Thursday, March 6, 2014


News Clips For The Day


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obama-the-feckless-tyrant/2014/03/03/73470bdc-a320-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

Obama, the feckless tyrant
Dana Milbank
Opinion Writer Washington Post

President Obama is such a weak strongman. What’s more, he is a feeble dictator and a timid tyrant.

That, at any rate, is Republicans’ critique of him. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Obama’s critics pivoted seamlessly from complaining about his overreach to fretting that he is being too cautious. Call it Operation Oxymoron.

Last Wednesday, I sat in a House hearing and listened to Republicans describe Obama exercising “unparalleled use of executive power” and operating an “uber-presidency.” They accused him of acting like a “king” and a “monarch,” of making the United States like a “dictatorship” or a “totalitarian government” by exercising “imperial” and “magisterial power.”

But after events in Ukraine, this very tyrant was said to be so weak that it’s “shocking.”

“We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) proclaimed Sunday on CNN.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday that Obama has “a feckless foreign policy where nobody believes in America’s strength anymore.”

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) told Bloomberg News that “we’re projecting weakness.” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) told CNN that recent events make “the administration look weak.” And Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) told Fox News that the administration is “playing marbles” and that the Russians are “running circles around us.”

In theory, it is possible for Obama to rule domestic politics with an iron fist and yet play the 98-pound weakling in foreign affairs. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense that one person would vacillate between those two extremes. A better explanation is Obama’s critics are so convinced that he is wrong about everything that they haven’t paused to consider the consistency of their accusations.

Obama is neither tyrant nor pushover. In general, the criticism of him being inconsistent and indecisive is closer to the mark. But the accusation that he has been feckless in Ukraine is still dubious, because those demanding a stronger response have been unable to come up with one.

After Obama threatened Friday that “there will be costs” to Russia’s action in Ukraine, my colleague Charles Krauthammer, who in the past likened the president to Napoleon, said on Fox News that “everybody is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement.”




“Charles Krauthammer, who in the past likened the president to Napoleon, said on Fox News that “everybody is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement,” said writer Dana Milbank. This comment by Krauthammer, one of the more arrogant “talking heads” on television, illustrates why I never go to the Fox News website to get news articles. They boast that they are “always fair and balanced,” but I would add to that statement “toward the right.”

I think Obama has been trying to avoid threatening a war over Russia's classic bullying tactics and making the situation worse, while doing something useful that we can actually carry through with – going instead for NATO and UN involvement and diplomatic sanctions. I know I don't want us to start a war with anyone, and a war with a nation as powerful and apparently ruthless as Russia could be an invitation to disaster, especially with our troops still in Afghanistan. Let's finish one war before we start another one.





Jeffrey Sinclair, U.S. Army general, to plead guilty on 3 charges, deny more serious counts of sexually assaulting junior officer – CBS
AP March 6, 2014

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A U.S. Army general accused of sexually assaulting a junior officer will admit guilt on three lesser charges but maintains his innocence on allegations that he forced her to perform oral sex, his lawyer said Wednesday night.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair is set to enter the plea Thursday morning before opening statements are scheduled for his court martial at Fort Bragg. The primary accuser in the case is a female captain who claims Sinclair twice ended arguments about their relationship by unzipping his pants and forcing her head into his lap.
The woman says her commander threatened to kill her family if she told anyone about their three-year affair, which continued after the alleged assaults.

Sinclair's lawyer, Richard Scheff, said the general will plead guilty to having improper relationships with two other female Army officers and to committing adultery with his mistress, which is a crime in the military. He will also admit violating orders by possessing pornography in Afghanistan and to conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman.

Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne, faces life in prison if convicted of the remaining sexual assault charges.

Scheff said in an interview that his client is taking responsibility for his actions, but also strengthening his legal position headed into trial. The general had previously entered pleas of not guilty to all eight charges.

By admitting guilt on the three charges for which there is the strongest evidence, the married father of two narrows the focus of the upcoming trial to charges that rely heavily on the testimony and credibility of his former mistress.

"The government now has a big problem," Scheff said in an email. "It took pathetically weak assault charges and put a fancy wrapper around them. We just tore the wrapper off. The prosecution team no longer gets to distract us with salacious details about acts that aren't even criminal in the civilian world. All they're left with is a crime that never happened, a witness who committed perjury, and a pile of text messages and journal entries that disprove their claim."

