Don't mean to further dampen already dampened spirts, what with Howard Dean saying this weekend that Dear Leader has taken Hispanic votes for granted, but ..
A "smoking gun" in the case of summarily fired U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod indicates that Just.Another.Politician.™ also apparently was taking African American votes for granted in 2010.
To refresh your memory, Sherrod had, earlier in 2010, made a speech at an NAACP event in which she condemned past racial bias in USDA lending practices and other things. After Andrew Breitbart posted a selectively edited version of the video to try to make her look like a racist, the NAACP headquarters "bit" on the Breitbart theme. That led to Team Obama pressure, and her eventual resignation, as described on Wikipedia.
The first three grafs from that smoking gun are worth quoting in full:
A 2010 email from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says his department was "waiting for the go-ahead" from the White House before accepting the resignation of employee Shirley Sherrod, according to newly released documents, despite Obama administration assertions that her ouster was Vilsack's decision alone.
The email, which was made public Friday in an ongoing federal court case over the matter, shed more light on the evening of July 19, 2010, when the USDA hastily asked Sherrod to resign after a video showing her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative website. Her dismissal turned into a racial firestorm after it became clear that the video had been edited and her remarks were meant to tell a story of reconciliation.
Both the White House and Vilsack have repeatedly said the agriculture secretary made the decision to ask for Sherrod's resignation without White House input. The emails, along with earlier emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010 and 2012, make it apparent that Vilsack wanted Sherrod to leave the department and ordered her resignation. But a newly-released email sent by Vilsack himself suggests he was awaiting a decision from White House officials on how to proceed.
In short, Tom Vilsack lied on behalf of top minions of Barack Obama, who were almost certainly directly doing his bidding.
We also have further proof that Obama meets Teddy Roosevelt's description of William McKinley and has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. We also see that the NAACP is little different than most liberal interest groups.
Unfortunately, though, the tawdry sewage of Breitbart is behind this latest story, too.
Sherrod filed a defamation suit against Breitbart, with his wife named as defendant in his place after his death. The emails are being touted by her legal team as proof against defamation.
Let's hope this doesn't hold up in court. Obama's a coward and Vilsack's a toady par excellence, but they both acted that way because Andrew Breitbart, already then having a known reputation for slime, deliberately edited a video in a way so as to defame Shirley Sherrod.
