Put a hold on Tim Tyson’s Hunt charges

Many of you know Duke professor Tim Tyson as one of the first to eagerly, loudly and publicly embrace Crystal Mangum’s and Mike Nifong’s lies. Few Duke faculty did more to stir racial animosity and make an already bad situation much worse and more dangerous than it had to be. To read about Tyson’s disgraceful conduct in March and April, 2006 see N&O ignores Duke's Tyson's framing role, More concerning the N&O's Tim Tyson profile and KC Johnson’s post: Tyson Reinvents History.

To this day Tyson refuses to apologize for what he did. Instead he attacks his critics. You’ll find very recent examples of that in this May 23 post and on it’s comment thread at 5/25/08 @ 00:27.

I want to call your attention to some of what Tyson’s now saying because it’s so revealing of the man who seems to never tire of promoting his books and publicly proclaiming his compassion, piety, careful scholarship and passion for justice.

Extract from professor Tyson’s 5/25 thread comment attacking his critics:

Fortunately for me, award committees actually read [my] books before pronouncing judgment. The work (such as it is) of my attackers here will be out of print in a few minutes. . . .

Meanwhile, the year before the lacrosse incident, a black man in Winston-Salem, Darryl Hunt, got out of prison, exonerated after spending 19 years in prison for a rape and murder to which he had no connection whatsoever. The prosecutors knew that the killer was a light-skinned African American, but Hunt is quite dark-skinned. Nor was there any evidence against him.

Demogoguery (sic) (and eleven whites) on the jury convicted Hunt. Nineteen years later, community activism forced a reexamination of his case, and DNA evidence (and some simple questioning of the record) led to the real killer.

Darryl Hunt went into prison as a teenager. He came (sic) a middle-aged man, robbed of much of his life. The city of Winston-Salem paid him many times less than the accused lacrosse players have received so far, and roughly 28 and a half million dollars less than the players are currently suing Durham for.

Did KC Johnson or any of the people indignant about the lacrosse case say one word on behalf of Darryl Hunt?

You guessed it. Their concern for racial justice is confined to "the vanilla suburbs," and always will be.

A number of commenters quickly informed Tyson that blog comments and other Internet material – unless deleted – will last indefinitely.

Commenter J Swift informed him that KC has commented often on the Hunt case, something Tyson could have learned if he’d done what J Swift did: a Google search that would’ve taken less than a minute.

Then KC came on the thread and said among other things:

Since I have discussed the Hunt case--both at the blog, and in public talks that I have given on the lacrosse case--I assume that when Prof. Tyson wrote, "You guessed it," he meant to say, "Yes, Prof. Johnson has discussed the Hunt case."

KC could’ve added that in their widely praised book Until Proven Innocent, he and co-author Stuart Taylor devote an entire chapter to presenting cases in which people of various races and ethnic groups were victims of police and prosecutors' malfeasance.

Tyson’s ill informed question regarding KC and the Hunt case leads to the obvious question: Did Tyson actually read Until Proven Innocent?

Meaning no disrespect to KC who we all know has done critically important work helping unravel the hoax and expose the frame-up attempt, what Tyson said about him and the transience of blog comments were, at worst, petty, foolish, ignorant, perhaps even arrogant.

But some comments of RRH on 5/25/08 @23:30, if substantiated, would reveal Tyson to be grossly misinformed concerning the Hunt case and possibly dissembling and libeling.

Here are RRH’s comments relevant to Tyson’s statements about the Hunt case:

…[As] a member of the bar, I note with special dismay that Prof. Tyson is no longer content with merely attacking innocent college students -- now he libels the American justice system.

Prof. Tyson says the prosecutors in the Hunt case knew that Hunt was innocent and that the jury convicted Hunt on "no evidence". These are both lies.

There has never been a substantiated charge of prosecutorial malfeasance in the Hunt case, and most certainly not one -- until Prof. Tyson's latest outrageous libel -- that prosecutors "knew" Hunt was innocent.

Moreover, the last I heard, eyewitness testimony is some evidence; there were at least five, mostly black, witnesses who fingered Hunt for the crime.

Mr. Zane, I would urge you to learn more about the killing of the former newspaperwoman, Deborah Sykes, by reading the Winston-Salem Journal's award-winning series on the crime, which can be found at http://darrylhunt.journalnow.com/.

I hope everyone who wants to comment about the case will read every word of that series.(italics in original)

At 3:45 PM ET on 5/26 I checked the thread. So far Tyson has not responded. But he clearly has a duty to explain the evidence for the extremely serious charges he’s leveled.

When I finish this post, I’ll leave a comment on the thread urging the blog host, N&O writer J. Peder Zane, and Tyson to respond. I hope many of you do the same.

I haven’t read all of the W-S Journal’s series, but I’ve read enough to tell you I believe there’s substance for what RRH says about the case.

I plan to send KC a link to this post and urge him to consider posting concerning Tyson’s Hunt case charges.

Stay tuned.

Honoring the 4th Infantry Division’s fallen

There’s a touching photo and brief story at Commentary (scroll down) concerning a memorial to members of the 4th Infantry Division who’ve given the last full measure of devotion.

I hope you visit it.

I thank the JinC Regular who called it to my attention.

If others of you find tributes to our military, pass them on and I’ll try to post them.

Memorial Day Remembrance

They shall grow not old,

As we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them,

Nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them.

Great news: Butler’s back; Rickards joins her

There’s great news today for people who appreciate outstanding journalism. And if they also love Duke, the news gets better.

In today’s Chronicle the tag of a column - "Memorial Day Outing" – tells us:

Kristin Butler Trinity '08 will attend Ohio State Law School. Ed Rickards Trinity '63 and Law '66, is a former editor of The Chronicle and lives in New York City. They will collaborate on a weekly column starting in August.

JinC Regulars know Butler and Rickards are literate, fact-driven and sharp-thinking “tell it as it is” writers who care deeply about Duke.

Both were early, constructive critics of the university’s shameful “throw them under the bus” response to Crystal Mangum’s and Mike Nifong’s lies and the agitation of Duke faculty members who embraced those lies.

Butler and Rickards are willing to do what most in the Duke community are unwilling to do: speak publicly about university policies, actions and failures to act which stain Duke.