The case against Sinclair, believed to be the most senior member of the U.S. military ever to face trial on sexual assault charges, comes as the Pentagon grapples with a troubling string of revelations involving rape and sexual misconduct within the ranks.

The defense will present evidence at trial that the female captain lied under oath during a pretrial hearing in January about her handling of an old iPhone containing messages between her and the general. Lawyers for Sinclair have painted the woman as a scorned lover who only reported the sexual assault allegations after the general refused to leave his wife.

The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they were sexually assaulted.

The captain testified that on Dec. 9, shortly after what she described as a contentious meeting with prosecutors, she rediscovered an old iPhone stored in a box at her home that still contained saved text messages and voicemails from the general. After charging the phone, she testified she synced it with her computer to save photos before contacting her attorney.

However, a defense expert's examination suggested the captain powered up the device more than two weeks before the meeting with prosecutors. She also tried to make a call and performed a number of other operations.

Three additional experts verified those findings.
During a pretrial hearing on Thursday, a top Pentagon lawyer testified that the lead prosecutor assigned to the case for nearly two years, Lt. Col. William Helixon, had urged that the most serious charges against Sinclair be dropped after he became convinced the captain had lied to him about the cell phone. Helixon was overruled by his superiors and then removed from the case last month, after suffering what was described as a profound moral crisis that led to his being taken to a military hospital for a mental health evaluation.

The case now heads to trial with a new lead prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert Stelle, who said in court this week he doesn't care what his predecessor thought about the weakness of the evidence.

It is highly unusual for an officer of flag rank to face criminal prosecution, with only a handful of cases in recent decades. Under military law, an officer can only be judged at trial by those of superior rank - ensuring that Sinclair's jury will be comprised of five major generals.




“Under military law, an officer can only be judged at trial by those of superior rank” – this is reason enough to remove the trial of sexual crimes from the military chain of command. Another news report I saw within the last year and a half concerned a woman who had made a complaint of rape to her superior officer and she was punished for charging her superior officer with the crime. I once worked at a law school library and the title of one of the books took my attention: “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.” It's like when the Catholic hierarchy officiates over the investigation of priests who have molested children, with the result that the family of the child is convinced to drop the charges and the priest is moved to another post without police being involved. Where you have a large hierarchy which exercises great power there is likely to be an effort to sweep the dirt under the rug to protect the reputations of those in power.

In this case, the woman has a somewhat weaker position because she did maintain a three year sexual relationship with the general. She really can't cry rape, and who knows which sexual practices they performed together as a part of their involvement on a regular basis. At the same time, this general has admitted to relationships with two other women as well, and is known to have had a collection of pornography against regulations while in Afghanistan, so he doesn't deserve to keep his high position within the army. I don't have much sympathy for either one of them. I do agree with the congressmen who want to remove sexual crimes from the military justice system. I don't think the victim is likely to get a fair trial if their case is even allowed to go to trial.




Feds: N.C. deputies racially profiled drivers, engaged in other anti-Hispanic acts – CBS
CBS/AP March 6, 2014

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Federal prosecutors say deputies of a North Carolina sheriff accused of illegally targeting Latino drivers shared links to a bloody video game in which players shoot people entering the country illegally, including children and pregnant women.

Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department filed documents this week in their complaint against Alamance County Sheriff Terry S. Johnson, who is accused of violating the rights of citizens and legal residents by detaining and arresting Latinos without probable cause. Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to find in their favor without a trial, citing extensive evidence of racial bias.

Johnson's lawyer said in an email that the sheriff denies the allegations. His lawyers filed their own motion Sunday seeking to have the case dismissed.
"Sheriff Johnson and his office have not engaged in a pattern or practice of intentionally treating Latinos differently due to their ethnicity," Chuck Kitchen wrote in the motion.

CBS Greensboro, N.C. affiliate WFMY-TV reports Johnson denied discriminating against Latinos in a deposition, saying at one point in part, "There is only one race...and as far as I'm concerned.. that's the human race."

According to the government's motion, a high-ranking deputy emailed out the link to the violent game.

"Captain Mario Wiley emailed several other ACSO employees a link to a game premised on shooting stereotypical Mexican figures, including pregnant women and children, as they attempt to cross the U.S. border," the motion says. "Blood splatters on the screen as the figures are shot, and the final screen of the game shows how many 'wetbacks' one has killed."

