Happy Unbirthday, America

“A Very Merry Unbirthday.” We all remember the lyrics from Alice in Wonderland: “A very merry unbirthday/To me/To who?/To me/ Oh, you.” Etcetera. They were written by Robert B. Sherman of the Sherman Brothers who wrote so many of the great Disney hits, including that most super positive of all super uppers, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

But one thing that it isn’t very “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” this Fourth of July is our country. It’s her birthday — but not a happy one. Maybe we should, in Robert B. Sherman’s other words, call it an “unbirthday.”

But whatever we call our situation, the causes of our malaise are all too apparent — a depressed economy, out-of-control government spending with the largest deficits since World War II, an intractable ecological disaster with no plan how to end it, a continuing global war against an enemy we dare not even name, a mad theocracy on the verge of nuclear weapons, and so on.

Worst of all, however, may be the growing cancer inside our own house. Difficult as our problems may be, they can be resolved democratically in a society under the rule of law. But we have reason to believe that these days, that most basic of all our legal principles, that keystone of our system, one which was fought for by generations of Americans, equality before the law, is under attack at the center of our government.

That is why the most important story that Pajamas Media has covered since its inception in 2005 may be the emergence of whistleblower J. Christian Adams from the Department of Justice. Adams was an attorney in the voting rights division who resigned when the Department forbid him to testify on the New Black Panther case before the US Commission on Civil Rights. The Department had dismissed that case before sentencing, even though they had won it. According to Adams, the DOJ has a dreadful record when pursuing examples of black on white racism. Only racism towards people of color is countenanced.

As CEO of Pajamas Media, I am proud to have published Adams and will continue to do so. I am also a former sixties civil rights worker and what we were fighting for at the time was true racial equality, not an unbalanced system in which aggrieved interest groups, whatever their historical justification, can threaten and bully people of other races. I can’t say what Dr. King would think today (unlike others, I am not psychic) but I would like to think he would oppose racism from all quarters and toward all races. In fact, I am almost certain he would.

I also know Adams’s story is important because it has been met by stone cold silence from the mainstream media. And not just from the usual suspects – the triumvirate of reified liberalism, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post — but even from the Wall Street Journal. The supposedly center-right WSJ has thus far ignored the story of the Justice Department attorney. Shame on the Journal and kudos to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly for having the courage to bring this forth.

Well, on Tuesday, Adams — no longer a government employee — will finally get to testify in front of the commission. And I have it on good authority that he will name names — the names of those in authority who let the Panthers off free after the case had been won: Loretta King and Steve Rosenbaum. I have no idea if he will officially name their boss the attorney general, but as the old saying goes, “The fish rots from the top down.” Indeed, I am told that Holder was “aware of the outlines of the case.”