It Turns Out That Obama Doesn’t Hate Whitey After All

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This promises to be fun. The Justice Department’s Inspector General has released a report investigating charges that the Civil Rights Division has been misbehaving. The short answer is: Yes during the Bush adminstration, no during the Obama administration. In particular, the IG took a look at a longstanding Fox News pet rock, the handling of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers, and concluded that there was political interference from Obama’s political appointees. But not quite the kind that conservatives think. Here’s Adam Serwer:

The Inspector General’s report, like a previous OPR report, found that the decision to narrow the New Black Panther case was “based on a good faith assessment of the law and facts of the case,” not on anti-white racism or corruption. The report also concludes that the political leadership at Justice did influence the handling of the New Black Panther case—but not improperly—by insisting that that the case could not be dismissed outright. This turns the GOP attack on its head, for Republican critics have accused the Obama administration of trying to bury the case to protect a black separatist group. The IG notes no such thing was done.

Rather than interfering with the case because Obama loves the Black Panthers and hates whitey, DOJ leadership interfered to make sure the case continued. In fact, the report says that in early 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder paid a visit to the voting section and declared that he “would not tolerate any politicized enforcement or hiring in the division, including retaliation from his own political staff.”

Needless to say, none of this is likely to slow down conservatives. There are always tidbits here and there that can be cherry picked, and as Adam says, “The IG report, no doubt, will provide the division’s conservative foes with just enough material to continue their crusade.” No doubt.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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