The "race issue" continues to smolder.

The Washington Times has published more follow-up stories today and yesterday about the Justice Department’s dismissal of a voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party (a racist hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center) – despite the fact that the defendants defaulted and failed to answer the complaint. The new revelation is that Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli approved the dismissal. He is the No. 3 official at Justice and is a political appointee who raised $500,000 for President Obama’s campaign.

The Department’s spokeswoman says that “the facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims.” Really? Then why is the Department refusing to allow the trial team who actually investigated the “facts and the law” or the chief of the Voting Section who supervised the investigation to brief members of Congress?

The message from the Justice Department with this dismissal is that if you are a member of a black hate group, you can intimidate, threaten, and hurl racial epithets at white voters and poll watchers, and the Justice Department will give you a pass.

We all know that if it had been the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Brotherhood at the polls in Philadelphia acting in this manner towards black voters, Associate Attorney General Perelli and Attorney General Holder would never have even considered dismissing the case. They would be bragging in the press about their pursuit of a civil injunction against all of these defendants, and would be pressing the Criminal Division at Justice to indict them on criminal charges.

By the way, one of the defendant's MySpace page lists one of his general interests as “Killing Crakkkas".