The Panthers didn’t try to threaten or intimidate anybody, and they aren’t a racist organization. Comparisons to the Klan are asinine.
I also fail to see how a black guy getting arrested for carrying a stick demonstrates a double standard, especially since rednecks are allowed to stand around outside Presidential appearances waving guns around and threatening to muder the President.
If those actions equate to “thuggery”, then what a vice-principal of a Jr. High schools sees every day must be equivalent to massacre and mayhem.
Nobody has yet been able to show an example of this imagined double standard.
The OP discussed only Harry Reid and Trent Lott, and “ethnic things.” Since then other examples of double standards have included Don Imus, Robert Byrd, the Black Panthers, and the relative positions of Democrats and Republicans on civil rights. Double standards have come up but it has almost always been in the context of race. So with all of that in mind, if you wish to discuss the Meehan incident, please continue in your own thread. That goes for everyone else who wants to comment on that incident, too.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has The New Black Panther Party designated as hate group. And when the SPLC designates a group on the left as a hate group, you can be sure they’ve got plenty of hate. You might want to do a search and read a little of what they have to say.
But the name alone might give you a clue, don’t ya think? If not, Google a little. Sheesh.
It demonstrates that there are people on the left—like you—who profess to care about civil rights, etc., but when you’re faced with an incident of the those on the left breaking the law and acting like assholes, you go out of your way to excuse or minimize the behavior. It’s pathetic.
And he didn’t get arrested for carrying a stick. He got arrested for voter intimidation—carrying a weapon and acting in a threatening manner at a polling place. Or do you think the laws on the books should be abolished?
I’m not familiar with the New Black Panther case, but wielding a nightstick near a polling place is a pretty clear case of intimidation. You’re not even allowed to carry some kinds of signs near a polling site and a nightstick is a weapon.
The New Black Panthers are very much a racist organization, and its leaders have advocated the genocide of whites, violence against the government, and said that Jews secretly control the world.
And having a weapon in plain view in or in front of a polling place is by its very nature intimidation, which is why it’s a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
I can’t help you guys if you’re afraid of sticks. Maybe you should go to the gym or something. Maybe buy some pepper spray. Me, personally, I’d high five the guy on the way in.
Diogenes the Cynic, do not make this a personal matter. Please dial it back.
A stick, when it’s designed to be used as a weapon, is called a club. In this particular case, the person was carrying a baton, which is a weapon and used to inflict non-lethal damage on another person. This is the reason they’re often carried by law enforcement officers, and why they’re banned for civilian use in some jurisdictions.
This is also why carrying them in or around a polling place on election day is a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Okay. So you’re pro voter intimidation. By those on the left, anyway. Gotcha.
I don’t think it’s been demonstrated that there was any intimidation. There was a fear that black voters might be harrassed at the polls, so the Panthers were doing a community service. I guess sticks are illegal outside polling places, but otherwise, they broke no laws, and threatened nobody.
Evidently, other people see the actions in the video and what was reported by people like Bartle Bull as being intimidation. Fortunantely, some of those people are in law enforcement and the guy is getting a little slap. Too little, I think, but its something.
So other than breaking voter intimidation laws, they broke no laws. Uhh, okay. Glad you came around.
I wonder, have the victims of this dreadful intimidation come forward? Is the federal government ultimately liable for any emotional scars or traumatic stress disorders they may well have suffered, being glowered upon by a black man with a full-auto assault baton? How many victims were there, by the way? Was it just conspiracy to brandish, or was there a count of Samuel L. Jackson scarey-ass eyeball?
Nobody’s whining about being victimized… that’s your side’s favorite technique.
I guess we have a new standard though…as long as it is applied across the board.
The Left has DtC, the Right has Beck and Limbaugh. I’d be more than happy to see the same standard–those with fringe opinions ignored by everyone else–if you could get the Right to go along with that. 
So, what am I, chopped liver? I’m just as lefty as Doggyknees, how come he gets all the attention! Snotty little prima donna, he’s probably bragging about this on Facebook right now!
Let’s keep this in perspective. Reid said Obama was electable, despite being African-American, because he is “light-skinned,” and because he does not speak with a “Negro dialect”.
Every bit of which was and is absolutely true. Someone physically and culturally resembling Jesse Jackson never could have made it to the late primaries, regardless of his record or his politics. (What, ya think the Pubs are ever gonna run Alan Keyes on the presidential ticket? When monkeys fly out of your ass! And he’s not one bit stupider or crazier than Sarah Palin, either.)
That’s just how it is.