In their column this Memorial Day, they remember those with Duke connections who’ve served or are serving in our military; and call our attention to Duke’s shocking failure to appropriately honor them.

Take a look at "Memorial Day Outing"

Afterwards, as one of your acts of appreciation today for our military, I hope you’ll send an email to President Brodhead urging him to act so that Duke properly honors our military, especially those connected to the university.

Brodhead’s email address – president@duke.edu

Why can't we criticize Michelle Obama?

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby first. Then my comments below the star line.

Jacoby begins - - -

On the website of the Tennessee Republican Party is a short video in which residents of Nashville talk about the pride they feel for their country.

One man, for example, mentions his esteem for the First and Second Amendments. A Vanderbilt graduate student says he was proud when Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall - "and I was prouder when it came down." A young professional woman extols the "academic and job opportunities that women have in this country." A police officer named Juan says he is proud of having immigrated to the United States, learned English, and become a citizen of this "land of opportunity and the best country in the world."

The video makes its point by alternating these upbeat comments with clips of Michelle Obama telling two different audiences in February: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

In an understated press release announcing the video, the state GOP welcomed Mrs. Obama to Nashville and remarked: "The Tennessee Republican Party has always been proud of America."

One would have to have skin of microscopic thinness to take offense at so gentle and indirect a critique.

No surprise, then, that Barack Obama took offense, reacting as if his bride had been slimed by slurs akin to those that enraged Andrew Jackson when he ran for president. (During the campaign of 1828, supporters of John Quincy Adams maligned Jackson's mother as a "common prostitute" and mocked his adored wife, Rachel, as a "convicted adulteress" and a "strumpet.") In an interview on ABC, Obama growled that Republicans "should lay off my wife," and described the inoffensive Tennessee video as "detestable," "low class," and reflecting "a lack of decency."

If Republicans "think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign," he added ominously, "they should be careful." . . .

Jacoby's entire column's here.

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Comments:

I looked at the ad and thought it was very, very tame. What upset Senator Obama?

Jacoby doesn't see any reason why Ms. Obama shouldn't be subject to criticism as long as she's out campaigning for her husband. I don't either.

I wish Obama's MSM supporters would ask him to explain why he doesn't think people should criticize his wife for criticizing America.

There must be a reason.

I'm all for Michelle Obama's right to say she's never been proud of America until it looked like her husband might get the Dems' presidential nomination.

It's a free country, after all.

But people should be able to criticize her, too.

That's where I stand.

How about you?

Final thought: I liked the history lesson and links Jacoby provided.

More concerning the N&O's Tim Tyson profile

Readers Note: On May 22 I posted N&O ignores Duke’s Tyson’s framing role.

J. Peder Zane, a talented and, in the past, a reliable N&O writer was bylined on a two-page profile of Duke professor Tim Tyson whose book about a racially-motivated killing, Blood Done Sign My Name, is being made into a movie.

When news of Crystal Mangum’s lies about being gang-raped at a party hosted by members of the Duke lacrosse team broke, Tyson was one of those who took the lead in provoking racial animosity and inflaming community sentiment against the lacrosse team.

He also supported the now disbarred Mike Nifong’s and others’ travesties which were part of an attempt to frame three innocent young men.

But the N&O’s flattering profile made no mention of any of that.

Instead, it went on at great length describing Tyson as someone who strives for racial harmony and equality.

I was critical of Zane and the N&O for failing to mention Tyson’s hoax and frame-up attempt involvement.

I sent Zane an email which you’ll find in the post. He responded promptly.

Zane acknowledged he should have mentioned Tyson’s hoax/frame connection, but said he didn't see that Tyson’s role in them was as defining of him as I’d said or as consequential as I’d suggested.

What follows is my attempt to convince Zane that my assessment of Tyson and his contribution to the harsh hysteria, travesties and injustices that flowed from Mangum’s lies is correct.

I’ll keep you posted on what I hear back.

John
___________________________________________________

Dear Peder:

Yesterday historian and blogger KC Johnson posted Tyson Reinvents History.

It concerns Tim Tyson’s very public and racially inflammatory endorsement of the Duke Hoax as well as his statements supportive of an “investigation” which was a transparent travesty from the start, and which intelligent, fair-minded people soon realized was a frame-up attempt.

Johnson documents Tyson's conduct for which he should long ago have publicly apologized: first, to those most victimized by it – the lacrosse players, their families, Coach Pressler and his family - and then to the Duke and Durham communities which had a right to expect better of a man who presents himself as knowledgeable and sensitive regarding the history of race-based crime in North Carolina.

At a time of maximum danger to the players and the rest of us who could’ve been unintended victims of violence meant for the players, Tyson made false and malicious public accusations concerning them, including telling N&O readers “the spirit of the lynch mob lived” at their party.

There was “a spirit of the lynch mob” at Duke and in Durham in March and April, 2006. But to say it was at the players’ party is a slander.

The “spirit of the lynch mob” lived within those who made the CASTRATE and GIVE THEM EQUAL MEASURE banners; those who rallied to them; those who circulated the Vigilante and Wanted posters; and those who, in the face of evidence to the contrary, promoted the “wall of silence” lie.

Tyson’s statements both stirred and justified the “spirit of the lynch mob.”

He helped make a bad situation much worse and much more dangerous than it had to be.

If I understand you correctly, you feel Tyson’s hoax and framing actions and inactions are in contrast to the rest of his life and don’t define him in any significant way.

I disagree.

Tyson’s actions then and his subsequent refusal to repudiate them and apologize tell us a great deal about a man whose “gospel” includes preaching to others they must acknowledge their errors and make amends.

Let’s agree on the following:

On Mar. 27, 2006 Tyson stated on WUNC:

"One of the really terrible things about this is that these young men are banding together and refusing to cooperate with the police investigation.”

At the time he said that, Tyson may not have known it was false.

But the next day the Durham Police acknowledged the extensive and voluntary cooperation the lacrosse captains had provided them on the evening of Mar. 16 and in the early morning hours of Mar. 17; that cooperation including answering without attorneys present all questions the police asked, signing statements, turning over their computers, helping police locate others who were at the party and going to DUMC where they submitted to DNA testing.

