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It’s scary-black-man déjà vu all over again at Fox News. This morning, as the polls opened across the country – and the New York Times’ Nate Silver gave President Obama a 92% chance of winning the election - a Fox News Alert warned, as Steve Doocy put it, that “some critics” say that a member of the New Black Panther Party “standing guard” outside a Philadelphia polling place “looks like intimidation, like in 2008.”

Well, if it is like 2008, then the only thing to fear is how Fox News may misuse and distort the incident. An excellent article in Main Justice, a website that reports on the DOJ, explains with great clarity and specificity just how Fox teamed up with GOP operatives to politicize - in an especially racial context - the Obama administration's decision not to make a federal case out of the inconsequentially semi-thuggish behavior of two black men acting as poll watchers in a district with 34 whites in a precinct of 970. Nearly two years later, Main Justice noted:

“No voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation. The complaints have come from white Republican poll watchers, who have given no evidence they were registered to vote in the majority black precinct.”

Doocy didn’t mention which precinct the NBPP “guard” was at but chances are it’s the same majority black precinct. In 2010, the NBPP was there again, this time without incident. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Judge of Elections Lugina Robinson as complaining, “The media is still blowing it out of proportion... There hasn't been any static and turnout has been great. He's not bothering anybody."

Doocy and Fox seemed determined to fear monger and the evidence be damned – or hidden. As a lower-third banner misleadingly referred to the man as a member of “Black Panthers,” (when that group has disavowed any association with the New Black Panther Party), Doocy said,

A member of the New Black Panther Party standing guard outside a polling place in Philadelphia. Hmm. The organization claims they are monitoring the 2012 election but some critics say that it looks like intimidation, like in 2008. And in an election that is virtually tied, every vote counts.”

Guest Peter Johnson, Jr. not only advanced the “scary black man” meme but added the “Obama administration didn’t prosecute because they favor black people” meme that was at the heart of Fox’s original “controversy.” Johnson said that the black man in the video, who mostly stood with his hands folded in front of him, was in “some kind of semi-military pose.” He continued, “We know that the New Black Panther Party was not prosecuted based on what happened four years ago and that became a big, big controversy. …If someone stands at the poll in a way that appears to be intimidating, it is intimidating.”

And if it isn’t intimidating, you can count on Fox doing its best to make it so - especially if it can make political hay in a swing state. Except when they're for intimidation and not against it.

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Oddly enough, the only mention whatsoever of the New Black Panthers Party on Fox News in the past few days was the above snippet, one of Bill O'Reilly's "Reality Check" tidbits near the end of his show on Tuesday.

Odd, because there was this significant bit of news involving the NBPP case that has been the subject of so much coverage and discussion at Fox for the past year:

The Obama Justice Department did not improperly let politics or the race of the defendants affect the handling of a high-profile civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party, a probe by DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concluded after an extensive investigation.

Justice Department attorneys "did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately, in the exercise of their supervisory duties in connection with the dismissal of the three defendants in the NBPP case," the head of OPR wrote in a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) obtained by TPM.

OPR's investigation began in the summer of 2009. After an extensive investigation which included reviews of the New Black Panther Party file, "thousands of pages of internal Department e-mails, memoranda, and notes" and interviews with 44 current and former Department employees, OPR "found no evidence that the decision to dismiss the case against three of the four defendants was predicated on political considerations," wrote DOJ's Robin Ashton.

This is most odd indeed. Why, we can remember when our Fox morning and afternoon broadcasts were dominated by the breathless coverage of the NBPP scandal, including that nasty catfight on Megyn Kelly's show when Kirtsen Powers tried to point out that there was no there there, and of course video and audio of racially incendiary rants by NBPP leaders. It was always pathetically obvious as race-baiting goes, but then, Fox is nothing if not shameless.

Indeed, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters explains, Fox has been obsessing about the NBPP for the better part of the past couple of years, evidently certain that an Obama-dooming scandal lay therein:

For nearly two years, the right wing has been obsessed with the decision by those senior career attorneys to drop civil charges against three defendants affiliated with the New Black Panther Party who allegedly intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. This fixation became stronger last year, when two DOJ attorneys on the trial team who are linked the Bush administration's politicization of the DOJ claimed in media appearances and in testimony that the DOJ's actions were part of a pattern of racially-charged corruption at the department, in which lawyers there refused to protect white voters from intimidation by minorities.

These allegations received a ready airing on Fox News, but they simply never added up: There was simply no evidence that this was anything more than a disagreement between career attorneys on how to apply a rarely-used provision of the Voting Rights Act; the Obama DOJ did get obtain an injunction against one of the defendants in the case; it also took action in another case to protect white voters from intimidation by black political leaders; and the Bush administration had failed to take action in a similar case in which Latino voters were allegedly intimidated by whites.

And yet, this week, nary a word about these findings could be found on Fox, particularly not on Megyn Kelly's show, where the coverage was high-pitched, heavy-handed and heavily promoted.

