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Although I mentioned it in passing, I have not directly commented on the reports from Andrew Breitbart and J. Christian Adams that there seemed to be mutually reinforcing interplay between Barack Obama and leaders of the New Black Panthers at events in Selma, Alabama in 2007. I had not yet done so in large part because the story seemed to require a discussion full of nuance and context that I have not yet this week found enough time to provide. Well, I no longer need to do so. Instead, I associate myself completely with this analysis by Andrew McCarthy at NRO, which nails the issue perfectly. Sorry to steal the "money" passages (please do read McCarthy's whole post!), but the main thrust of McCarthy's argument is encapsulated here:

Obama's interplay with the Panthers in Selma might have been happenstance to which Obama was indifferent; it might have been happenstance that he exploited to what he believed at the time was his advantage; or it might have been a predetermined collaboration. We just don't know, because Obama was not vetted like other candidates are vetted. The result is ambiguity. When there is ambiguity, you have to look at everything else you know in order to try to interpret the event in question. When it comes to Selma, the everything else we know prominently includes the subsequent, strange dismissal of the NBPP case and the adoption of an enforcement policy in which DOJ refrains from using the civil rights laws to protect white victims from black transgressors.

I also think it highly interesting that Loretta King, who was at the center of the Panther case dismissals, the hiring scandal at DoJ, the absurd DoJ position of trying to impose racial quotas on the Fire Department of New York, and the obnoxious DoJ stance disallowing the black majority of Kinston, North Carolina from holding nonpartisan municipal elections -- wow, what a horrid resume, not even mentioning her ethics being sanctioned by federal courts! -- has, according to reports, quietly resigned from DoJ just as Adams' book is coming out. Methinks there just might be some illegal activity being swept under the rug here; methinks that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith should investigate.