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Maybe documentation is too specific of a word. Politico had no documentation AND no evidence whatsoever. The who, what, where, when and why of the story were entirely missing.

The burden is on the accuser to prove that the charges are true, not on the accused to prove a negative.

You asked about my feelings on the matter.. who do I believe? Until I see some real evidence, I believe that Cain is probably innocent of the charges, but there is currently no way for any of us to know. I do think it is suspicious that the accuser won't bring forth the agreement that she and her attorney signed.

In the end, I believed Clarence Thomas because not a one of the folks who knew both Thomas and Hill sided with her. And in the end, even if everything she said was true, what's the big deal? I have no patience for women who want to be equal to men in the workplace, but still want to be put on a pedestal. It drives me crazy.

Since I live in CA, my opinion on the election is pretty irrelevant. The candidate will be picked before we even vote, which is OK with me, since most of CA is pretty liberal.

For what it's worth:
1) I hate Romney
2) I don't care for Huntsman or Paul
3) I think a Cain/Gingrich ticket makes a lot of sense, but I could support any of the remaining candidates without reservation. My two cents.

Maybe documentation is too specific of a word. Politico had no documentation AND no evidence whatsoever.

Now you and I are getting closer to agreeing and its time to share a coffee. The headline of the post was 'documentation.' As an attorney (and I apologize to you; I apologize to myself daily), that word has a specific definition. Its use in the headline almost seemed intended to create an "A-AH!" in minds when lack of documentation is often meaningless.

And I wouldn't say Politico had no evidence. We don't know to whom Politico spoke. I'd say that chances are they had very shaky evidence, very thin evidence, and perhaps clearly unreliable evidence. Although we could be quite surprised. There's a tiny, tiny chance that the past President of the National Restaurant Association - a Marriott, if I believe, and Romney friend - was the original source of the "two women' story.

You said "The burden is on the accuser to prove that the charges are true, not on the accused to prove a negative." That's a standard in a court of law for *most" situations. It's not a standard for printing a news story (or a slur story). And even in court, there are some exceptions. In products liability action (and I need to simplify this so I don't write a book here) there is a doctrine of strict liability, and another doctrine in the law called res ipsa loquitur, "the thing speaks for itself", where the fact that something happened is evidence itself. At that point, you're stuck proving a negative.

So all along, I've been arguing not for or against Cain or any candidate on this post.

It all started with an innocent question - can somebody summarize? Because the headline was "no documentation." And the idea that 'no documentation' of that first claim was meaningful didn't seem to be meaningful.