Commentary Magazine

Topic: minority

Republicans Turn Up the Heat

03.11.2010 - 3:11 PM

It seems as though the Democrats haven’t quite put Eric Massa out of sight. House Republicans know a good thing when they see it:

The House voted 402 to 1 Thursday to send the ethics committee a GOP measure calling for an investigation into how Democratic leaders handled allegations of sexual misconduct by former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.). But a senior Democratic aide said the ethics committee never shut down its investigation of the Massa scandal in the first place – despite the fact that numerous sources familiar with the investigation told POLITICO, the Washington Post and other media outlets Wednesday that it had. … The GOP resolution, offered by Minority Leader John Boehner, calls on the ethics committee to create a special investigative subcommittee to look into the Massa allegations and report back to the full House by June 30 on the results of the inquiry.

This, of course, will keep the scandal brewing and test whether the Democratic leadership in fact had an inkling of what was going on. Moreover, the overwhelming vote suggests that the Democrats know they have a problem with ethics and with transparency. No longer can they strongarm the minority and rebuff the media and public with impunity. In the midst of the health-care fight, this wasn’t what the Democrats needed.

And this may not be the only ethics issue brewing. It could get worse, as we learn: “On the heels of ethics imbroglios that have ensnared a freshman Dem and a long-time committee chair, Dems could have another problem on their hands: Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-MI). Kilpatrick and a staffer have been summoned to give testimony before a federal grand jury, according to letters made public earlier this week.”

It seems that virtually nothing is going the Democrats’ way right now.

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Civil Rights Laws Run Only One Way?

01.14.2010 - 12:10 PM

A curious report appears over at Main Justice, a website that offers nice juicy gossip and often mirrors the liberal legal party line from the Justice Department. It seems that one of the New Black Panther Party members at issue in the controversial dismissal of the Election Day voter-intimidation case is hopping mad:

Last week in a podcast interview, [New Black Panther Party president Malik Zulu] Shabazz let loose — with a racially tinged rant against the Republicans he said are trying to turn the issue into campaign ads for this fall’s midterm elections. “These right-wing white, red-faced, red-neck Republicans are attacking the hell out of the New Black Panther Party, and we’re organizing now to fight back,” Shabazz told the podcast host, a man who calls himself “Brother Gary” and hosts a show called Conscious Chats on Blogtalk Radio.

Shabazz singled out GOP Reps. Frank Wolf (Va.) and Lamar Smith (Texas) — two critics on the House Judiciary Committee — along with “Old Uncle Tom, Michael Steele, the black Negro who heads the Republican National Committee.”

“We gearing up for a showdown with this cracker,” Shabazz said, although it wasn’t clear to whom he was referring. “He keep talking – we going to Capitol Hill, we’re just gearing up right now, we’ll go to Capitol Hill.”

Well, probably not what the Holder Justice Department was anxious to hear as it attempts to stonewall its way through the inquiry. But what’s even more interesting is the apparent “defense” offered by Main Justice for those Obama officials who chose to dismiss the case over the objections of career attorneys: “No actual voters came forward to complain — the objections came from white Republican poll watchers.”

So is that what’s at the root of the case here — the notion that voter-intimidation claims are less than valid if white Republicans bring them? The behavior of the New Black Panther Party members was, after all, captured on videotape, so the conduct of the defendants is really not in dispute. What seems to be gnawing at the liberal legal types, however, is that a voter-intimidation case could be instituted by whites — white Republicans no less. Read More

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Pirates Are Still at It

12.01.2009 - 9:48 AM

Pirates aren’t front-page news anymore, but they continue their predations. The latest news: Somalian desperados ventured 800 miles off the coast of Africa to seize a tanker loaded with $20 million of Saudi oil headed for the United States. The New York Times report notes: “The Somali pirate business appears to be back in full swing after a brief lull this summer that some attributed to increased naval patrols but that may have had more to do with the monsoon season. Now that the seas are calm, the pirates have resumed operations, acting with even greater sophistication.”

The increase in piratical activity is hardly surprising considering how poor most Somalis are and how much money they can make in this lucrative racket. As the Times further notes: “The vast ransoms paid for commercial vessels seem to be drawing more and more Somalis. Piracy used to be dominated by two clans, the Saleban, based in Xarardheere, and the Majeerten, who brought hijacked ships back to a small beach town called Eyl. Now, according to witnesses in Somalia, many other clans are involved, even Bantus, a minority group best known as farmers. ”

The underlying problem here is the toothless response of the international community, which won’t give orders to its warships to sink suspected pirate vessels on sight and won’t pursue the pirates into their onshore lairs. Nor will Western nations give pirates the kind of quick and merciless justice meted out by our ancestors in prior centuries. As I argued in this Foreign Affairs article, there is no secret solution to combating piracy. Western states defeated the pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a variety of tried and true measures. Our failure to heed those lessons today means that the piratical plague will continue to grow — and could wind up helping to finance the Islamist groups who are attempting to take over Somalia.

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