Posted on 02/14/2014 6:12:30 AM PST by Kaslin
Few have ever heard the name Debo Adegbile. He's President Barack Obama's nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department.
A few months ago, his nomination would have been a non-starter -- there is more than a whiff of radicalism in his past. But we are in a new world. Sen. Harry Reid is now absolute monarch of the Senate. Republicans are largely irrelevant. They cannot offer amendments to legislation. They cannot filibuster. I suppose they can write letters to the editor, and march outside the chamber wearing sandwich boards.
Before the Reid invocation of the "nuclear option" eliminating the filibuster, Adegbile would have been considered too controversial. But now, the administration can have its head on nominations.
Adegbile is a passionate advocate for racial quotas in hiring and university admissions, and also urges that employers not be permitted to do background checks on potential hires -- presumably because more African-Americans have criminal records than other applicants. He has encouraged the president to nominate judges who recognize that "ratified treaties" are the law of land. Well, no argument there, but he goes further. Adegbile wants judges who will decree that "customary international law" is the law of the United States as well, asking for God only knows what mischief. Who would decide what "customary international law" is? By what authority would it be imposed on Americans? Investor's Business Daily reports that Adegbile supports George Soros's campaign to create a new "progressive" constitution. If that doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you're not paying attention.
It was Adegbile's role in the case of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal that incurred the wrath of Justice Department employees though. The union representing FBI agents, which rarely expresses itself on nominations, along with the Fraternal Order of Police and other law enforcement groups, have written to Attorney General Eric Holder to protest Adegbile's nomination. Carl Rowan Jr., a former deputy U.S. marshal, FBI special agent and chief of police, wrote: "He isn't the first questionable nomination made by a president who ... seems drawn to those with radical backgrounds, but this one is an open slap in the face to everyone in law enforcement."
Abu-Jamal has long been a poster boy for the radical left in America. His fine speaking voice (he had been a radio host), long dreadlocks, Muslim moniker (he was born Wesley Cook), radical memberships (in the Black Panthers and black liberation group MOVE), and admiration of Mao Zedong made him irresistible to the Ed Asners, Jonathan Kozolses, National Lawyers Guilds, Michael Moores and NPRs of the world. But until this administration, most mainstream liberals would have steered clear.
Adegbile revealed a great deal about himself by choosing to have the NAACP Legal Defense Fund join the campaign to defend Abu-Jamal. There are many miscarriages of justice that cry out for redress, but Abu-Jamal's 1981 conviction for killing 25-year-old Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner is one of the most litigated in American jurisprudence. The verdict was reviewed or allowed to stand by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court, among others, over the course of more than 30 years.
On Dec. 9, 1981, at about 4 a.m., Faulkner pulled over a driver named William Cook (Abu-Jamal's brother) for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Cook threw a punch at Faulkner, who then hit Cook with his flashlight. At that point, four eyewitnesses said that Abu-Jamal, who had been across the street, fired at Faulkner hitting him in the back. Though wounded, Faulkner fired back at Abu-Jamal, hitting him in the chest, before falling onto his back. Abu-Jamal approached the wounded officer and holding his gun 18 inches in front of Faulkner's face, fired the shots that killed him.
Ballistics confirmed that the bullets that killed Faulkner were from Abu-Jamal's gun, found with him at the scene.
Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death, but decades of litigation and agitation on his behalf delayed the sentence. He has claimed ineffective assistance of counsel (though at one point he represented himself), racism by the judge, racism in jury selection -- the usual gamut. In 2011, prosecutors announced that they would no longer pursue the death penalty.
Every defendant deserves a defense, of course. But Abu-Jamal has had a celebrity lineup of lefty lawyers. That Adegbile wanted to join their ranks is a sign of his sympathies. That Obama believes Adegbile can get confirmed by the neutered Senate is a sign of the times.
why dont they just announce him as the replacement for holder and be done with it
“why dont they just announce him as the replacement for holder and be done with it”
They will as soon as they can work out how to retire Ginsburg and get Holder a seat on SCOTUS I without anyone knowing.
Figure Memorial Day weekend because if you are going to screw America, what better date?
It is just a daily assault from this Administration.
Maybe like rocketry and robots, they'll discover it some 70 to a hundred years later, but right now ... ?
BTTT
Strange title—I haven’t seen any evidence of a “soul” anywhere in the o administration.
Isn't that some type of oxymoron? They actually HAVE a soul?
OK, Holder's looking much better than he did before I read this... maybe Holder and his haters should stay...
I said, when the Holder resignation was announced, that his replacement would be worse. They always are.
Convicted criminals are definitely a key voting block for Dems.
When Martin O Malley and his Dem legislature took over Maryland first thing they passed is voting rights for convicts.
And then tuition aid for illegals, now they get their own special drivers licensees, before Maryland just gave them the same ones we get but Federal law stopped that, so special licenses for them was O Malley’s fix...
Criminals are key to Dems.
Holder wants to restore their voting rights and we know exactly why
this is (sadly) not radical. The United States has been abiding by the (unratified) Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties for over thirty years. It is becoming settled law before our eyes, which makes Zero's signature on the UN Convention on Small Arms truly concerning.
You were totally right on this one... this guy’s going to be much worse.
That’s the way it always is with totalitarians. Forgot if it was Sowell or Hayek that gave the scenario of the whip holder refusing to do that thing that is just beyond what his conscience allows, and another guy stepping up and saying “I’ll do that”.
(Saul and murdering the priests in 1 Sam 22)
That's because it was sold just before the inept druggie's incomprehensible rise to power.
BOOBAMBA'S HORRIFYING JUDICIAL NOMINEE---Blood-thirsty Cornelia Pillard is a radical pro-abortion extremist. The right to an abortion, she argues, is necessary to help “free women from historically routine conscription into maternity.” She also contends that men and women who oppose government mandates on employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception “reinforce broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders.”
Pillard complains ultrasound produces “deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the 'anti-choice movement' has popularized since the advent of amniocentesis.” The notion that ultrasound produces images of autonomous beings is absurd. No one claims that the images are of something that is autonomous. Pillard’s concern is that ultrasound images look too much like something people want to protect. (powerlineblog.com)
Harvard and Yale graduate Pillard now a Georgetown U law professor---previously served as a deputy assistant to the attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel and assistant to the solicitor general.
“The D.C. Circuit is known as the second highest court in the country, and there’s a good reason for that. The judges on the D.C. Circuit routinely have the final say on a broad range of cases involving everything from national security to environmental policy; from questions of campaign finance to workers’ rights. In other words, the court’s decisions impact almost every aspect of our lives,” Obama said. (theblaze.com)
Although except for the VRA, voting rules are controlled by the states not the Feds.
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