Written By : Morgan Freeberg

Here’s a fascinating paradox of liberalism, one that affects not only them but anybody who lives where they have influence. Who you are determines truth. Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd drop dead, and if Fox News says that’s what happened then it hasn’t really happened yet. Vice President Joe Biden says the Recovery & Reinvestment Act has saved-or-created a bunch of jobs, and it must be so because Joe Biden has done something to advance the progressive agenda. Thurgood Marshall was a deity, don’t say a word against his judicial philosophy or you’ll be the opposite. Identity determines everything.

And yet, as Adam Serwer apparently understands, if all the opportunities line up just so and you say just the right thing, there’s no ladder of promotion to be ascended. You can leap up near the top in one fell swoop. Jot down a sentence at just the perfect moment that inflicts sufficient damage on conservatism, or offers a sufficient boost to liberalism, and you can join Mount Olympus and anything that comes out of your pie-hole from then on also becomes true.

So Serwer declares the Black Panther scandal to be unofficially over. Maybe it’ll work. All for the team, eh Adam?

So, a number of things have happened in the past few hours that should really discredit the entire conservative conspiracy theory behind the New Black Panther Party case.

Earlier today, I reported that J. Christian Adams, in his testimony to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said that there was no indication of pressure from outside the Civil Rights Division to dismiss the civil complaint against the other two plaintiffs named in the original complaint–meaning that even Adams admits there’s no evidence Barack Obama or Eric Holder had anything to do with deciding to narrow the case.

Ben Smith reported this evening that Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative voting rights expert and one of George W. Bush’s appointees to the commission, says that the conservative bloc explicitly discussed a “wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president.” This was clear from the beginning, but it’s the first time anyone on the commission has said with first hand knowledge that the conservatives on the commission had deliberately decided to do this to damage the administration.

Finally, Adams has been claiming that the Justice Department, by refusing to reject a Section 5 preclearance request from Ike Brown, the defendant in the last Section 11(b) case filed by the Voting Section, was proving his claim that the Voting Section has no interest in protecting white voters. Brown filed a submission to the Justice Department seeking to create a closed Democratic primary in Noxbuee County, Mississippi. In fact, as Jeremy Holden reports, the Justice Department didn’t reject Brown’s request because he is not the “proper submitting official under Section 5″ and he is still prohibited under the terms of a 2007 injunction from making any changes to the election rules that make them not “equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens.” The DoJ then filed a motion requesting that the court move to “prohibit Brown from moving forward with plans to create a closed primary, to prohibit Brown from making any future official filings seeking to change the electoral process, and to extend the 2007 order an additional 2 years,” in part because of his prior efforts to “reduce white voter participation.”
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This story should now be over. It won’t be, but it should.

Okay, so let’s review this thing from the opposite logical direction. In order for a scandal to develop and endure, which will bring harm to the progressive cause, we know from Mr. Serwer’s comments that a whole bunch of conditions must exist for if they do not exist, Serwer will come along and declare the scandal dead.

It’s gotta go all the way to the top or it doesn’t count. The buck doesn’t really stop there and maybe it doesn’t make it that far in the first place.

Nobody can be politically motivated against enemies, anywhere. If anybody’s out to get anybody, then nothing happened. (Such behavior is not to be encouraged, this is Washington DC after all.)

All claims of wrongdoing, even legitimate ones, must be filed according to proper protocol. If they aren’t filed by the “proper submitting official under Section 5″ then they didn’t happen.

I find these “Serwer Rules” to be, to say the very least, convenient and I’m choosing the most charitable adjective there I can.

I cannot help but wonder how many conservatives, or for that matter non-conservative people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time in conservative administrations, would be interested in knowing about these rules. Maybe someone who was distantly connected to the Abu Ghraib scandal a few years back? Wonder what they’d think of all this.

I like your rules Mr. Serwer. Can you imagine what would happen if all liberals who were hyper-agendized against conservatives, were suddenly deprived of a voice? Michael Moore would be in the poorhouse, and the civility of our nation’s discourse — a constant subject of complaint among any, for a solid decade or more by now — would improve mightily. Your rules should apply equally in both directions. They won’t, but they should.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and at Cassy’s place.

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