From the onset of the New Black Panther Party scandal, the Obama Justice Department has refused to allow percipient witnesses, including the trial team, to testify. Eric Holder has prevented those accused of quashing the voter-intimidation case and those who complained about the quashing to testify. J. Christian Adams had to quit his job in order to tell his story.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is now challenging the mainstream-media canard — this is “small potatoes” — and pushing Holder to end the stonewalling. The chairman of the commission, Gerald Reynolds, wrote to Holder yesterday. The letter reads, in part:

Mr. Adams testified that there is hostility within the Civil Rights Division to the race neutral enforcement of civil rights protections, and that such hostility may be supported by statements of current political appointees in the Division. By way of example, his testimony indicated that career employees refused to work on the Ike Brown litigation (in which the court found that the voting rights of white and black voters had been violated by a black official) and, most importantly, that specific instructions were given to Mr. Chris] Coates [head of the Black Panther trial team] from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes to the effect that “cases are not going to be brought against black defendants for the benefit of white victims; that if somebody wanted to bring these cases it was up to the U.S. Attorney, but the Civil Rights Division wasn’t going to be bringing it.”

Without waiving its rights to examine Department personnel in the future as to the decision making process in the New Black Panther Party litigation, the Commission will agree to limit Mr. Coates’s (initial) questioning to non-deliberative statements or actions relating to whether there is a policy and/or culture within the Department of discriminatory enforcement of civil rights laws and whether there is a policy not to enforce Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act.

(And oh, by the way, the chief pooh-pooher on the commission, a Republican who’s now the darling of the left, “fearlessly” abstained from the vote to send the letter. What could possibly be the objection or the reason to take a pass — or have the facts simply become too overwhelming to dispute?)

To reiterate: we are talking about a serious allegation that Obama’s Justice Department refuses to enforce the civil rights laws without regard to the race of the defendant and — without any legal basis — is preventing a witness from testifying. If it were not for their partisan loyalty and desire to minimize a scandal they have ignored for far too long, the mainstream media and the punditocracy would be going nuts. Imagine if the Bush administration had refused to allow a key Justice Department attorney to testify as to why a Republican administration dropped a slam-dunk case against a white racist organization. It’s inconceivable that a Republican administration would attempt such a thing or that the media would yawn in response.

Let’s see what Holder’s excuse is now for blocking an inquiry into his department’s lawless conduct.