Other deputies, including supervisors and the agency's designated media spokesman, traded messages that included racist jokes.

"Sergeant Darryl Myers and Lieutenant Wesley Anderson each forwarded an email joking that when Davey Crockett saw 'hordes of Mexicans' approaching the Alamo, he asked 'are we having landscaping done today?'" according to the court filing.
In another email, training officer Richard Longamore forwarded an email to the sheriff and his chief deputy bemoaning a federal program that provides temporary visas to foreign nationals who are the victims of such violent crimes as rape, incest and torture.

According to federal officials, Johnson himself referred to Latinos as "taco eaters" prone to drinking, drug dealing and other crimes. He ordered special roadblocks in neighborhoods where Latinos live, during which those with brown skin were stopped while whites were waved through.

His deputies, in turn, were as much as 10 times more likely to stop Latino drivers than non-Latinos, according the federal review of the department's traffic stop records. Hispanics make up 11 percent of the population in Alamance County, which is about an hour's drive northwest of Raleigh.

In a sworn deposition, former deputy Adam Nicholson recounted the sheriff using racist slurs as he directed officers to arrest Latinos during a raid on a trailer park.

In his motion to dismiss the case, the sheriff's attorney says that both the sheriff and his chief deputy have testified that they never heard the term "wetback" or "spic" used and that they would have disciplined anyone who used those terms. The sheriff's motion also disputes that there is any evidence that Latino drivers are stopped at a greater rate than non-Latinos in the county. Its says the sheriff commissioned a study by a Duke University professor that determined that there was no evidence that racial profiling was happening.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal laws bar police from engaging in a pattern of violating the constitutional protections of U.S. citizens or legal residents. In the complaint, federal authorities ask the court to impose sanctions intended to force Johnson's compliance with federal law.

The civil complaint does not charge Johnson with a crime, and the federal court has no mechanism to remove a local elected official from office.

Johnson is currently seeking election to another four-year term in November.
Raul Pinto, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, urged Johnson to settle the federal suit and embrace the recommended sanctions.

"The abhorrent and unconstitutional practices outlined in this motion should not be tolerated in our state and cannot be allowed to continue," Pinto said. "All residents of Alamance County deserve fair and equal treatment from their law enforcement officers."




Pinto “urged” Johnson to settle the suit and “embrace” the recommended sanctions. Doesn't the Justice Department have the authority to mandate changes in the Sheriff's department's procedures or oversight into their future actions? What are the “teeth” in the Justice Department's powers?

“Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to find in their favor without a trial,” seems to indicate that they don't want to go to the expense and trouble of a trial, or they are afraid they can't find an unbiased jury in the jurisdiction. Police, unfortunately, are too often involved in racist practices as well as other criminal acts as they are without oversight until someone brings a suit. The degree of autonomy and raw power that police officers are too often allowed is the problem, I think. In this atmosphere of excessive freedom their worst impulses are sometimes allowed to grow and bloom.

In this case the top of the power structure, Sheriff Johnson was not, apparently, exercising a healthy discipline over his officers and even joined in with the abusive environment. The violent and racist video game is one of the worst things I have read about in a police department, in terms of pure corruption. Police in many parts of the US are known for stopping the cars of racial minorities for no real reason and harassing them, hence the term “Driving while black.” I feel sure that not all police do these things, but those that do are giving the police a bad name. I hope the Justice Department does more than just embarrassing the Sheriff. Of course, it's up to a federal judge to rule now. Hopefully he or she isn't racially biased too. If I see more about this case I will clip the article.




Vladimir Putin nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – CBS
CBS/Reuters March 5, 2014

OSLO -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize — but the conflict in Ukraine is also likely to be on the Nobel committee's agenda.

A record 278 candidates, including 47 organizations, received nominations for the 2014 prize, said the Norwegian Nobel Institute's director, Geir Lundestad.

Committee members who met on Tuesday added their own proposals with a focus on recent turmoil around the globe.

"Part of the purpose of the committee's first meeting is to take into account recent events, and committee members try to anticipate what could be the potential developments in political hotspots," Lundestad said.
Russia seized control of Ukraine's Crimea region after President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted on Feb. 22, prompting the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Putin to stand down and said the U.S. is looking for ways to de-escalate the mounting tensions.

