Updated - today's items:
Dennis Prager, Real Clear Politics:
Duke Lacrosse Scandal: Eight Lessons -- America's news media, an amoral university, an opportunistic district attorney, and a police department that seems to have collaborated in framing innocent students all combined to nearly destroy the lives of three innocent young men -- members of the Duke University lacrosse team.
The attorney general of North Carolina announced that all charges -- of rape, sexual assault and whatever other charges a mendacious young woman got Mike Nifong to bring against the Duke lacrosse team players -- were being dropped. He pronounced the students "innocent," not merely "not guilty." And the attorney general also declared Nifong a "rogue prosecutor."
The lessons of this terrible story are obvious, but given the political correctness of our time and the inverted values that prevail among America's elites -- particularly the news media, the universities and the legal profession -- these lessons will rarely be expressed, let alone learned.
First, the rape of a name is also a rape. A false accusation of rape can be as devastating to a man and his family as a real rape can be to a woman and her family. Sometimes a real rape is more destructive; sometimes the rape of a name is more destructive. It is therefore a grave injustice not to prosecute the woman who brought these false charges...
discussion:
LieStoppers forum: Dennis Prager Column, Essential Reading
FreeRepublic: Critics Want Duke Accuser Prosecuted...
related:
Cash Michaels, Wilmington Journal: Critics Want Duke Accuser Prosecuted...
-- Ms. Mangum, 28, reportedly has a long history of mental and emotional illness, detailed in documents that are being kept under seal by the court now that the case is over.
However her older cousin and spokesperson, Jakki, told the syndicated television news magazine "Inside Edition" that Mangum is not mentally unstable...
Sources confirm that Mangum has legal counsel, lending to speculation that she may file a civil suit in the matter.
At one point, Cousin Jakki did exclusively indicate to The Carolinian/Wilmington Journal newspapers that Mangum was interested in telling her side of the story in a book, but so far, there is no indication of any deals having been made.
Critics raise the question that if Mangum is not sane enough to be held responsible for filing serious false charges, then why is she considered stable enough to raise three young children under ten - the youngest literally just months old - without supervision or a steady source of income?
And now that the media are plastering her name and picture on television and in newspapers, how will Ms. Magnum be able to cope under the pressure of being easily identified?
The answers to those questions are why, in the minds of many observers, the final chapter in the Duke lacrosse case is far from being written.
NEXT- Should Blacks apologize for the Duke lacrosse case?
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WRAL:Judge Will Deny Resident's Call for Nifong's Removal -- For the second time in two months, a local resident has filed court papers seeking the removal of Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong from office.
But a judge overseeing the case said he would again deny the motion.
Elizabeth Brewer filed a civil complaint against Nifong in February, alleging willful misconduct and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the office into disrepute. The charges stemmed from his handling of the investigation of sexual assault allegations against members of the Duke University lacrosse team.
Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson delayed any action on the complaint until an ethics case filed by the North Carolina State Bar against Nifong for his handling of the Duke lacrosse case is completed.
Hudson told WRAL on Monday he would deny Brewer's motion again, because ruling on it would deny Nifong's right to due process before the State Bar.
discussion:
LieStoppers:
Perverting the Law, Just Another Day on the Bench -- In ruling on Spruill v. Lake Phelps Volunteer Fire Department, Inc., the North Carolina Supreme Court stated:“A court cannot ignore clear and precise statutory language. Judicial interpretation allows a court to resolve statutory ambiguities, not create them.”Repeatedly, the United States Supreme Court has affirmed that “when the terms of a statute are unambiguous, judicial inquiry is complete” and “when a rule (or a statute) is clear, a court cannot distort its meaning.”
Yesterday, for the second time in two months, Durham County Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson has decided that he has power that both the North Carolina and United State Supreme Courts do not. Placing himself above the law, Judge Hudson continues to ignore the clear and precise statutory language of NCGS 7A-66...
Joan Foster, LieStoppers:
With Apologies to ABBA... -- [for Durham County Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson]Do you read the press, Orlando?
I remember long ago when I still held them in my thrall.
They hailed my confidence, Orlando!
And never seem to mind my tactics or my stunning lack of evidence at all.
The metanarrative had begun!
If the Dukies just stand trial, a Durham jury will make them fall!..
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WRAL:Duke Profs Receive Racist E-Mail After Lacrosse Case -- Duke University police are investigating death threats against professors who questioned racial attitudes on campus a year ago, shortly after a black woman accused three white Duke lacrosse players of sexually assaulting her.
The so-called "Group of 88" professors endorsed an advertisement in The Duke Chronicle newspaper that quoted students who talked candidly about racism on campus. Some readers said the faculty members were convicting the lacrosse players before they had been tried...
The professors denied they were prejudging the players, but the ad was enough to spark violent, racist attacks against them in some Internet blogs.
