Free Republic

Closure is precisely what the Duke community needs right now.

Yep, let's get on with business as usual. The gang of 88 has gotten daddy to buy them protection and now they can go back to their research on race/gender/class. Nothing to see here, keep on moving.

That is why the settlement released the 88. There was no valid claim to begin with.

Somebody at Duke obviously feared there was the potential for faculty liability or they wouldn't have worked to get that specific language included in the agreement.

It should also be noted that the agreement was between Duke and the three defendants and their families. Other members of the team did not share in the settlement and are not bound by the agreement. All of them suffered the public abuse and the threats from the witch hunt. Each of them incurred the expense of securing legal representation. Some of them sat through classes where they were depicted as criminals by their instructors.

The damages were real enough. As to whether Duke faculty could be found liable:
1. The university's lawyers made sure to get language absolving them for anything they said before the agreement (with the implicit message to the 88 that "you're on your own from here on. Keep up the crap you've been pulling and we won't be bailing you out!");
2. There will not be a shortage of legal talent ready to pursue civil claims against Duke, its administration and faculty on behalf on the dozens of other wronged parties.

The settlement with the three families saved Duke the expense and embarassment of fighting civil charges which they probably would have lost and which would have put the university in an extremely unflattering public light. Who wants to be the villain in the lead story on the news every night ("Duke vs falsely accused students")?

The settlement has also made it clear that Duke will use its deep pockets to put this incident "behind them". Surely no one at Duke (or in the Durham legal community) imagines that the university has written its last check in this affair.

First rule of economics: If you want more of something, then subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. I think that principle applies here!

...the South Carolina state House approved a bill Wednesday that would allow women considering an abortion to see an ultrasound of their unborn child.

In which states are pregnant women not allowed to see an ultrasound of their child? Somehow I think this sentence misses the point of the alleged legislation.

The recently released film of Rudy sucking up to the NARAL crowd has done him immeasurable harm. It's one thing to hold a theoretical "let everybody do whatever they want" point of view and quite another to grovel on cue and repeat the femi-nazi slogans verbatim.

Many conservatives are willing to accept a "flawed" candidate so long as he's electable and strong on national defense. They aren't going to be willing to accept the lapdog we see performing in that film clip.

Howie Carr calls him Osama bin Meehan for his knee-jerk crticism of the President delaying his return to DC on 9/11.

Good for Howie! Meehan really distinguished himself by launching personal attacks on the President before there had been any revelation of the steps the Secret Service had employed in keeping the President safe during the period immediately following the attacks. He has probably the most severe case of BDS of any member of congress...though he does have lots of competition. Still, he stands out as the one whose first response to an attack on the country was to vilify the President.

Presumably he's maxed out on the congressional pension by now. Four or five years at UML ought to be enough to secure another six-figure pension. Then it's on to the toll commission for a few years to bag another. Where would we be without these humble public servants taking care of us?

CBS would have been smarter to hire Judge Judy to read the news.

LOL!! And notice that we never see Judge Judy complaining about weak lead-ins hurting her ratings. She assumes that it's her job to create a program that people will want to watch. The perky one could learn a lot from Judge Judy.

The double treatment of the Adalius Thomas signing is more reprehensible (and more typically Borges) than the copying of lines reciting someone's stats for the season. He writes one story for the MSNBC web site praising Thomas as the greatest value in the free agent market (and this before the signing takes place). Then for the Boston Globe he trots out this purported executive to bad mouth Thomas and question the wisdom of the Patriots in making the signing.

Recall that the week before the AFC title game Borges wrote an optimistic "big teams win big games" kind of article praising the Pats chances of going back to the championship game. Then on Sunday in the Globe he wrote the "Pats aren't that good anymore, can't possibly win" article. The bottom line seems to be that the national web site won't pay him to use their space just to trash the Patriots and so he writes the column they want. (This is the explanation I've heard him give in a personal interview.) Meanwhile, back at the Globe nobody has the guts to give him orders so he does what comes naturally--to find the gray lining in every Patriots cloud.

"good old alan dropped a bomb to pump up his speaker fees."

I know there's some sarcasm in your response but essentially you are correct. This was the master kicking sand in the young pup's face. "You're not the man, I'm still the man." Bernanke speaks a little uncarefully from an official platform, with all the cameras running, and the market shed 100 points or so. Alan speaks from some dive in Japan and poof! there went 632 Billion dollars from the world's portfolio. Tell me, who's your daddy? It ain't Ben!

"Black Voters Shift to Obama"

Duh, who wudda thought? Guess that pretty well trumps any Giuliani bid for the job! All this time I thought they were a shoo-in for Newt Gingrich. Gotta watch more MSNBC to keep up with the details.

"Don't write off Europe."

Thanks for the encouragement, I hope you're right! My reading on the subject leads me to believe that the chinese missionaries may make the greatest impact in the non-western world in this century.

Geez, give them another ten years and they'll have all the boys on ritalin, just like us.

Well hell lady, he's only from Texas, not Marin County, how can you expect anything better than "impaired". But we know you meant that in the best possible way and, god forbid, didn't mean to be judgmental about it.

"Rich was pardoned after his former wife, Denise Rich, contributed heavily to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign."

Shows how far the Boston Globe has fallen in a few years. Has the NY Times managed to find a suitable home to adopt the Globe yet? The Globe has actually resorted to just citing history instead of trying to spin it as a greater good. Give them a couple more more years and the BG will be a weekly advert insert in the Lowell Sun. (But no one will rush to the mall when they acclaim the "biggest sale of the year".)

Well thank goodness she's a Catholic...for a moment there I thought you were talking about a skank. Move along, no story here.

"...what kind of a job can you get in the real world with a degree in "African and African American studies"? Teaching at Duke, apparently."

Don't knock it, it beats working! And once you get the job...it's for life!!

"...who got a Dodge Intrepid as part of the deal ..."

I'm guessing that a deal for a Prius would have mitigated the charge. (And a deal for a Hummer would have raised it to a capital offense.)

"the findings do not mean that HPV infection rates are rising, only that they are higher than previously thought."
Wow! Talk about your "good news...bad news". Nice that the WaPo could lead with the cheery perspective.

What's happened to Reuters? No obvious reference to Bush here...or am I just to unsophisphicated to understand the subtext?

"U.S. officials would not describe the evidence in any detail, but people in the intelligence community have speculated recently that the CIA may have obtained surveillance photos of either bin Laden or Zawahri in Pakistan."
Yeah, they'd stand out like a green thumb in that environment.
(...speculated...that they may have..." ) Can't get much more "definitive" than that!!! Really hard edge reporting...get Christine Amanpour to the scene now!!