Problems at the polls surfaced early Tuesday in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, with Republican election monitors being turned away from polling places and members of the New Black Panther Party appearing at voting sites in Philadelphia.
Some inmates on Virginia's death row are asking the Department of Corrections to change its policy so they can have contact visits with their family and friends. The visits were banned in 2008 amid concerns outsiders could smuggle cell phones or other contraband to the men on death row, who now number 11.
The Obama administration is terminally confused about the role of local law enforcement. Or worse, it's purposely hypocritical.
The Justice Department still hasn't explained its decision to drop most of its voter-intimidation case against violent Black Panthers 18 months ago. If the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights finally adopts its report on the controversy, the great lengths Justice officials have taken to avoid scrutiny will be exposed.
The White House is trying to dodge the issue, but the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case is a growing scandal about political interference by the Obama administration into law-enforcement matters. The latest outrages to come to light are the brutal criminal histories of the Black Panthers who threatened Philadelphia voters on Election Day, 2008.
Voters at a precinct on Philadelphia's Fairmont Street witnessed unusual sights and sounds on Election Day Nov. 4, 2008. Two members of the New Black Panther Party, King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson, stood within 15 feet of this polling station dressed in military-style black jackets, black berets and black combat boots. King Samir Shabazz wielded a 2-foot-long night stick.
"I just want to see them one last time just to thank them for being there for me," Jackson said of his friends.
Jackson said he and others asked department director Harold Clarke, who took over the agency in November, to change the policy when he visited death row a few months ago, but nothing changed.