The attacks have continued even as the case against the players has ended, said the professors, who didn't want to be identified for fear of instigating more threats. They said they receive about a half dozen threatening e-mails a day from unidentified senders.
discussion:
'I am because we are' blog:
J: Duke Professors Recieving Racist, Threatening E-mails - one year later: still being justified by the “listening ad” -- While the celebrations of “innocence” roll on, and KC Johnson’s hate-filled blog (where hundreds of commenters a day log in to join his denigrations and verbal maulings of these professors, and fawn over his ceaseless iterations of hateful clap-trapping about the “G88″) is on its way to publication as a book, and even the ‘good liberals’ are coming out of the woodwork to shake off the remnants of their tainted white guilt to join the daily avalanche of apologies to “the accused”, WHO IS LISTENING NOW?
LieStoppers blog: Duke Police Investigating E-mail Threats, WRAL re: "Group of 88" -- They were whining at least as far back as mid February at the "Shut Up and Teach" event. If they had anything credible it would have produced results by now.related:
Naureen Khan, Duke Chronicle: Faculty speak out on threats, intimidation
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Iza Wojciechowska, Duke Chronicle:Times lax coverage comes under scrutiny -- It was the best of The Times, it was the worst of The Times.
Often regarded as a national newspaper of record, The New York Times has recently come under fire for its coverage of the Duke lacrosse case. In the year since the story first broke, The Times has been criticized for printing news with a slant favoring Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong and for drawing out the amalgam of sex, race and class issues that contributed to the case's prominent position in the national spotlight...
In an August article for Slate.com Stuart Taylor, a columnist for the National Journal and a former Times reporter, said Wilson and Glater's piece "highlights every superficial incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence and reports hotly disputed statements... as if they were established facts."
He also criticized the article for relying heavily for evidence on a 33-page report by Sgt. Mark Gottlieb and three pages of handwritten notes that had been made exclusive to The Times. Gottlieb wrote the notes after the initial investigation and told defense lawyers he was "relying... on his memory" to write a chronological report of the investigation, The Times reported.
"[It] was the worst single piece of journalism I've ever seen in long form in a newspaper," Taylor said in an interview with The Chronicle. He added that many of the paper's articles-most of which were written by Wilson-were pro-Nifong and downplayed much of the defense's evidence...
discussion:
KC Johnson: Wojciechowska's Counterfactual -- An intriguing counterfactual from Iza Wojciechowska, regarding her article today... So I wonder: if The Times had restrained its coverage a little bit—or perhaps been “more skeptical,” as the critics would like to have seen—would the entire story, the entire case, the entire “perfect storm” have been the same?
KC Johnson: What Byron Calame Should Have Written
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Clay Waters, NewsBusters.org:NYT Public Editor Defends Paper's Poor Coverage of Duke 'Rape' -- Sunday, the Times Public Editor Barney Calame (whose term as the paper's in-house critic and "readers' representative" is expiring soon) gently tackled the paper's shoddy coverage of the Duke case.
Even as the case fell apart and other liberal media outlets backed away, the Times issued a notorious 5,000-word portrait of the case on August 25, 2006, in which reporter Duff Wilson concluded that there was enough evidence against the players for local prosecutor Michael Nifong the case to trial.
As usual, company man Calame lets the Times off easier than it deserves, but his mild, overly faithful criticism does tease out a few nuggets of insight... -------
Richard Lipsky, The Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog:Times' Lockjaw Continues -- As the Times' shameful silence continues on the attempt at legal lynching of the Duke3, there is a wonderful cartoon in the Charlotte Observer that asks the question: "If the lacrosse players are innocent, who's guilty?" In the cartoon there is a Blue Devil logo surrounding a caracature of Mike Nifing garbed in real devil attire.
And while Nifong deserves satanic first billing, it is certainly far from unfair to say that the paper of wreckage deserves a supporting actor award for its poor coverage and subsequent editorial silence. The Times had no problem excoriating Don Imus, but hasn't the menschlichkeit to make Nifong, who arguably has done far greater damage to racial comity in his abuse of power, the target of its editorial scorn...
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KC Johnson:Araton: No Apologies -- This policy—to which he had not adhered in his April 2006 case analysis, which defended the work of Selena Roberts—allowed Calame to avoid comment on Times sports columnist Harvey Araton, who penned one of the most disturbing op-eds of the entire case. After hearing that members of the women’s lacrosse team would wear armbands at the Final Four expressing sympathy with the three men’s players targeted by Mike Nifong, Araton chastised the “lacrosse gals” for showing how “cross-team friendship and university pride [could] negate common sense at a college as difficult to gain admission to as Duke.” They were, he scoffed, “staking their own reputations” on the case’s outcome...
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Ray Gronberg, Herald-SunColumn angers players' backers -- A column about the Duke lacrosse case in N.C. Central University's campus newspaper is drawing criticism from supporters of the now-exonerated players who say it advocates vigilante justice.
The column, penned by senior history major and NCCU student government member Solomon Burnette, is titled "Death to All Rapists." It contends the dismissal of charges against lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann wasn't surprising because American law "is not worth the paper it is printed upon."
Burnette -- son of former City Councilwoman Brenda Burnette -- concluded by saying that others must be ready to mete out "retributive correction." ...
