and termed it "a new low." Wichita's Oletha Faust-Goudeau, the only African-American woman in the Kansas Senate, called Kobach's comments ridiculous. Kobach said that he stood by his allegations declaring, "My point was to bring attention to the Obama Justice Department's position that some civil rights statutes can't be enforced against people of color", Kobach said. "For example, one of the Obama administration's first actions it took in 2009 was to drop the slam-dunk charges against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation." One Republican member of the Civil Rights Commission disagreed, however. Abigail Thernstrom, writing in National Review, described the incident as "small potatoes". She warned that exaggerating its importance could hurt conservatives, noting that in 45 years there had only been three successful prosecutions. She said only two "Panthers," one of whom displayed a billy club, had been at a single, majority-black precinct in Philadelphia. After months of hearings, testimony, and investigation, no actual evidence was found that any voters were afraid to vote. She continued, "Too much overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges has been devoted to this case." On September 2, 2015, representatives of groups most likely to be affected by Kobach's plan to shorten a deadline for tens of thousands of suspended voters to produce proof of citizenship, including the ACLU, the League of Women Voters (LWV), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Organization for Women (NOW), all testified in a Topeka hearing conducted by Brian Caskey, a Kobach appointee, against the implementation of Kobach's policy. Although Kobach's office was in the building adjacent to the courthouse, he failed to appear for the rule change hearing and to answer questions. Instead, his request was supported by Andrew Howell, a Shawnee county elections official whom Kobach also had appointed. In response to criticism levied by the campaign staff of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Kobach characterized them as "left-wing knuckleheads". He remarked that Clinton was getting her "pant suit in a twist", over his stance in favor of implementing some of the most strictly enforced voter ID laws in the United States. Clinton had claimed Kobach's interventions were an attempt to make voting more difficult for key Democratic constituencies, such as young people and racial minorities. In October 2015, Kobach spoke at a conference organized by Social Contract Press, an organization that the Southern Poverty