"It is clear that Russia has been working hard to create a pretext for being able to invade further," Kerry said. "It is not appropriate to invade a country, and at the end of a barrel of a gun dictate what you are trying to achieve. That is not 21st-century, G-8, major nation behavior."

Pope Francis and former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden also received nominations as well as Putin.

Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' right to education, is also thought to be among the candidates, as are several Russian dissidents who have spoken out for human rights.

Conflicts between protesters and the governments of Thailand and Venezuela are also expected to be debated by the committee.

"We are getting an increasing number of nominations from people in countries that have never submitted nominations before," Lundestad said.

Although nominations are kept secret for 50 years, thousands of people around the world are eligible to propose candidates, including any member of any national assembly, and many make their picks public.

The committee narrowed its list to between 25 and 40 on Tuesday and it will cut its list to about a dozen by the end of April.

First awarded in 1901, the prize includes 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.24 million) in cash. The winner will be announced on the second Friday of October and the prize will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.




Of the people mentioned in this article, I would like to see the teenager Malala Yousafzai elected. She has endured a shocking retaliation for supporting education for girls. This is in Pakistan, one of our on again off again allies in the Middle East. The Taliban is a really vile organization, which commits crimes in the name of religion.

As for Putin being nominated, according to this article, almost anybody can be nominated. I don't expect Putin, nor Snowden either, to be elected. If they are I think the Nobel committee is no longer credible. I didn't think Obama should have been elected at that early time in his presidency, either, as he hadn't been tried and tested yet, nor done a great deal on the world stage. I would hate to think that the Nobel Peace prize is politically influenced, or a mere popularity contest. We'll see what happens.




­ Facebook To Restrict Posts About Private Gun Sales – NPR
by Laurel White
March 05, 2014

Facebook said Wednesday that it will limit minors' access to pages and posts that offer firearms for sale, along with other measures that aim to curtail illegal gun trafficking.

"This is something we've been working on for a while," says Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld. "We want to balance the interests of people who come here to express themselves while promoting an environment that is safe and respectful."

The rules, which will be implemented in the coming weeks, will also apply to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Both sites will begin removing posts that indicate illegal activity, like ones that advertise "no background check required" or moving a firearm across state lines without the involvement of a licensed dealer.
The National Rifle Association was quick to accuse Facebook of bowing to pressure tactics from anti-gun groups. In a statement issued Wednesday, Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said:
"The NRA enjoys 150 times more support on Facebook than Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns. That's why Bloomberg and the gun control groups he funds tried to pressure Facebook into shutting down discussion of Second Amendment issues on its social media platforms."

Some members of the Facebook community Guns For Sale, which has more than 200,000 "likes," also criticized the announcement, calling the new rules unconstitutional and unnecessary.

But the community's administrators posted a statement this afternoon noting that Guns For Sale was developed to help enthusiasts legally buy and sell guns, and that they "support the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of children and dangerous people (i.e. criminals who aren't allowed to own them). We applaud Facebook for taking a deeper look into this issue that will help make our country a safer place while still keeping our freedoms intact."

Facebook's announcement follows a push by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the advocacy group that was also behind Starbucks' gun ban announcement last fall. Alongside Moms Demand Action is a coalition of groups against gun violence, including Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Moms Demand Action's founder, Shannon Watts, says online purchases are nearly impossible to track. "To not know what's happening out there is truly frightening," she says.

Watts welcomes the new social media rules, but Moms Demand Action and similar groups acknowledge that no one really has a handle on how many guns are illegally trafficked via social media because most such purchases begin online but conclude offline.
"Frankly, it's just not a question that we can answer," says Erika Soto Lamb, spokeswoman for Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Lamb says Mayors Against Illegal Against and its allies were also motivated to take action by stories like that of a 15-year-old from Kentucky who bought a gun from an Ohio man online on Facebook last October. The student then brought that gun to school (no one was hurt).

Facebook spokesman Steinfeld says the company won't have a team monitoring for those kinds of illegal firearm sales.

"As with anything on Facebook, we'll be relying on our community of members to notify us," he says. "We encourage anybody who sees anything to bring it to our attention."
Steinfeld says that the new, gun-related reports will go to the same team that monitors complaints of bullying and hate speech. He doesn't have staffing numbers for the team or a comment on how they might handle the increased workload.




