Congress’ right wing and police oppose the president’s nominee for the Department of Justice civil rights office’s head Debo Adegbile
By Ja’Neal Johnson
In an ongoing battle among President Barack Obama, the National Fraternal Order of Police, and members of the right-wing Congress because of the President’s nominee for the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights office, Attorney Debo Adegbile is under fire.
Debo Adegbile was one of the attorneys for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and his exoneration from death row. The former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. was asked during his confirmation hearing if illegal immigrants have a “civil right to citizenship in America”. Adegbile refused to definitively answer if he believes, as Attorney General Eric Holder has suggested, that illegal immigrants have a civil right to citizenship in America that was asked by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Debo Adegbile stated no previous knowledge of Holder’s position and only said he would provide “fidelity” to existing law and would enforce future legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President, according to his confirmation hearing records.
Another group that opposed President Barak Obama’s nomination is Project 21, a group that consist of mostly black conservatives. One of the members of Project 21, Deroy Murdock, a nationally-syndicated columnist, asked, “Of all the left-wing lawyers in America, couldn’t Obama have appointed one whose client list did not include unrepentant cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal? It is unrealistic to expect a hardened liberal such as Obama to nominate a Federalist Society member to the Justice Department. However, it should not be asking too much for Obama at least to avoid nominating someone with a dead police officer’s blood on his briefcase.” Murdock believes the President’s nomination is divisive.
Last year Debo Adegbile was nominated for the post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights to replace Tom Perez, who became Secretary of Labor. Attorney Debo Adegbile, who also is senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, practiced law privately.
Other opposition in other states of the President’s nominations are Michael Boggs and Mark H. Cohen. Boggs, who is a judge in Georgia and a former state legislator who voted to preserve the Confederate battle flag as part of the Georgia state flag, according to The Daily Report.
