For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competitors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing bloggers have been pumping the story. Liberal bloggers have countered, accusing them of trying to manufacture a scandal.
But The Post has been virtually silent.
The story has its origins on Election Day in 2008, when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a Philadelphia polling place. YouTube video of the men, now viewed nearly 1.5 million times, shows both wearing paramilitary clothing. One carried a nightstick.
Early last year, just before the Bush administration left office, the
Justice Department filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the men,
the New Black Panther Party and its chairman. But several months later,
with the government poised to win by default because the defendants
didn't contest the suit, the Obama Justice Department decided the case
was over-charged and narrowed it to the man with the nightstick. It
secured only a narrow injunction forbidding him from displaying a weapon
within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places through 2012.
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Source: Andrew Alexander, Ombudsman, The Washington Post
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