Black Conservatives: Who's Next?

 WASHINGTON  -- Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are expressing disgust over the left's lack of real respect for the First Amendment in light of the uproar among professional liberals that ABC News invited conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart to contribute opinions on election night.

"Silencing speech is the consistent theme used by progressives," said Project 21 full-time Fellow Deneen Borelli. "Not too long ago, NPR threw Juan Williams under the bus because he expressed his feelings, and now ABC News is experiencing the wrath of the left for inviting Andrew Breitbart to appear as a commentator on election night. Progressives will conveniently play the race card or launch smear campaigns in their desperate attempt to control conservative thought."

Breitbart is scheduled to take part in an online election night town hall meeting at Arizona State University to be moderated by ABC News anchor David Muir and Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook. The far-left Media Matters for America, a long-time Breitbart critic, claims the network "puts its credibility on the line" by associating with Breitbart.

Media Matters also published the opinion of Rose Sanders, the attorney for Shirley Sherrod, the former U.S. Department of Agriculture official fired by the Obama White House after a video of part of a speech she gave to a local NAACP event was posted online by Breitbart, and sought, but failed to obtain, the opinion of Sherrod herself. Sanders recklessly compared inviting Breitbart to participate in a media event was like "giving a Klansman an award for burning a cross on Shirley Sherrod's house."

"Shirley Sherrod's lawyer personifies the liberal schizophrenia on the subject of free speech," noted Project 21 member Jerome Hudson. "The Left cannot on one hand be champions of decency and openness and then attempt to suppress Andrew Breitbart's views on the other."

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research