There was plenty of time between the Mar. 28 acknowledgment of the captains’ cooperation and Tyson’s Apr. 2 N&O op-ed for him to include in it an acknowledgment of his false Mar. 27 statement broadcast by WUNC and apologize for it.

But Tyson didn’t do that, even as he knew his false statement on WUNC was adding to the danger the players faced from unstable and hate-filled people inflamed by the “wall of silence” lie.

Instead, Tyson told readers, referring to the party for which the players have rightly and repeatedly apologized:

The ghastly spectacle takes its place in a history where African- American men were burned at the stake for "reckless eyeballing" -- that is, looking at a white woman -- and white men kept black concubines and mistresses and raped black women at will.

Not in his op-ed or at any time proximate to his false “wall of silence” statement on WUNC did Tyson take the simple, decent step of saying something like:

“I made an error and I’m sorry. Players did cooperate and their attorneys say they’re all willing to come in with them and tell the DA what they know. I’m cooling my hot language. I hope others do, too.”

If we agree to the foregoing, Peder, we have to ask ourselves what sort of person fails to say something like that in the terrible circumstances Tyson himself had helped create?

And when the person goes for more than two years without ever apologizing, and instead excuses his behavior and lashes out at reasonable, fact-based critics as Tyson has just done at your blog post here and on its thread at 5/25/08 @ 00:27, isn’t that person telling us a great deal about himself – about what’s really at his core?

I certainly think so.

In light of your criticism of my earlier post, I’ve reread it as well as your May 18 profile of Tyson and your May 23 post which includes his answers to questions you asked him in response to criticism of your failure to mention in your profile Tyson’s actions and inactions in connection with the Duke Hoax and frame-up attempt.

Having done all that, I stand by everything I said in my earlier post.

In your most recent email you say:

The Duke lacrosse case was outrageous. But so was the Darryl Hunt case - and the many other miscarriages of justice that Tyson has addressed. What have you had to say about that? Travesty,that it was, why is Duke lacrosse seemingly the only case that so many people are angry about?

I want to respond to that here on the main page, but this post is already long and the day is flying by.

So I’ll respond tomorrow.

I remain open to publishing on the main page anything you wish to say by way of response. If you prefer to respond at your blog, I’ll be happy to highlight and link to what you say.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

McClatchy, the N&O and the War on Terror

I've just gotten another outstanding letter from Mike Williams who begins - - -

There’s a blog out there called McClatchy Watch. It’s “mainly about cluelessness at The Sacramento Bee and its parent…the McClatchy Company.” You may recall that McClatchy also owns the N&O. So, here we go again:

Two of McClatchy's "activist journalists" co-wrote a Bush-bashing article this week entitled "Mideast negotiations now bypassing Washington."

I skimmed the column Saturday and almost decided not to post anything about it because the anti-Bush stuff from Strobel and Allam has become so routine that it is boring. But I changed my mind and decided to do some fact-checking. And I found information that leads me to believe Strobel and Allam, if not outright lied, at the very least mislead their readers.

The point of this particular article is that Bush has become so "toxic" to middle eastern leaders that they are bypassing Washington….

This article was in yesterday’s N&O.

And by the way, Melanie Sill, formerly the N&O’s executive editor, is now executive editor at The Sacramento Bee. So is her replacement at the N&O any more “fair and balanced” than she was, or any more scrupulous about fact-checking, or is he just another rubber stamp for the McClatchy agenda?

I encourage you to follow the link and form your own opinions.

We’ve talked a lot recently about Colombia and FARC. Today there’s more good news:

After the death of FARC leader Manual "Sureshot" Marulanda yesterday, FARC rebels have contacted the Colombian government and are ready to release hostages in exchange for freedom.Sureshot, the leader of FARC for 40 years, was the third FARC leader lost since March 1st….

Earlier this week, starving one-eyed FARC leader Nelly Avila Moreno, also known as "Karina", surrendered to Colombian officials.

She later made a radio plea to her fellow rebels to turn themselves in.

It's been a very bad year for the FARC terrorists.

A Marxist mass murderer with the handle Sureshot! You’ve got to give credit where credit’s due, I guess. Maybe Hollywood will canonize him like they’ve done Ché.

In Iraq:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida's network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups….

The Gateway Pundit comments: “Thank goodness for today's news... Now, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats won't have to admit that Al-Qaeda is actually operating in Iraq since they've been obliterated.”

And then there’s this:

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) is seen in a video that has surfaced on the Web saying that Democrats “sort of stretched the facts” in the 2006 elections about their ability to end the Iraq war….

Republicans reacted Friday by calling for Kanjorski to apologize.

“For Paul Kanjorski to admit that Democrats campaigned in ’06 on a fraudulent agenda to end the war not only exposes his own calculated efforts to fool the voters of his district, but it also raises the question of whether this was a coordinated effort by the Democratic Party as a whole”….

Roger L. Simon:

…this "insincerity" is the essence of why I no longer consider myself a Democrat. A party that could be that dishonest about such a crucial situation is repellent. And it's worse now with Obama's fake palaver about Iraq and Iran, every word built on getting himself elected.

I haven't fallen in love with the Republicans, not by a long shot, but the current version of the Democrats (other than Lieberman) gives me the creeps. They should actually give themselves the creeps when they read what Kanjorski said….

As Simon says, lying is shameful. Funny, I used to be a registered Democrat myself.

Well, outside McClatchy and the N&O, good news about the War on Terror continues to pour in:

Less than one week after pushing into the northern two-thirds of Sadr City from the walled southern neighborhoods, the Iraqi Army is uncovering substantial weapons caches in the Mahdi Army stronghold. Iraqi and Coalition forces continue to press against the Mahdi Army in Baghdad as the New Baghdad district begins to heat up….

And in Afghanistan:

The May 14 airstrike launched against a Taliban and al Qaeda safe house in the town of Damadola in Pakistan’s Bajaur tribal agency has claimed a senior al Qaeda trainer and operations commander, US and European intelligence officials said.

Meanwhile, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, said cross-border attacks into Pakistan would continue despite the peace agreements signed with the government.

Abu Sulayman Jazairi, a senior Algerian operative for al Qaeda’s central organization, was killed in the Damadola strike along with 13 others….

