Andrew Breitbart says he has photographic evidence Barack Obama hanging out with members of the New Black Panther Party -- proof Obama's "extremist ties and radical roots," he says. Some conservative bloggers are atwitter over the images, which come from a march in Selma, Alabama in 2007 -- that was also attended by Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic party is lousy with racists, you see.
The photos come from a book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, to be released Tuesday by conservative imprint Regnery, written by former Justice Department official J.Christian Adams, who quit because his bosses wouldn't prosecute a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers. (A conservative Bush appointee has called the case a "fantasy.") Right-wing outrage specialist Andrew Breitbart says the book "describes, in detail, the Selma march at which then-Senator Obama was joined by a group of Panthers who had come to support his candidacy." It's unclear if Adams was actually at the march, since he was working for the Bush administration in Washington at the time. The 2007 march, organized by civil rights leaders to mark the 42nd anniversary of the Selma march for black voting rights that ended with police brutally beating the protesters. Hillary Clinton and Obama -- then running against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination -- gave speeches at churches a block apart. But Breitbart sees the episode as evidence of Obama's racial radicalism alone. Several bloggers have latched onto it. Michelle Malkin, for example, calls the march "the Obama/NBPP event," as if the two were organizing together, and calls them both "race hustlers."
The post comes after the weekend's revelations that Rick Perry has property called "Niggerhead," and that he might not have painted over the sign until very recently. Is the timing coincidental? Bryan Preston makes the connection at Pajamas Media, writing, "I'd say that this is far more relevant than an anonymously painted rock out in West Texas. This is the current president choosing of his own free will to accept support from and appear with some very radical and racist figures, during his rise to power."
Breitbart's photos of Obama and the Panthers standing at the same podium:
And his blurry still from YouTube that shows them near each other:
The story fits nicely into the conservative meme that liberals are the real racists.
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Elspeth Reeve
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