Fox News has been working hard to try to make its New Black Panthers-DOJ "scandal" into an ACORN-type takedown of the Obama Administration. It's done more than 100 segments on it since June 30. But now along comes an insider to tell all about who really cooked up the scam, and why. I wonder how many segments they'll do on this part of the story?
Abigail Thernstrom, the Republican vice chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, spills the beans:
A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.
But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department’s handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party — a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months — Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.
"This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the {Obama} administration," said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims "in the initial discussions" of the Panther case last year.
"My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president," Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.
If you haven't really been following this story because you don't frequent the insane regions of Fox News or the right-wing bloviosphere, you can find the facts sorted out from the fantasy at Media Matters, which debunks the whole phony scandal here.