You wouldn’t know it, but it’s NATO that’s been on the offensive in Afghanistan this year, and it looks like they’re getting less shy about cross-border strikes into Pakistan. Obama should be pleased….

On a personal note, my daughter made an overnight visit on her way to her next duty station. She’s an Air Force major who’s been in Baghdad the past year, helping hunt roadside bombs – and bombers.

Well done Wendy, and well done to her recently returned cohort, Major Don, as well.

Lessons for Dems and the rest of us

Sen. Joe Lieberman provided them this week in a WSJ op-ed. Here are extracts followed by my comments below the star line.

Lieberman began - - -

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided. …

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party.

Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault. …

[After 9/11] I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made.

When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign. (emphasis added)

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn. . . .

Lieberman’s entire op-ed is here.

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Comments:

If anyone thinks Lieberman is overstating the leftward, appeasing, and anti-American drift of the Democratic Party just consider a few things:

The Democratic Party would never give its presidential nomination to a man who for twenty years was an admirer and close friend of a pastor who shouted “God damn gays,” ridiculed “gay America” and claimed gays were deliberately spreading the AIDS/HIV virus.

But its about to nominate Sen. Barack Obama whose close friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright …(do I need to finish the sentence?.

Wear a Confederate flag lapel pin to a Democratic rally. Not so good.

Wear a Che or Bush=Hitler tee shirt to the rally. That's OK.

It’s routine for pundits – including those who favor the Dems – to say something like: “Well, if things are going better in Iraq by the election that will be bad for the Democrats.”

Charles Krauthammer had it right when he said the Democratic Party has gotten to a point where it’s invested in our defeat in Iraq.

Strong words but they're true.

Yes, Dems will say they don’t want defeat; it’s withdrawal they seek.

But surely in their honest moments Dems know in war it’s the losers who withdraw.

That’s why the terrorists in Iraq are doing anything – from killing our troops to deliberately killing children – to get us to withdraw.

The Churchill Series - May 23, 2008

(One of a series of posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In 1876 Lord Randolph Churchill was appointed Private Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, his father. Two year old Winston Churchill accompanied his parents to Dublin where the Churchills would live for the next for years. Young Churchill’s nurse, Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Everest, accompanied him to Ireland. We learn, courtesy of the Churchill Centre, a few things about Winnie, as family members often called him, at age 2.

A letter from his mother described life in Dublin with her young son: "Winston is flourishing tho rather X the last 2 days more teeth I think. Everest has been bothering me about some clothes for him saying that it was quite a disgrace how few things he had & how shabby at that."

Churchill's granddaughter, Celia Sandys, offers this portrait: "Winston had arrived in Dublin a month after his second birthday dressed, as was the fashion, like a girl. At that time children were dressed alike, making boys and girls indistinguishable one from the other, for the first few years of their lives."

Randolph and Jennie Churchill were neglectful parents; and their neglect of a son who loved them constituted more than harshness. It amounted to a cruelty.

I often wonder how Churchill would have turned our if Mrs. Everest hadn't been there from right after his birth until he was a young man. She was to him and his younger brother John (Jack) everything a loving parent should be.

Everest never married. The Mrs. before her name reflects the custom at the time to call nurses Mrs. even if they were unmarried.

Also, you may have seen her middle name spelled “Anne.” That’s how it’s usually spelled. But the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge University give it as “Ann,” so that’s what I use.

Now to each of you a wish for a nice weekend and a reminder to do some act which acknowledges this Memorial Day the service and sacrifices of our armed forces, veterans and all their families.

John

Obama gaffes you can believe in

Columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin reminds us:

All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life.

The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of “potatoe.”

The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush’s questions about new scanner technology at a grocers’ convention to brand him permanently as out of touch.

Malkin then asks:

But what about Barack Obama?

The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine.

Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:

* Last May, he claimed that Kansas tornadoes killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

*Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

*Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, South Dakota audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you Sioux City…I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.”

*Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”

On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

*Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama, he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement:

“There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”

Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil rights movement as a whole.”

Malkin goes on to cite other, more serious gaffes. Don't miss her column here.

Folks, most of us make mistakes like saying "Sioux City" when we should say "Sioux Falls."

Presidential candidates who go days bouncing from state to state with little sleep are especially prone to that kind of gaffe.

I don't hold that kind of gaffe seriouslyagainst Obama, even as I might jest about it. I mean it isn't like Obama told us he'd spent Christmas in Cambodia.

On the other hand, Obama's statement of "no preconditions" before meeting with rogue/terrorist regimes is more than a gaffe.

It's a dangerous doctrine in itself; and what I find deeply troubling is that when his mistake was pointed out to him, he didn't quickly acknowledge it and disown it. He's clinging to it.

Of course, Obama's biggest "gaffe" IMO has been his telling us he sat in the pews for 20 years without ever hearing his close friend and pastors racist and anti-American statements.

That's as believable as saying America has 57 states.

What do you think?

Hat tips: Jack in Silver Spring, AC, friend in St. Louis

UWIRE honors Chronicle's Kristin Butler

UWIRE, the leading web site for people interested in college journalism, has selected The Chronicle’s Kristin Butler for inclusion in its prestigious UWIRE 100 group.

You can view this UWIRE’s page which explains why Butler was selected, highlights key quotes from many of her columns and links to others.

I strongly suggest you do that now before continuing to read this post.

So go to the UWIRE’s Butler page right now. I’ll wait until you come back.

OK, you're back.

Well, what did you think?

Terrific, wasn’t it?

I was delighted to be one of Kristin’s recommenders.

Here’s the full text of the recommendation I sent URIRE:

Dear Anne:

Kristin Butler is an extraordinary young journalist who deserves to be included in the UWIRE 100 project.

She’s the recipient the 2007 Melcher Family Award for Excellence in Journalism which recognizes the best published article by a Duke undergraduate, and is sponsored by the Sanford Institute’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy.

Butler’s the first student to win the award for an opinion column.

In announcing the award, Public Policy professor and selection committee member Ken Rogerson said: “It is not often that we come across a young columnist who takes her reporting as seriously as her writing. Kristin made a strong argument, supported by solid research and sources, crafted in a very readable prose. It was difficult not to read to the end.”

