#ncpol: Smearing Mr. Farr

I swear.  It seems like the people who rail the loudest about “hate” are the most hate-filled people on the planet.  Dare to disagree with these people? Then YOU, SIR (or ma’am) are a bigot who must be called out, ruined, and crushed. 

Case in point: federal judge nominee Thomas Farr from North Carolina. Local and national libs are railing against this man like he’s the second coming of Hitler. 

The Round Rev has gotten into the game.  As has IndyWeek and The Southern Poverty Law Center.  You know the SPLC.  They are the ones who group The Minnesota Catholic Conference AND The Family Research Council into the same category with The Aryan Brotherhood.

Here’s SOME of the SPLC’s nonsense that is going viral throughout the driveby media:

[…] In a September letter to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argued that Farr “does not possess the temperament necessary to serve in an impartial judicial position.” What Farr does possess, according to Barber, “is a long record as an advocate for hyper-partisan, segregationist causes.”

Farr’s record of fighting advances in black political participation spans decades. It includes his involvement in drafting and then defending the 2013 North Carolina “monster” voter restriction law struck down by a federal court because it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.” “Because of race, the Legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” the court ruled.

And just recently, Farr was reported to have misrepresented his role in voter suppression activity directed at black voters conducted by the Jesse Helms Senate campaign in 1990 against Charlotte’s first black mayor, Harvey Gantt. A former Justice Department lawyer placed Farr in the center of the unlawful conduct.  

This record should be disqualifying on its own. What’s missing and more disquieting in Farr’s story, however, is his early connections to one of the most influential racist hate groups of the 20^th century: the Pioneer Fund. Founded in 1937 to pursue “race betterment” for those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution,” the Pioneer Fund was the “primary source for scientific racism” well into the 2000s and one of the key funders of the fight against civil rights in the South from the 1950s onward.

Planned Parenthood was founded right about the same time for the explicit purpose of thinning the herd of society’s “undesirables.”  *Shall we hold our breaths waiting for these creeps to denounce modern-day Planned Parenthood supporters / affiliates?*

MORE:

Farr’s connection to the Pioneer Fund comes principally through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms. Ellis was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from the Pioneer Fund to a tax-exempt foundation called the Coalition For Freedom that was under Ellis’ control and represented by Farr.[…]

Americans also tend to imagine organized racism as the province of hooded Klansmen. In reality, Farr stands as a direct descendant of one of the most sophisticated segregationist projects in American history. […] 

Wow.  Just, wow.  Talk about having nooooooooo shame.

[…] By 1973, Ellis officially joined the Pioneer Fund as a director on an invitation from Weyher. This fact only became public following a New York Times exposé in 1977 which revealed a number of grant recipients, including Stanford University Professor William Shockley and Dr. Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California — two towers of scientific racism — as well as Dr. Roger Pearson, a racist extremist who maintained ties with former Nazis.[…] 

Pssst.  Robert Byrd was in The Klan. (And the Dems elected him Senate majority leader. In the 70s AND 80s.  Jus’ sayin’ …)

Also, the Pioneer Fund gave money toward the publication of Charles Murray’s famous book, The Bell Curve.   — a real bête noire for libs.

[…] Ellis recruited Helms to run for Senate in 1972 and remained a top aide into the 1990s.

At the same time, Ellis and North Carolina’s new Senator Jesse Helms, were creating a powerful political empire designed to influence both politics and policy against the rising tide of integration and civil rights. That venture further extended the reach of the Pioneer Fund in the political world. While a Pioneer director, Ellis developed a set of interlocking directorates and associations that shared leadership with the Pioneer Fund and relied, in part, on its funding. These relationships would continue even after Ellis resigned from the Pioneer Fund after his association was made public. 

