Free Republic

Few universities are less well-suited to adjudicate sexual assault cases than Duke. The university’s president and judicial affairs staff remains the same as 2006-2007, when their egregious mishandling of events in the lacrosse case resulted in an approximately $6.7 million legal settlement with each of the three falsely accused players. The hostility to due process in the campus environment was best seen in the activities of the Group of 88, who proudly affirmed that something “happened” to false accuser Crystal Mangum based solely on the word of Mangum and rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong. Nor has Duke’s internal campus process inspired...

My wife handed me that part of the Sunday Virginian Pilot that I usually scan: the comics and the editorial page. I read the editorial page because it’s a useful guide. There are two kinds of guides that are useful: one who consistently point you in the right direction and one who consistently points you in the wrong direction. Both are equally useful once you figure out which is which. The Pilot is an infallible guide. If you read its advice and do the exact opposite, you are sure to get it right. The Pilot felt compelled to editorialize...on the...

Every now and then I get an email from a reader that puts a topic into words as good, if not better than I. This is one of those occasions. Sarge57 sent me an account of a message sent to the "Concerned Duke Faculty", now affectionately known as the "Gang of 88". His letter was impassioned, but never rude or obscene. The response he received was telling....

It's time for some True Crime. An acting Baldwin is arrested and it's not the first time. Hey folks, isn't it time someone put that Duke rape prosecution to rest? I've some ideas on why no one's doing anything to stop this travesty of justice. Dr. Death, AKA Dr. Kevorkian, soon to be out on parole, soon to kill again. Dear Dr. Kevorkian isn't as noble as many think he is. Either a pet ferret or a puppy chewed off an infant's toes and no one knows what to charge the neglectful parents with or even which animal did the...

In his book "The Great Crash 1929," John Kenneth Galbraith said: "The worst continued to worsen." The same can be said of the Duke University "rape" case and District Attorney Michael Nifong. After all this time, it finally came out in court last week that the DNA samples collected from the underwear and private parts of the alleged victim contained DNA from other men -- but none from the Duke lacrosse players who were accused of raping her. The head of the DNA testing laboratory testified in court under oath that both he and Nifong knew this and kept it...

click on the 'Find it here' .pdf to see the ABN campaign press release.

Americans love to poll, test and otherwise assess themselves. A news item barely hits the wires before a poll follows indicating Americans' reaction. Applying for a new job? Just fill out this short questionnaire to determine whether you're racist, sexist, homophobic, heterophobic, ageist, height-ist, or a fat-o-phobe. In that spirit of sensitivity, I submit the following pop quiz to gauge your bias as a news consumer. After reading the following characteristics, please select the college group that most likely fits the description: The group has a 100 percent college graduation rate. Sixty percent have a 3.0 grade point average or...

If there is a smoking gun in the Duke University rape case, it is not about the stripper who made the charges or the lacrosse players who have been accused. The smoking gun is the decision of District Attorney Michael Nifong to postpone a trial until the spring of 2007.That makes no sense from either a legal or a social standpoint, whether the players are guilty or innocent. But it tells us something about District Attorney Nifong.Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the players are guilty. What is the point of letting a bunch of rapists remain at large...

  Molehills And MountainsApril 27, 2006 The New York Times never held a hand of race cards that it didn’t like to play.  That is, of course, as long as the race cards were the right color.  Welcome to the NY Slimes’ fantasyland of Bizarro-Apartheid.  You know...that pharisaical world where white transgressions are mountains and all others are but a molehill. And speaking of molehills...the Slimes is certainly making much ado about nothing out of the Duke University lacrosse team’s situation.  As the entire universe is now aware, three “white” Duke laxers “raped” a “black” stripper...uh, I mean...” a 27-year-old single mother,...

People who were not within 1,000 miles of Duke University have already taken sides in the case of a stripper who has accused Duke lacrosse players of rape. One TV talk show hostess went ballistic when a guest on her program raised questions about the stripper's version of what happened.Apparently we dare not question accusations of rape when it involves the new sacred trinity of race, class, and gender.Media irresponsibility is one thing. Irresponsibility by an agent of the law is something else -- and much more dangerous. Prosecutors are not just supposed to prosecute. They are supposed to prosecute...