The column for which Buter was honored, “Soaking the Poor: With All Deliberate Speed,” focused on how patients lacking health insurance typically are billed at higher rates at the Duke University Health System and elsewhere. Butler addressed the ethical implications of charging uninsured patients more for their treatment.

Outstanding journalists can have different writing styles; broad or specialized interests. But all must possess the moral courage to take the unpopular stand; to speak truth to anyone – those in power and what is often much more difficult, to those who are their peers.

Kristin has that kind of courage as seen, for example, in her Feb. 28, 2008 column, "A House Divided."

She took Duke’s leadership to task for its disgraceful response to then DA and now disbarred Mike Nifong’s and other’s attempt to frame three obviously innocent Duke students for gang rape. At the same time, she was also critical of fellow Chronicle colleagues who’ve gone along with the university’s leadership.

Here’s how Kristin began that column:

Thirteen months ago, The Chronicle's editorial board had this to say about the Brodhead administration's performance during the lacrosse case: "People should not forget to recognize the adequacy of a 'good' performance in the turbulent and charged atmosphere of the last year. And in the end, history may very well judge the University's response as sensible and well executed given the constraints and competing interests at stake."

It's hard to imagine anyone offering that assessment today.

She went on to note Duke has already quietly settled a number of lawsuits and is a defendant in others which she said were in large measure:

the logical result of administrators' decision to shirk responsibility and stymie reform at every opportunity.

From the newly disbanded Judicial Affairs Review Committee to the Campus Culture Initiative and beyond, Duke administrators have remained disconcertingly slow to learn from their mistakes, which were legion.

As the academic year was ending, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists announced Kristin was this year’s first-place winner of its student-scholarship contest and would be its guest at NSNC’s annual conference in June.

It was a fitting tribute to the work of a diligent, caring and courageous young journalists.

I hope you place her among the UWIRE 100.

I will be happy to provide addition information or answer questions.

Thank you for your attention to this recommendation.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

PS – If you select Kristin and need additional links to any document I cited I’ll get them for you.
***********************************************************
Folks, last year's Chronicle editor Ryan McCartney did a good deal to provide UWIRE with material and references necessary for it to consider Kristin for selection.

He has my thanks and I know the thanks of almost all of you for that.

In a few days I hope to say more about what Ryan did in connection with Kristin's UWIRE selection.

I'll close with this: One of the hard things about writing the recommendation was I kept wanting to say to the UWIRE selection committee:

What do you mean, one of a hundred? Butler's one in a million.

NY Times distorts history to help Obama

Charles Krauthammer writes today about:

… when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that.

Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

An absurdity, indeed.

Senator Obama and his aides no doubt wish now he’d said something the day following the July 23 debate to “clarify what he really meant.”

But Obama, who’s lately gotten quite good at "clarifying" his remarks – he seems to have to do it daily – stood by his “no preconditions” offer to the terrorist states.

Now it’s hurting him politically.

Realizing that, today a NY Times editorial undertakes an Obama rescue mission which begins:

Everybody knew President Bush was aiming at Senator Barack Obama last week when he likened those who endorse talks with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasers of the Nazis.

But now we know what Mr. Bush knew then — that Israel is in indirect peace talks with Syria, a prominent member of Mr. Bush’s list of shunned nations — and it seems as if the president was going for a two-for-one in his crack about appeasement.

If so, it was breathtakingly cynical to compare the leadership of the Jewish state with those who stood aside in the face of the Nazi onslaught, and irresponsible to try to restrain this American ally from pursuing a settlement that it judges as possibly being in its best interests. . . .

The Times is wrong on every point.

Everybody doesn’t know President Bush “was aiming” at Senator Obama last week in his Knesset speech.

Hundreds of pundits here, in Europe and Israel have pointed out appeasement is, for all practical purposes, the policy of many leaders. What’s more, there’s a huge difference between negotiation and appeasement.

Churchill, the leading foe of Britain’s appeasement policy, was an ardent advocate of negotiations to settle international disputes and to form strong alliances to contain Hitler.

Instead of whining, Obama should tell us why he isn't an appeaser and why he belongs to be included with the negotiators such as Egypt's late President Anwar Sadat.

The Times' claim Bush in his Knesset speech was somehow suggesting Israel is engaged in appeasement for negotiating with Syria is as absurd as Obama pretending he never heard about Rev. Wright’s racist and anti-American sermons until they started affecting his poll numbers.

As for Syria, Israel has always been willing to meet with its enemies. But its never been reckless enough to meet with the heads of their states without preconditions. Bush and America support that policy.

In 1973 the October War, brought on by the determination of Arab states, chief among them Egypt, to destroy Israel ended disastrously for the Arabs.

Afterwards, Egypt's Sadat realized the war's lesson was peace with Israel is better than war. So he quietly began behind the scenes negotiations -first at a low echelon level - with his former enemy.

Those complex negotiations, in which each side had to repeatedly meet certain conditions for the negotiations to move forward, led in time to Egypt’s recognizing Israel’s right to exist, the settlement of the Sinai/Suez issues, and other terms for a peace between the two nations that's lasted to this day.

After agreements between the two nations had been reached, Sadat made a state visit to Israel in November, 1977 during which he addressed the Knesset (I believe he's the only head of an Arab state to ever do so).

Sadat presented to the Knesset and the world a plan for mid-East peace in a wise, stirring and brave speech you can read here.

That Israel would negotiate with Syria or any of its other enemies is nothing new. It's done that frequently since it gained independence in 1948. But it's done so in circumstances where certain preconditions have been met.

I'd be surprise if Israel adopted Obama's "no preconditions" policy and had its President or Prime Minister fly to Damascus or Munich to met with Syria's President Assad and "seek peace in our time."

The Times editorial distorts history to help Obama.

Krauthammer's column's here; the NYT's editorial's here; and Sadat's speech is here.

The Churchill Series - May 22, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill’s family ties to America were many. His biographer, Martin Gilbert, tells us something about them:

In 1963, in a message sent when he was eighty-three years old, Churchill remarked with pride to President John F. Kennedy that the story of his association with the United States went back nearly ninety years “to the day of my father’s marriage.”

