John Adams is Spinning in His Grave

The Senate has defeated the appointment of Debo Adegbile's appointment as head of the DoJ's Civil Rights division because he defended a black man accused of murdering a cop:

Senate Democrats on Wednesday rejected President Obama’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in an embarrassing rebuke of the president on the choice of a key legal adviser and one that left senior White House officials “furious” with members of their own party.

The nominee, Debo P. Adegbile, was litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund when it represented Mumia Abu-Jamal on an appeal of his death sentence for killing a Philadelphia police officer decades ago. He could not overcome a campaign by Republicans, conservative activists and law enforcement organizations still infuriated by the murder of the officer, Daniel Faulkner.

But it was the votes of seven Democratic senators to reject Mr. Adegbile that doomed the nomination despite what White House officials described as a sustained closed-door effort by Mr. Obama and his top aides to save the nomination. The president personally appealed to Senate Democrats at a recent caucus meeting and made several calls to Democratic senators in the last week, officials said. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, continued making calls Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

I'm not blaming the Republicans here. They would oppose the appointment of Pope Francis to head the Office of Faith Based outreach.

Additionally, I can understand why they oppose Adegbile's record of strong protection of civil rights, particularly voting rights.

After all, if there is a defining characteristic of the Republican party in the 'Teens, it is that they want to stop n***ers from voting.

I do blame the 7 Democrats, who seem to find that the idea of a black man getting competent counsel is somehow a bad thing, and I do blame the various elements in law enforcement who seem to think that being a good lawyer should be a crime.

This is is evil, runs counter to the constitution, and hundreds of years of British jurisprudence before that.

It is a sacred duty for the defendant to have competent legal counsel. That is why John Adams defended the British soldiers who shot the demonstrators at the Boston Massacre.

If you have a problem with this, you should not be a lawyer, a legislator, or a cop.

Anyone involved in this effort, and the cowards who folded to it, are unAmerican, and need to have no further role in our public discourse.