[mrustow]

I guess they can find some strained method to question the DNA evidence or come up with a very convoluted and tortured explanation for it. But is you put Occam's Razor to the question it isn't all that complex.

I don't see how Occam's Razor is going to help you to join the Hemings Party. The Hemings Party has adduced no evidence that Thomas was the father; hence, there is no reason to accept the radical, new theory that Thomas was the father. (And you can't call it an old theory, because Callender was merely a libelist.)

It would not destroy Jefferson's legacy, were it true, but the Hemings Party certainly does aim to "libel" Jefferson (legally, you can't libel a dead man). Why they think that would discredit him is a matter of their particular political psychopathology.

[tcuoohjohn]

The key to the issue is the preponderance of evidence standard. While it does not meet the " beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that isn't the historical standard used. Jefferson is not on trial ( though by the agonized writhings of the far right and far left on this issue you would swear that they have Jefferson in the dock.)

Given the historical record and contemporary DNA evidence one thing we know for absolute certainty. Someone in the Jefferson clan was the genetic contributor to one or more of Sally Hemmings children. Given that fact, you are faced with deciding who was the most likely to be that contributor. Given the frequency of access, the kinship relationship of Jefferson's widow to Sally Hemmings and comparing it to frequency of access of other possible candidates it is, on balance,most likely that Thomas Jefferson was that genetic contributor. This does not exclude other possibilites but is based on a "most likely standard". The distinction is the diffrence between words probability and possibility.

As an editorial comment I don't think Jefferson is any greater or lesser as a result of this probability. Those on the tub thumping left would have you believe that Jefferson was something lesser as result ( hypocrite, racist, rapist yadda..yadda.), while those on the sanctimous right are outraged at the suggestion that Jefferson probably fathered one or more of Hemming's children. ( He was a secular God who would never deign to stoop so low as to have sex with a mulatto women yadda yadda).

Jefferson was a man. He was a man of his time and operated under the social strictures and patterns of behavior of his time. He was a widower who owned a woman who was his dead wife's half sister.She gave birth to a son who ancestors bear the distinct genetic markers of the Jefferson family. Now given those facts who do you believe is the mostly likely genetic contributor?

If they stripped out the name Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings and its historical implications and substituted Josephus L Smith and Suzie Q. Brown the analysis of probablity becomes much more easy. It is less fraught with the biases and expectations of the observers.