"I stand with the Fraternal Order of Police in opposition to Debo Adegbile". we all should agree that those who go out of their way to celebrate, to lionize, convicted cop killers are not suitable for major leadership roles at the Department of Justice. Under Adegbile's supervision, LDF lawyers fanned the flames of racial tension through rallies and protests and a media campaign all to portray Mumia Abu-Jamal, an unrepentant cop killer, as a political prisoner."
-- Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, on the Senate floor, March 4, 2014
In this brief statement, Cruz manages to:
1. Defend what amounts to a police lobby veto over presidential appointments to the Justice Dept;
2. Lie about Adegbile's activities (no evidence to support Cruz's smear);
3. Invent "lionization" of the man at the center of a case that is genuinely about due process and the death penalty, a case that has been found wanting by the Supreme Court;
4. Pretend that racial tensions have not been present in this case since the moment it started (the trial judge promised "I'm going to help them fry the n-word," and a higher judge found the comment not prejudicial);
5. Lie about Adegbile's "supervision," offering no evidence, using only a kind of "guilt" by association that also attacks free speech;
6. Reach final judgment on a case in which he has played no role, and in which both sides have arguable positions for which neither side has managed to provide ultimately definitive evidence;
7. Illustrate one of the ways Abu-Jamal is used as -- and is, in fact -- a political prisoner, whatever else he may be.
Cruz and other senators opposing Adegbile got many of their distorted talking points from the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a Washington-based labor union and lobbying organization that claims membership of more than 330,000 police employees and whose motto is "Building on a Proud Tradition." (According to FBI statistics, there are more than a million fulltime law enforcement employees in the U.S.) In a letter to the president dated January 6, 2014, FOP president Chuck Canterbury expressed his organization's opposition to Adegbile with a rambling argument in which FOP's apparently real issue doesn't appeal until the fourth paragraph, which complains: "The Administration did not consult the FOP during the decision-making process for this nomination". This nomination can be interpreted in only one way: it is a thumb in the eye of our nation's law enforcement officers."
More raw emotionalism of Canterbury's letter came earlier:
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