The reason the Internet is so much fun is that I can go in and Google almost any subject and find at least a few articles that address it, and often a Wikipedia writeup. I often check the spelling of words in this blog whenever my Word program indicates that they are incorrect, I look up symptoms of illness, I look up drugs, I once looked for lists of poisons for a mystery that I was writing. Of course Google is keeping track of every subject I look up in a list that Big Brother could, if need be, access. I have avoided looking up pornographic sites – I don't want to see any porn anyway. I'm glad to see that Facebook is working to prevent minors from buying weapons and the illicit sales of guns in general. Go, Facebook!




­ Bill Clinton, Party-Builder In Chief – NPR
by Frank James
March 05, 2014
­
President Obama may be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, but his unpopularity in some parts of the country means there are certain places on the campaign trail where it's best for him to stay away.

Enter former President Clinton, who can go where Obama fears to tread.
The ex-president recently made his first campaign foray of the 2014 election cycle in an unlikely state — Kentucky, where Obama won just 38 percent in 2012 (but where Clinton won twice in the 1990s). Clinton appeared there last week on behalf of Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Few will be surprised to see him appear in other Republican-friendly states where Senate Democrats face tough re-election campaigns — places like his native Arkansas, North Carolina and Louisiana.

It's hard to know how much of Clinton's campaigning is aimed at improving wife Hillary Clinton's 2016 chances if she runs for president and how much it is the former president simply reveling in the art of politicking, with him at the center of attention.

But one useful lens through which to view Clinton's travels is as an extension of his longstanding party-building efforts.

Daniel Galvin, a Northwestern University political scientist who has studied presidents as party-builders, argues that modern Republican presidents have done much better at building up their party's organizational and competitive capacity than their Democratic counterparts. Clinton, however, was an exception.

In his book, Galvin compared the party-building efforts of recent presidents in six areas — among them, the financing of party operations, the recruitment of candidates and the development of human capital. Republican presidents rated far better than Democrats, who tended to be consumers — sometimes ravenously so — of party resources rather than creators.

Democratic presidents, for decades, could rely on organized labor and big-city machines and their control of Congress, Galvin says. Lacking those advantages, Republican presidents focused on building up their national and state party structures.

The one Democratic exception was Clinton during his second term. (During his first term and 1996 re-election, Clinton followed the traditional Democratic pattern of being a net consumer of party resources.)

But in the last two years of his presidency, that changed. Galvin speculates that the realization that Democrats weren't going to soon regain the House, and the Lewinsky scandal, both played a role in the repositioning.

Clinton went on a torrid money raising pace for the party. And he pushed the Democratic National Committee to create a national voter database that Democratic candidates could use in races from the federal level down to the local level.
The Clintons' recent commitment to help the DNC raise money to pay down its nearly $16 million debt — and to help expand the electorate and increase voter protections — are in keeping with that interest in long-term party-building.

The former president's current efforts are "consistent with the recognition that we saw in the Clinton White House during his second term that party organization building is one of the ways that presidents can really help their party and its competitive fortunes in the future," Galvin said. "It's important for all candidates up and down the ballot, to have a common stock of resources."

Like Clinton in his first term, Obama has also followed the Democratic pattern of being a taker, rather than a maker of party resources. That has caused years of grumbling among Democratic Party officials, dating back to 2008 even before he became president.

There are signs that could be changing in Obama's second term.
Obama's campaign organization recently moved to share the data it collected about voters and volunteers with the DNC, so that the party can help candidates across the ballot in 2014.

But it's still too early to know if Obama will ultimately match Clinton's efforts in building up the party.




Clinton is a very interesting person to me. Setting aside his sexual peccadilos, as they are viewed by some and deep sins as others see them, he has a huge grasp of many subjects – like a Jeopardy champion – and yet does not act arrogant. He also can express himself eloquently and espouses high causes in cultural issues. He is one of the few political speakers who does not get boring after the first half hour because he will address questions head on rather than blathering and shows that he cares about people. He has “the common touch,” and yet is a wealthy man.

Obama is much the same, but without any scandals in his closet. I think we have been lucky to have had both men in our party. Those people who don't like Obama or Clinton are mainly right wing leaning “patriots,” and don't want the same things for America that I do, so I never worry very much about their relative popularity. They are unpopular with those people because they speak up for an enlightened populace and a peaceful society.




