Megyn Kelly threatens to cut off Kirsten Powers "mic" over heated New Black Panther argument.

I remember this story from election day and, if my memory serves me correctly, it was utterly debunked as false.

Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia. But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign

"There was no fight, nothing," she says.

Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance. That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.

And yet, months later, Megyn Kelly shows footage of a woman - who clearly gets her misinformation from Faux News - expressing outrage that the DOJ no longer prosecutes cases with black defendants where the plaintiffs are white.

Now, were that to be happening, it would obviously be outrageous, but it is simply false.

And, when Kirsten Powers implies that Fox are perhaps making a mountain out of a molehill, Kelly instantly starts throwing around ridiculous insults, implying that anyone who disagrees with her can't know what they are talking about.

She cites J. Christian Adams, a man who it has been noted was "a foot soldier in the conservative movement, hired into the Justice Department during the Bush administration under a process the department's Inspector General concluded was improperly politicized."

"When the George W. Bush Justice Department filed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party in January [2009], it invoked a rarely used provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to allege voter intimidation," which was the "second time the Bush DOJ filed suit" under that provision. Main Justice further reported that the "common denominator in these unusual" applications" was J. Christian Adams.

She then cites Bartle Bull as saying that this was "the worst case of voter intimidation that he has ever seen" and states that he was a "civil rights attorney" and "Bobby Kennedy's campaign manager in New York state". This supposedly emphasises his "Democratic" credentials.

Bull strikes me as a strange kind of Democrat as he campaigned during the last election for John McCain and has said this: "Obama's notion of economic fairness is pure Karl Marx plus a pocketful of Chicago-style 'community organization.'"

That's a strange sounding "Democrat" and yet that is who Fox are using to back the validity of these outrageous claims.

Fox are seriously running with the claim that the Obama DOJ no longer prosecute cases with black defendants where the plaintiffs are white. That's a simply scandalous thing to suggest. And yet, they are seriously promoting that as if it is true.

UPDATE:

Michael Tomasky on the race implications of all this:

So we have here yet another story where a few carefully chosen factoids imply a deep conspiracy, but the full array of facts show the opposite to have been true: no evidence to suggest a conspiracy, no white voters claiming to have been intimidated, case downgraded by the Bush department, usual procedure regarding such cases followed, allegations made by one very political source, and so forth.

But what a perfect story. First Acorn, now the Panthers. Are there really still people out there trying to insist that race has nothing to do with why the right hates Obama? And do we really still have to pretend that this is the case because white tea partiers swear up and down it's not about his race?

Fox, Limbaugh and Beck have this almost constant theme where reverse racism is prevalent. And they make this charge whilst claiming that they are not motivated in any way by Obama's race. If they are not motivated by race, why do they suddenly see reverse racism everywhere?

UPDATE II:

There's a great example of just where J. Christian Adams is coming from on his own blog, which he subtitles, "More red than the Ivory Tower". That sounds terribly centrist doesn't it?

On Pajamas Media he also argues that the Obama DOJ have not stopped what he label's "Brown’s discriminatory scheme" because "they do not want whites and Asians, when they are the discriminated-against minority, to be protected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act."

And yet Kelly regularly refers to this guy as "a whistle-blower" as if he has no agenda in this matter at all.

Tags: Brad Sherman, congressman, Department of Justice, DOJ, Eric Holder, Fox News, hate group, Kirsten Powers, loon, Megyn Kelly, New Black Panthers, right wing, Voting Rights