Adam Serwer at the Plum Line observes:

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It was pretty obvious from the start that the whole New Black Panthers Party "voter intimidation" controversy was a Breitbart-like right-wing operation intended to gin up fear among white voters, made for heavy airplay on Fox News -- and later, to become an Obama-bashing tool, especially in the hands of Bush-appointed right-wing operatives still inside the Justice Department.

Now Ryan J. Reilly at TPM Muckraker has a great little scoop demonstrating that this whole scene in fact was being orchestrated by GOP attorneys: It turns out that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which has been devoting a great deal of energy to the matter, finally released the full two-and-a-half-minute video showing the New Black Panthers being chatted up by police outside the polling station in Philadelphia -- and then afterwards, the "poll watchers" -- lawyers hired by the GOP -- orchestrating the scene:

In the extended version of the footage, posted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights this month, a police officer tells Morse to back off. That's when the commotion begins.

The video shows someone off-screen to Morse's left, telling the officer "I got him, I got him." A man who appears to be Chris Hill, a Republican poll watcher who was accused of intimidating voters at the polls by another woman at the location, says "Put it down. You've got enough."

Then Bartle Bull chimes in. "Don't you threaten him with your hands. You're threatening him. Don't you use your hands!"

Soon an individual seems to grab Morse's arm or his camera -- the screen moves erratically. "I'm a fucking professional videographer," Morse tells the person trying to stop him from filming. "I was paid... to come from L.A. today."

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which has doggedly pursued the Justice Department's handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, released the final version of their report this week, complete with responses from all the commissioners on the panel. Two Democratic commissioners who have dissented from the investigation pointed out the additional footage in their reply and note that while the Justice Department handed over a full copy of the video, the Commission didn't see fit to post it online until this month, far after the report had been finished.

The video shows that the white Republican poll watchers who showed up to the majority African-American precinct knew exactly what kind of media sensation they had on their hands.

"We're on the same team," says another Republican poll watcher off screen.

"You're fucking up the story. Don't fuck up the story," one unidentified poll watcher tells Morse.

"You guys are lawyers, I'm a videographer," Morse says.

The USCCR issued its full report, including evidentiary material, earlier this week, and as you can see it's a pretty divided affair, largely along partisan lines -- though in fact conservative Bush appointee Abigail Thernstrom backs up her earlier concerns about the investigation with a brief but scathing dissent:

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Everyone -- even Abigail Thernstrom -- knows what Fox News' endless flogging of the fake "New Black Panthers" controversy is really all about:

"This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration."

More than that: It's a classic case of race-baiting, using the incendiary rhetoric of the NBPP to whip up white racial fears and resentments. It is, in other words, a Fox specialty.

O'Reilly was flogging the story again last night, ignoring the inconvenient realities of the matter in order to claim that Obama's Justice Department under Eric Holder is discriminating against white people. O'Reilly wrapped it up with this observation:

O'Reilly: Everybody knows that if a Klan guy was outside a polling place with a club, shouting racial remarks, he would have been prosecuted. So you can draw your own conclusions here.

Oh, really, Bill?

Because a Klan guy in Arizona that same election was seen outside a polling place not just with a club, but with a gun -- and the same voting rights section ignored it!

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We reported on this awhile back:

Leading off the pack is a fellow named Roy Warden. Roy is a well-known Latino-hating racist who is fond of threatening to kill his critics and anyone who opposes him -- and as you can see from the video, in fact packs a holstered pistol to all public events.

Warden is especially noteworthy because, just like those New Black Panthers, Roy Warden was in fact the subject of a DOJ voter-intimidation investigation -- and they indeed decided not to prosecute him based on a lack of evidence, just as in the NBPP case. Media Matters has more:

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It isn't often that truth gets spoken at Fox News, let alone a deep truth about the behavior of both movement conservatives and Fox itself. But UCLA poli-sci prof Mark Sawyer managed to slip one into the morning broadcast yesterday during a segment of America's Newsroom with Shannon Bream filling in for Megyn Kelly.

The topic was the so-called "Ground Zero mosque", and Sawyer was crossing swords with radio talker Ben Ferguson, who seems incapable of anything beyond basic talking-points regurgitation. Bream pointed to the mosque organizers' message of healing the wounds of 9/11 and wondered how that message got lost in the uproar. Sawyer, of course, couldn't help but chortle:

Sawyer: It's been lost because after that Laura Ingraham interview, you guys decided in your summer of racial resentment in the Republican Party, that you were going to whip this up, along with the New Black Panther Party, along with Shirley Sherrod, along with a bunch of other phony stories to get people all stirred up. And that's the point. Nothing's wrong with her message. Exactly what she's saying is exactly the America that we should all want to live in.

Good on Sawyer. I love it when someone says what needs saying, because it doesn't happen enough on teevee. (Of course, Ferguson not only couldn't respond, he then displayed his usual sensitivity by dismissing concerns that the mosque organizers were now getting death threats -- because hey, it happens all the time, right?)

Mind you, he limited the observation to Republicans -- but let's face it, everything he said was equally true about Fox News' behavior. Indeed, as we increasingly see via the money trail, Fox and the GOP are joined at the hip these days.