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Possibly the single best commentary written to date on this spectacle, courtesy of Tony Soprano of the TalkLeft forum...

"On the Eve of Halloween, Mike Nifong told an AP reporter why the three Duke Lacrosse Players must be put on trial:

You can make the case go away pretty easily..... You can do it with the stroke of a pen. But that does nothing to address the underlying divisions that have been revealed. My personal feeling is "the first step to addressing those divisions is addressing this case..... The future of Durham's in the balance."

Listen closely, and you can hear Mike Nifong clamouring for these three young men to be sacrificed in the name of addressing underlying issues in Durham.

What do these three have to do with feelings and underlying feelings in Durham?

Nifong told USA Today in March, There's been a feeling in the past that Duke students are treated differently by the court system. “There was a feeling that Duke students' daddies could buy them expensive lawyers and that they knew the right people."

So courtesy of the Town Elder's mouth, we know the "feelings" were there in Durham before these players ever came along. But, somehow, it seems they are being held hostage for some perceived "feeling" in the community. A perceived Evil in the community.

One interpretation of Nifong's pontifications are that a trial - the sacred ritual - is necessary and if the three players are sacrificed, it's what the community demands -- and needs.

It has always bothered me that Nifong told a National audience that the woman's behavior that night in March was consistent with someone that had experienced a Traumatic event. A reaction is not evidence. People react in different ways. Appearances can be deceiving. People act and people fake. But, Nifong reasoned someone must be to blame for the woman's behavior.

The Salem Witch Trials began with a young woman that exhibited bizarre behavior. Some of the "evidence" used against accused witches in phony trials, where the accused were assumed guilty, was the reaction of an afflicted young woman. Defendants were often asked, "If you're not a witch, how do explain the fact that these afflicted girls fall into fits the minute you enter the room?" What happened at Duke Medical Center? We were told that the accuser reacted hysterically to the sight of a man at the hospital. The accuser had to be shielded from men at Duke, in order to prevent her fits.

The young women in Salem, after their fits, reported that they were pinched, kicked, and strangled and pointed out the witch or wizard that was responsible. At Duke Medical Center, according to the NYT, the SANE nurse wrote that the Duke accuser, told of being held by both legs and pinched, pushed and kicked. Those observering the fits in the 17th century, said the young women cowered under chairs and spoke nonsense and gibberish. The Duke accuser cowered under furniture in a Durham Strip club before stealing a car. Kim Roberts and Medical personnel have alternatively described her as speaking nonsense and being incoherent.

Town leaders in Salem whipped the townspeople into a frenzy over the alleged witches inflicting pain and fits in young women from the community. The community anger overflowed at accused Witches in the courtroom: "In contrast to the dignified courtroom decorum demanded by most U.S. judges today, the Salem witches were confronted by belligerent magistrates, rabid witnesses, and apoplectic spectators in the gallery. One defendant was struck in the head with a shoe thrown by an onlooker."
It seems Durham Village, even today, doesn't have "dignified courtroom decorum." If you recall when a young man, David Evans, entered the courtroom, observers yelled out obscenites and threats at him - as the Black Panthers and angry townspeople gathered outside, like Salem, it seems Durham Village also presumes Guilt before their trials.

One of the afflicted young women in Salem was described like this by a modern day author:
"She was a sad and vengeful woman whose life had been filled with hardship and misery. Which had greatly affected her mental health and made her susceptible to visions, dreams and omens. Her fragile state of mind left her high-spirited and prone to fits of fancy, which had fatal results for some of the accused." The afflicted young women in Durham village has a long psychological story of problems and in unrelated cases has accused at least four men of crimes that would put them away for most of their lives.

In Salem, a town Leader wrote that there was a "blak cloud that threatened this Province with destruccion"; Town Leader, Mike Nifong tells us today of the urgent need to prosecute these young men, "The future of Durham is in the balance," we are told.

Mike Nifong's investigation and prosecution has a lot more in common with a witch trial to cleanse the town of its "underlying feelings," than an examination of the facts in administering the Law. Nifong should be careful in calling for an exorcism, be careful what you wish for, Elder Nifong."