" US Senate hearing: "Stand Your Ground: Civil rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force"[/caption] My first general observation is that the anti-SYG folks were, as experience would suggest, big on emotion and small on actual facts, law, or data. One of the anti-SYG witnesses, Professor Sullivan from Harvard Law School, did raise some actual data--but when these were utterly destroyed by the later testimony of Dr. John Lott and Elliot Shapiro of CATA, Professor Sullivan was swift to discount the use of data (which he himself had introduced into the testimony) and instead focus on the "real people" behind the data. In sharp contrast, the testimony of the pro-SYG speakers was focused and direct. Second, the anti-SYG folks persistently conflated the legal concept of Stand Your Ground with utterly discrete legal concepts, such as presumptions of reasonableness and civil/criminal immunity.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 11, 2013 19 Comments

I followed Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart and Larry O'Connor over an edited video of Sherrod's speech to an NAACP chapter very carefully early on, demonstrating beyond doubt that the core of Sherrod's claim, that she was falsely portrayed in a short video Breitbart released,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 26, 2013 61 Comments

The deification of Trayvon Martin, with comparisons to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Emmitt Till, is just part of the false narrative of the prosecution of George Zimmerman. We are seeing a mythology grow and become embedded on campuses which misrepresents the factual and legal nature...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 09, 2013 19 Comments
NAACP President Ben Jealous says he is stepping down at the end of the year to spend time with his family and pursue a career in teaching. From ABC News:

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous, who is credited with boosting finances at the nation's largest civil rights organization and helping to stabilize it, said Sunday that he plans to step down at the end of the year.

The Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said that its rosters of online activists and donors have grown tremendously during his five-year tenure. Jealous was the group's youngest-ever leader when he was hired as its president at age 35 in 2008.

In a written statement Sunday, Jealous, now 40, said he plans to pursue teaching at a university and wants to spend time with his young family.

Jealous most recently pressed for the DoJ to pursue a civil rights case against George Zimmerman. Of course, Tea Party members will also remember Jealous most for his 2010 speech when he angrily demanded that the Tea Party expel its “bigots and racists,” as the NAACP passed a resolution condemning the Tea Party as racist.
My message to the Tea Party is this: you must expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take full responsibility for all of their actions. We will no longer allow you to hide like cowards behind signs that say, "lynch our President" or anyone else.
During his speech, Jealous had also cited in part as proof of the so-called racism the phantom N-word incident that supposedly occurred outside the Capitol steps in DC at the height of the health care debate.  This despite the fact numerous videos surfaced that showed no signs of truth to claims of use of the n-word and intentional spitting on a congressman.  As more began to question the validity of the accusations, even some of the MSM began to back away from such strong charges and tried to change the direction of the narrative. Jealous and his NAACP followed with a campaign to further smear the Tea Party as racist when it teamed with other left wing groups to launch TeaPartyTracker.org, a campaign based on the same model as Southern Poverty Law Center’s HateWatch blog.  It was a short lived one, as Professor Jacobson noted at the time:

Posted by New Neo on July 28, 2013 148 Comments

Look, I want to give Bill Cosby his props. He's been speaking up courageously for years on the problems within the black community, and he's gotten a lot of flak for it. It can't have been easy for him. Here are some excerpts from the address...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 19, 2013 166 Comments
President Obama surprised reporters by showing up to today's White House press briefing, where he made remarks about the Zimmerman case and on the Stand Your Ground law. National Journal was able to capture some of the key quotes:
While the president began by commending the judge in the case as "professional" and the jurors as "properly instructed," he brought the case into the much broader context of race in America. "When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said this could've been my son. Another way of saying that is, a Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago. When you think about why in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away." He also said that "there are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping at a department store. That includes me." The same goes for African American men who have heard "locks click on the doors of cars," or seen a "woman clutching her purse nervously" in an elevator. The president also said that "there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws" -- from the death penalty to drug laws. He continued (with our emphasis): "Folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated that they feel that there's no context for them, that that context is being denied. And that all contributes to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that from top to bottom both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2012 17 Comments

And it goes on, and on, and on. Any notion that the pathetic racial politics which drive Democrats would relax post-election were shattered immediately.  There is a sickness in the Democratic Party and media which just seems to get worse and worse. It's bad enough that they...

Posted by Anne Segal on October 20, 2012 8 Comments

Last night I attended the opening night of the Andrew Breitbart documentary Hating Breitbart in St. Louis, MO. Seeing Andrew again on screen was a reminder of just how irreplaceable he is. Already I was starting to forget just how intelligent he was, how courageous, how...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 14, 2012 53 Comments

Because you have been bad, and because I want to inflict maximum pain, you must watch all 12 minutes of this video in which Lawrence "Herman Cain didn't know how to be black" O'Donnell leads a panel of race card players attacking Mitt Romney's speech to...

Accessibility by WAH