­Senate Democrats Defect On Obama Civil Rights Nominee – NPR
by Carrie Johnson
March 05, 2014 4:22 PM
­
In a stinging blow to the Obama administration, seven Senate Democrats joined with Republicans Wednesday to block one of the president's key civil rights nominees.
The 47 to 52 vote marked the first defeat of a Democratic nominee since lawmakers changed Senate rules to make it easier to push through judges and executive branch candidates. And it came after a clash that pit powerful law enforcement interests against the civil rights community.

A campaign by the Fraternal Order of Police worked to define civil rights lawyer Debo Adegbile through one controversial episode in his long career.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey set the stage with this line on the Senate floor: "It was 3:55 AM on December 9, 1981, when 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Danny Faulkner was brutally murdered in the line of duty."

The killer was Mumia Abu Jamal, an African American activist who was sentenced to death, until a group of lawyers got his sentence reduced to life behind bars by uncovering faults in the case. Attorneys at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where Adegbile worked for years, handled some appeals on the case.

That drew the ire of Officer Faulker's widow, who sent a letter to lawmakers read by Sen. Toomey before today's vote. "The thought that Mr. Adegbile would be rewarded in part for the work he did for my husband's killer is revolting."

Republicans had other objections to Adegbile, mostly centered on the expectation he'd aggressively enforce voting rights laws.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, "He has a long record of left wing advocacy marked by ideologically driven positions and very, very poor judgment."
But McConnell said for him the deciding factor was the Abu Jamal case.
"The decision to champion the cause of an extremist cop killer sends a message of contempt to police officers," he added.

And that was the tone of the day. Adegbile's supporters called it a smear. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont cried foul, pointing out that no Republicans would work with him to help cops by sending more federal money to buy bullet-proof vests.
"Not a single Republican has joined me in the effort to reauthorize what was a bipartisan piece of legislation that actually saves the lives of police officers," Leahy thundered, "but boy, they will come down here and wax eloquently and misleadingly against this good nominee."

Adegbile has worked for Leahy for months as an aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But before that, he spent a decade at the Legal Defense Fund and twice argued voting rights cases before the Supreme Court. Adegbile pulled himself out of poverty and periods of homelessness as the child of immigrants in the Bronx. President Obama held him out as an illustration of the American dream.

Those are solid qualifications to lead the civil rights division at the Justice Department, says LDF president Sherrilyn Ifill, especially since lawyers who work for defendants in criminal cases are simply doing their job.

"The criminal defendants that we represent, we represent to vindicate constitutional principles and it's never more important than in capital cases where we're talking about the state exercising the authority to take the life of a human being," she said.
After all, Ifill said, that never stopped John Roberts from getting confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"That's why even people like Chief Justice John Roberts could donate 25 hours of pro bono service during the time he was a law firm partner to a man who had committed multiple murders in the state of Florida," Ifill added.

But sources tell NPR the administration never properly vetted Adegbile's nomination with police groups before it happened. And cops were furious.

Law enforcement turned up the heat and Senate Democrats badly miscalculated the numbers. They labored to check the votes of several Democrats facing close elections this fall but overlooked too many members of their base.

One of the biggest surprises was Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who voted for Adegbile to proceed through the Judiciary Committee before voting against him on the Senate floor.
Coons, who chaired part of Adegbile's nomination hearing, said he "was troubled by the idea of voting for an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights who would face such visceral opposition from law enforcement on his first day on the job."

He added: "The decades-long public campaign by others...to elevate a heinous, cold-blooded killer to the status of a political prisoner and folk hero has caused tremendous pain...and shown great disrespect for law enforcement officers and families throughout our region. These factors have led me to cast a vote today that is more about listening to and respecting their concerns than about the innate qualifications of this nominee."

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada gave voice to the uncertainty,but too late to do anything about it.

"I sure hope that we get enough votes for this good man," Reid said. "If we don't, maybe it's time America had a good discussion on civil rights."

As the vote drew near, Vice President Joe Biden showed up to help break a possible tie.

But so many Democrats defected that it wasn't even close.




This looks like an Obama mistake, such as failing to read and thoroughly vet his candidate before recommending him. Something like killing a police officer is an unforgivable sin to the majority of police officers, and anybody who helps such a criminal is an enemy of justice to those people. Obama will have to try again later with someone else.