That marriage took place in Paris on 15 April 1874. The bridegroom, Lord Randolph Spencer Chruchill, was the son of a British duke. The bride, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American millionaire – although at that precise moment Leonard Jerome’s fortune has taken a temporary dip. […]

The first member of [Jennie’s] family to settle in America was an Englishman, Timothy Jerome, who reached America from the Isle of Wight in 1710, a descendant of Huguenot Protestants who had fled France for Britain three generations earlier.

One of Winston Churchill’s great-great-grandfathers, Lieutenant Reuban Murray, had served during the American Revolutionary War in the 17th Connecticut Regiment and the 7th Connecticut Regiment and the 7th Albany Regiment, New York Militia. […]

Leonard Jerome and his brother Lawrence married two sisters. Lawrence Jerome’s son, William Travers Jerome – Churchill’s second cousin – was to become a reforming District Attorney of New York who refused to bow to the dictates of Tammany Hall, with its strong political control. In 1906 he sought to be nominated as Governor of New York, but was unsuccessful.

The biographer of Churchill’s mother, Ralph G. Martin, speculates that if Travers Jerome had won the nomination and the governor ship on 1906, “he might well have been nominated by the Democrats for President in 1912 instead of Woodrow Wilson.” […]

In 1865, from the window of their house on East Twenty-sixth Street, Jennie and her two sisters watched as the horse-drawn coffin of the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln passed in solemn procession on the street below.

All three of Leonard Jerome’s daughters married Englishmen.

I think Churchill had it right when, in his December 26, 1941 address to a Joint Session of Congress, he said:

By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own. (laughter)

In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice.(laughter)In that case I should not have needed any invitation. But if I had it is hardly likely that it would have been unanimous. (laughter) So perhaps things are better as they are.

_________________________________________________
Martin Gilbert, Churchill and America. (pgs. 1-4) Churchill's address to Congress can be found here.

N&O ignores Duke's Tyson’s framing role

Correction Note: As first published, this post mistated the title of the profile discussed and the name of the N&O staffer who wrote it . The errors have now been corrected thanks to an Anon who pointed them out on this post's thread.

I thanked the Anon there and do so here as well.

I am sorry for my errors.

John
______________________________________

Readers Note: This past Sunday the Raleigh News & Observer, whose racially inflammatory and deliberately fraudulent news reporting was essential to launching the Duke witch hunt and frame-up attempt, published a two-page profile of Duke professor Tim Tyson whose book, Blood Done Sign My Name, is being made into a movie and a play.

Among those who inflamed community sentiment against the Duke students and supported the now disbarred Mike Nifong’s transparent frame-up attempt, Tyson was one of the loudest and most virulent.

But the N&O’s flattering profile made no mention of that.

Instead, it went on at great length describing Tyson as someone who strives for racial harmony and equality.

I’ve just sent the following emails to J. Peder Zane, who wrote the Tyson profile titled “Minister of History” and public editor Ted Vaden.

John
____________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Zane:

I blog as John In Carolina and have posted often on the Duke Hoax, the frame-up attempt and its ongoing cover-up.

We have spoken a few times when I phoned to commend you on a book review or essay.

I’ve viewed you as a graceful, thoughtful and trustworthy writer, including times when I didn’t agree with what you’d written.

But after reading your profile this Sunday of Duke’s professor Tim Tyson, I doubt I’ll again trust something published under your byline.

In your lengthy, flattering profile you present Tyson as someone seeking to help us face our history of slavery and other race-based crimes so that we can begin to heal and live more harmoniously in circumstances where what matters is our character, not our skin color.

You called that Tyson’s “gospel.”

But for all your reporting on Tyson’s boyhood influences, reaction to Emmitt Till’s murder, research and writing about the Wilmington Riots, teaching, and his book writing and movie-making activities, you told readers nothing about Tyson’s prominent role in promoting the Duke witch hunt.

Nor did you say anything about his support for Mike Nifong’s transparent attempt to frame three white Duke students for gang rape and other felonies of which attorney general Roy Cooper later declared them innocent.

Tyson’s many reckless and prejudicial statements helped inflame those in our community who waved CASTRATE and GIVE THEM EQUAL MEASURE banners, who produced and distributed Wanted and Vigilante posters, and who cheered the New Black Panthers shouting death threats at Reade Seligmann at the Durham County Courthouse.

Why didn't you provide readers a sample of the N&O op-ed Tyson wrote Apr. 2, 2006, the same day the N&O published a Vigilante poster photo after Duke said doing so would add to the danger the 43 white students pictured on it?

From Tyson’s op-ed:

Rape is one of the deepest and most vicious ways that human beings deny their common humanity. Racism is another. These crimes are intertwined deeply in our history, and that history came off its leash once more on Buchanan Boulevard on March 13, as a few Duke students did great harm to our community.

The spirit of the lynch mob lived in that house on Buchanan Boulevard, regardless of the truth of the most serious charges.

The ghastly spectacle takes its place in a history where African- American men were burned at the stake for "reckless eyeballing" -- that is, looking at a white woman -- and white men kept black concubines and mistresses and raped black women at will.

Tim Tyson's as much a racial healer as are David Duke and Houston Baker.

Tyson really is, as his op-ed demonstrates, a reckless race-agitator with self-promotion skills that place him in the same category as John Edwards and Al Sharpton.

I’m sending a copy of this email to Ted Vaden who often tells readers they should trust what they read in the N&O.

If you care to respond, I’ll publish what you send me in full at my blog.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

***********************************************************

Dear Ted:

Awhile back you wrote about newspapers losing public trust because they make small errors such as getting a date or address wrong. You spoke of the “drip, drip, drip” of public confidence.

I don’t think people are losing trust in newspapers because of small, inadvertent mistakes of the type all of us make, as long as they're acknowledged and corrected.

What’s so damaging to reader trust is the gush, gush, gush of deliberate news manipulation.

One example of that can be found in Sunday’s N&O’s two-page puff piece profile of Tim Tyson. He’s presented as a racial healer.

No doubt many readers will be fooled by the piece. However, those who remember Tyson’s role in inflaming the Duke hoax and supporting Nifong’s race-baiting and frame up attempt won’t.