Ellis and Helms first met as aides during a 1950 North Carolina Senate campaign that was notorious for its racism and included ads that stated, “White people, wake up before it’s too late.” After Helms’ first senate victory in 1972, a campaign which Ellis managed, Ellis created and chaired the North Carolina Congressional Club, a vehicle initially designed to retire the campaign’s debt. Ellis turned the state-based organization into the National Congressional Club, an incredibly powerful national political action committee that served the conservative movement for decades. […] 

Okay, so let’s get this straight.  Farr is UNFIT to be a judge because he worked WITH somebody that belonged to an organization that these creeps don’t like?

And that 1950 Senate race?  There has never been a shred of evidence linking Helms to those ads.  (He denied involvement, as well.) But lack of evidence rarely stops liberals, does it?  (Russia “collusion”, anyone?)

MORE:

In 1983, Farr became intricately engaged with this network of organizations when he joined the Raleigh, North Carolina-based law firm that bore Ellis’ name, Maupin, Taylor & Ellis. (William W. Taylor, Jr. worked with Ellis to staff the Pearsall Committee).

Farr worked with Ellis at Maupin, Taylor & Ellis until 2003, and then followed Ellis to another firm where Farr is still a shareholder.

[…]

In 1984, Helms, Ellis and Farr used their vast political network to suppress African American votes and scare up white resentment in Helms’ campaigns for senate. With Farr as lead counsel, the campaign circulated photos of opponent Governor Jim Hunt with African American leaders such as Jesse Jackson and cited Hunt’s support of voter registration, the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday — the vote for which Helms infamously filibustered in the Senate — and the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. The campaign was even mentioned by the Supreme Court in a redistricting case, Gingles v. Edmisten, as evidence of continued racism in North Carolina politics.[…] 

In 1984, Helms’s chief spokesman for his campaign and Senate staff was a young black man named Claude Allen.  (*Details, Details …*)

[…] Farr also served as lead counsel for Helms’ senate campaign in 1990. The opponent was Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte. In its final days, the campaign ran an ad showing white hands crumpling a rejection letter with the announcer stating: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Farr’s mentor Ellis was credited with authoring the ad.  […] 

Never mind that during THAT very campaign — in 1990 — civil rights legend James Meredith was working as an aide in Helms’s Washington offices. Or that the chief of staff in his DC office — a former journalist — had won awards for his exposé on the 60s-era membership of the Klan in his home county in North Carolina.  (*Details, details, details …*)

[…] That same campaign engaged in voter suppression so egregious that the Justice Department under President George H.W.

 Bush filed a complaint for intimidating black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the campaign mailed over 100,000 postcards to mostly black voters in North Carolina one week before the election. The postcards suggested the voters were ineligible to vote and threatened jail time. The Justice Department complaint found that the mailing was undertaken to influence the senate election and had the purpose and effect of intimidating and threatening black voters from exercising their right to vote. A North Carolina voter who received the postcard recently told a reporter: “We were looking at it, and it just seemed like you would basically be afraid to go vote, in case you would do something wrong…And the wording on the card just gave you a chill.”[…] 

The cards were reminders about ONLY voting where you live and only voting ONCE.  During the ’90 campaign, I was working for Helms in DC and finishing up my undergrad at GW.  There were posters all over the place recruiting leftist rabble to go down to North Carolina and meddle in the race. Mischief was afoot all over the place.

And the Bush Justice Department interest?  Look at what we’re learning about the current Justice Department.   Administrations come and go, but career employees with agendas hang around forever. 

I am so sick of Republicans bowing and scraping to give liberals the Sotomayors, Bader-Ginsburgs, and Kagans with nary a whimper of protest, while they sit on their hands and allow lefty creeps to smear actual accomplished jurists like Tom Farr, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas.

Farr is not exactly a radical.  His donation record is quite establishment-oriented. He’s been  a good soldier for the NCGOP.  (But THAT is not a crime. Yet, at least.)

Judge this guy on his record and performance.  Evaluate him on his view of the job — what a federal judge SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be doing.