From LA Times:
Democrats help block Obama's civil rights nominee Debo Adegbile
By Timothy M. Phelps
WASHINGTON—In a surprising defeat for President Obama, the Democratic-controlled Senate on Wednesday blocked his controversial nominee to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
March 5, 2014, 11:11 a.m.
In a statement, President Obama called the 47-52 vote "a travesty based on wildly unfair character attacks against a good and qualified public servant." Supporters of Debo Adegbile, the son of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, say his nomination had been fraught with race issues from the start. Opposition focused on his past legal representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a convicted cop killer in Philadelphia who became a cause celebre in leftist circles.[...]
Civil rights advocates who backed Adegbile expressed outrage, suggesting that race may have played a factor. “You hate to raise that up, but it smells very bad," said Hilary Shelton of the NAACP....There is more here. I suggest that the color of Adegbile's skin had less than zero to do with this. More, it had to do with the cynical belief by this administration that someone who defends a convicted cop killer has ANY business in ANY civil rights division of ANY Justice Department. The only thing that smells 'very bad' here is the tired old playing of the race card. Period. PAY ATTENTION!!