What will they make of J. Peder Zane's failure to mention any of that?

Gush, gush, gush.

Sincerely,

John

"Kennedy talked, Khrushchev triumphed." Now what about Obama?

Today William Katz at Urgent Agenda posts Never Fear? I comment below the star line.

Here's Katz - - -

Occasionally we get a newspaper piece written by those who actually do the research, have absorbed the facts, and can apply a reasonable perspective to a political stand. Here, two writers, in a New York times op-ed piece, pretty much wreck Barack Obama's naive stance on negotiations.

In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency’s — indeed one of the cold war’s — most consequential: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s special assistant, called those sentences “the distinctive note” of the inaugural.

A little problem...

But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats.

And...

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.”

And...

Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.

Too intelligent and too weak.

Does that remind you of a certain Illinois senator?

Finally...

The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.

If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate.

There's a lot to think about here. But since those journalists who are in the tank for Obama are emotionally opposed to thinking, I'm not too optimistic.

******************************************************************

Comments:

The "Kennedy talked, Khrushchev triumphed" tag identifies its authors as journalist Nathan Thrall and Jesse James Wilkins, a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University.

Katz has done an excellent job of IDing "the guts" of what they say and adding some comments of his own we should all be thinking about.

Today was my first visit to Katz's blog, Urgent Agenda. I looked around and liked what I saw. I hope you visit it here.

Hat tip: Mike Williams

N&O withheld Lax cooperation news; pushed “silence” lie

On the thread of What about the Raleigh N&O's Duke Lax framing? (5/18/08) an Anon commenter @ 10:31 says in part:

Re: "the N&O’s behind-the-scenes decision to deliberately withhold from readers news it had of the players’ cooperation with police; and instead tell them the lie that the players weren’t cooperating with police" --

can you refer me to the source material for these two points? I know a N&O reporter I'd like to ask about this. Thanks.

Here's my response to Anon @ 10:31 - - -

Dear Anon @ 10:31:

Let’s look first at what was available to the N&O by the time it published it’s Mar. 25, 2006 story which laid out the trashing and framing script.

A Mar. 21 Chronicle story - "Suspects in alleged rape unidentified" - reporting on the investigation of what we now know were Crystal Mangum's lies included this:

Gottlieb said any man that attended the party March 13 would be a viable suspect but refused to go into further detail.

The residents of the house have been cooperative with DPD in locating any suspects, he added. (emphasis here and following added)

In time for Mar. 24 news reports Duke News issued a statement attributed to John F. Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. The statement headed - Statement on Duke Men's Lacrosse Team - said:

Yesterday, 46 Duke University undergraduates who are members of the men’s lacrosse team responded to a legal order from Durham authorities and traveled downtown to be photographed and provide identifying information. The authorities made the request in connection with an investigation of an alleged incident on March 14 at 610 Buchanan St. in Durham. Duke University is monitoring the situation and cooperating with officials, as are the students.

On Mar. 24 the N&O reported all 46 white members of Duke Men's lacrosse team had submitted to court-ordered police DNA testing and face and torso photographing. The story mentioned Burness' had said the players were cooperating.

But the N&O didn't mention that the NTO, signed by the now disbarred Mike Nifong's mentor and close friend Judge Ron Stephens, could’ve been appealed by each one of the 46 students, including those who weren't even at the party; and that none appealed.

The decisions of every one of the 46 players' not to appeal the NTO and instead submit to police DNA and photo evidence gathering at a time when the players had reasonable cause to question Durham Police investigators' integrity was an extraordinary example of young citizens cooperating with police.

Saying nothing about player cooperation, the N&O reported in its Mar. 25, 2006 front page, above the fold story it said was about "a night of racial slurs, growing fear and, finally, sexual violence":

...Duke officials briefed university staff Friday on the allegations, and authorities vowed to crack the team's wall of solidarity

"We're asking someone from the lacrosse team to step forward," Durham police Cpl. David Addison said. "We will be relentless in finding out who committed this crime."

He emphasized the seriousness of the accusations -- first-degree rape, kidnapping, assault by strangulation and robbery. ...

The entire N&O story's here.

When a newspaper has available the sources and evidence cited here confirming the players' cooperation;

and the newspaper suppresses mention of what those sources have said and what the evidence of the players' cooperation demonstrates;

and the newspaper instead tells readers unnamed "authorities [have] vowed to crack the team's wall of solidarity;"

and then it quotes a police officer saying, "We're asking someone from the lacrosse team to step forward [.] "We will be relentless in finding out who committed this crime[;]"

the newspaper knows its promulgating a lie.

Even if you accept the N&O’s “we were under deadline; the story wasn’t perfect” fogging over of what it did, you’re then left to explain why in subsequent stories the next few days the N&O didn’t report on the players’ cooperation, something honest journalists caught under deadline would have done in the next edition.

But look at the N&O's Duke framing coverage for Mar. 26, 27 and 28. You won't find a single mention of the players’ cooperation with police.

Instead, the N&O continued to hype the false claim of the players’ “the wall of silence” refusal to cooperate.

In its Mar. 25 and those subsequent stories the N&O also trashed the players as drunks, racists and hooligans, libels Mike Nifong used along with the “wall of silence” lie when he first began speaking publicly about the case on Mar. 27

Here’s one example of the trashing and “wall of silence” lie promulgated by the N&O: Ruth Sheehan’s Mar. 27 “Team's silence is sickening” column is based entirely on the premise the players were refusing to cooperate with police.

Full disclosure: Months later Sheehan repudiated the column. She said she'd relied on information passed to her by another or other staffer(s) at the N&O who told her the information came from Mike Nifong. At the time of the column's publication, Sheehan didn’t tell readers Nifong was the source for her column. The N&O has said nothing to confirm or deny Nifong served as an N&O anonymous source at least by Mar. 26 when Sheehan says she received the information.

I hope this has been helpful.

Now a request: If you get to talk to an N&O reporter who answers your question, please ask the reporter four questions:

1) Why, during the time period we’re talking about, didn’t the N&O report on the players’ extraordinary cooperation and instead in story after story and in Sheehan’s news column hype “the wall of silence” lie to the point that it was endangering the players as Wanted and Vigilante posters circulated at Duke and nearby?