Solomon Burnette -- who served a 13-month prison sentence in 2000 and 2001 after pleading no contest to charges of robbing two Duke students in 1997 and then violating the terms of his probation -- stood by his column.
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Michael Gaynor:Duke case: An even greater NCCU disgrace -- First there was North Carolina Central University's Chan Hall, who told Newsweek, "It's the same old story. Duke up, Central down." and the Duke students should be prosecuted 'whether it happened or not" as " justice for things that happened in the past."
Now there is NCCU's Solomon Burnette.
Solomon's solutions : "Death to all rapists" (the title of his utterly outrageous op/ed in the NCCU student newspaper) and racial warfare.
His article is profoundly and patently disturbing...
discussion continues:
LS forum: More Black Racism Rears Its Ugly Head, NCCU Hatefest continued
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LieStoppers:Campus Echo Stands By Hate Piece -- In response to criticism of the decision to publish the violent musings of Solomon Burnette, the editor of the Campus Echo, student newspaper of North Carolina Central University, has printed a disclaimer suggesting that the opinions expressed by the twenty-seven year old University of North Carolina Association of Student Governments Vice Chair do not reflect the views of the newspaper or the University. Rather, the editor stands by the decision to publish the overtly racist hate speech on the basis of First Amendment rights.
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John in Carolina:INNOCENT: Readers refute N&O. -- Raleigh News & Observer executive editor for news Melanie Sill allows that the N&O’s coverage of what it used to call “the Duke lacrosse rape scandal” wasn’t quite perfect but, Sill insists, it was awfully, awfully good.
Sill and other N&O editors admit the paper made some mistakes during the first week of the N&O’s Hoax coverage, but they say the mistakes were mostly the fault of the players and their parents who refused to cooperate with the N&O. (See Apr. 15 columns by Sill and public editor Ted Vaden)
Some people buy Sill and the N&O’s glowing self-appraisal of the paper’s Hoax coverage. Sill calls those people “thoughtful critics.”
And the people who don’t agree with Sill and the N&O’s glowing self-appraisal?
Editor Sill calls them “haters” engaged in “smearing The N&O.”
That's nonsense!
The people Sill calls “haters” are really fine citizen journalists speaking truth to a powerful editor who we’ve all just learned led a thirteen month long cover-up of critically important exculpatory news that, had the public known of it, surely would have made the frame-up of David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann impossible.
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Mike McCusker: Duff Wilson Has A Pussy Down There-------
Glenda Overstreet, Topeka Capital-Journal:Overstreet: Duke case leaves deep scars -- A Duke University lacrosse player recently indicated, after going through the unfounded charges and legal challenges he’s faced over the past year, he’ll be going to another college, even though Duke extended an invitation to him to continue his studies there. The player said he was uncomfortable being at Duke and had chosen to look at other educational options.
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John Schwade, The Last Plantation...blog:Duke lacrosse case: Beware revisionist accounts -- Sorry to disappoint the world, but we citizens of Durham, NC did not initiate a race war as the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case made its way through, if not the criminal justice system, the imagination of DA Mike Nifong. And contrary to dire predictions, black citizens did not riot when NC Attorney General Roy Cooper pronounced the accused "innocent."
Nothing about the case was ever as it was portrayed in the entertainment-news media, especially the reactions of Durhamites...
Although you'd never know it if you don't read The Durham News, the president of the NC NAACP, Rev. William Barber, was the best ally the players could have asked for...
comment: Durham election Nifong in November 2006 to be their DA despite all the mounting questions regarding his ethics. Durham's corruption has been exposed by this hoax. The moral core of Durham is rotten. Durham has big problems. And if William Barber was an ally of the innocent lacrosse players, then Judas Iscariot was a friend of Jesus, who just got a bad rap. Schwade is doing exactly what his article says to beware. He's giving a revisionist account. Schwade has attempted before to shift all the blame to Nifong. Black citizens of Durham are just more victims of Nifong. Voters bare no responsibility for their votes.
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Cartoons by Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer and Lisa Benson
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comment: Unrelated, but them's fight'n words --
Rob Parker, Detroit News:Hank Aaron is a coward -- Shame on Aaron for not being supportive of Bonds -- He's taking a stance but not saying what it is.
There's no other way to look at it. Aaron, the home run king, is playing a neutral role in the biggest sports debate since whether hits king Pete Rose deserved to be in the Hall of Fame.
It's clear Barry Bonds will supplant Aaron as the king of the long ball. Bonds is 18 home runs away from No. 756, one better than Aaron.
Still, Aaron says he will notbe there when he drops to No. 2. Why? Who knows. Or more like, we all know.It comes down to accusations Bonds used steroids, even though the slugger hasn't been found guilty. What's Aaron's problem?
Well, he needs to take a stand -- either denounce Bonds' attempt because he's been implicated in the steroids scandal, or embrace Bonds' accomplishment and show up. Playing middle of the road isn't fair -- to baseball, its fans or Bonds.
discussion:
MSNBC: Hammerin' Hank a coward? Not a chance
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