2) When and in what detail did the N&O first report on the Lax captains’ cooperation with police on Mar. 16?

3) When did the N&O first learn of the captains’ cooperation which included voluntarily submitting to DNA testing the night of Mar. 16/17, answering all questions asked them by police without an attorney present, signing statements, helping police ID who was at the party?

4) Why hasn’t the N&O answered questions 1, 2, and 3 before now?

Thank you for commenting.

The Churchill Series – May 21, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

A Churchill Centre post, Action This Day(Summer, 1945), contains an excellent sketch of people and events connected with the July, 1945 British general election in which Churchill's Conservatives were beaten by Labour. Here are excerpts from it:

Despite Churchill’s war record his Party’s prospects for reelection were discouraging. Since 1942 the Gallup poll had shown a large Labour lead. Eight Conservative candidates, unopposed by Labour because of a wartime electoral truce, had already been beaten by independents.

The Conservatives focused on Churchill as the leader who had won the war. Churchill reminded the overseas troops that there was "no truth that you can vote Labour or Liberal without voting against me." As grateful as they were, many people expressed concern that the great war leader would not be a good peace leader. […]

From the beginning he struck hard against his opponents. Controversy ensued when he said the Socialists "would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo." His daughter Mary later recounted how her mother begged Churchill "to delete the odious and invidious reference to the Gestapo. But he would not heed her." […]

Polling day was 5 July in Britain but it took three weeks to count the service vote. Meanwhile Churchill flew to Bordeaux to rest before moving on to Berlin [to attend the Potsdam Conference].

Shortly after arriving in the German capital Churchill, with his daughter Mary, toured its ruins including Hitler’s Chancellery. When Churchill observed the German populace he said his "hate died with their surrender."

On the same day he met President Truman for the first time. A few days later the two leaders agreed to use the atomic bomb against Japan.

Churchill’s last public event as British Prime Minister occurred on 21 July when he took the victory salute in Berlin. "Twice in one generation," he told the troops, "as in bygone times the German fury has been unleashed on her neighbours. Now it is we who take our place in the occupation of this country."

Among the cheers, however, were ominous signs. John Peck noted how "the great war leader but for whom we should never have been in Berlin at all, got a markedly less vociferous cheer than Mr. Attlee." [Clement Attlee was at time the Labour Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister in the national unity government Churchill formed upon taking office as Prime Minister in May, 1940.]

On 25 July Churchill left Stalin and Truman, without saying goodbye, to return to London with Attlee to await the results of the election. On 28 July Clement Attlee returned to Berlin as Prime Minister. […]

[Following his defeat Churchill made a gracious] concession speech [which]included the admirable comment: "I thank the British people for many kindnesses shown towards their servant."

This remark stands in contrast to Stalin’s reported comment that he was surprised because he had supposed that Churchill would have "fixed" the results.

On 29 July Churchill signed "finis" in the visitors’ book at Chequers. Many high-ranking officials who owed their positions to Churchill, including Lord Louis Mountbatten, were now expressing Labour sympathies.

When Chamberlain had resigned in 1940 many Conservatives clearly expressed their preference for him over the new Prime Minister.

This time, however, the Conservative MPs showed their hearts were with Churchill. When he entered the House on 1 August they sang an enthusiastic "For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow." Later he joined Attlee to celebrate VJ-Day and clearly received greater ovations.

On 16 August the House recognized Churchill’s war leadership. The new Prime Minister spoke for all when he said that Churchill’s "place in history is secure."

Most people are unaware Churchill headed a national unity government during the war. Attlee was one of many Labour leaders who held important cabinet posts. Leaders of the much smaller Liberal party held offices as well including the party leader, Archibald Sinclair, who served as Secretary of State for Air.

The entire post is here.

Kingsolver's rant in the rain: Duke can do better

When Duke's President Richard Brodhead announced the selection of novelist and ardent leftist Barbara Kingsolver as the school's 2008 commencement speaker, many were critical of the choice. Some noted Kinsgolver's often been wrong on obvious and important matters most people understood.

Brodhead told the critics they needed to "read more."

Fast forward to Duke's May. 11 commencement and all those people shivering in the cold and rain listening (or trying not to listen) as Kingsolver delivered a lengthy leftist rant one of her fans assures me didn't last "much more than a half-hour."

Who was surprised Kingsolver didn't consider her audience sitting in the rain and cold(a Duke staffer held an umbrella over Kingsolver's head)?

Sure, Kingsolver couldn't disappoint Brodhead and the others who selected her knowing she'd deliver a leftist rant.

But given the circumstances, Kingsolver could've said

"In view of the rain and cold, I'll dispense with my prepared speech and just tell you 10 things you should all hate about Bush and America.

And I'll keep it to 5 minutes, which is more time than Lincoln used at Gettysburg."

What could be wrong with that? Even those leftist faculty sitting in the rain would've shivered their agreement, don't you agree?

All Kingsolver needed to do was recognize the obvious and respond sensibly.

But Kingsolver often misses the obvious, even when it's, to use a phrase President Brodhead's made memorable, "brought to glaring visibility."

And as for acting sensibly, consider the following - - -

In the late Fall of 2001 one of the largest and most successful famine-prevention operations in recent history occurred in Afghanistan. The job was done by America's military under war conditions. Millions of lives were saved.

But Kingsolver missed it. She was busy bashing President Bush and America's response to 9/11.

On Nov, 23, 2001 as American forces were driving the brutal Taliban regime from government power in Afghanistan, the Washington Post published a Kingsolver op-ed that attacked our 9/11.

Kingsolver's op-ed included this:

”Freedom from fear, freedom from want -- these clearly aren't meant just now for the millions of Afghan civilians placed at risk of starvation because of the war.”

That was nonsense! The war hadn't placed millions of Afghan’s at risk of starvation, something even most leftists knew by Nov. 2001.

For many months a famine in Afghanistan had been widely reported in the Western press and by international relief agencies.

Here's an example of that reporting from a July 2001 UN World Food Program (WFP) report:

A third successive year of drought has left Afghanistan teetering on the brink of widespread famine and placed the lives of millions of people at risk.

A joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment mission sent to Afghanistan in May has returned from the field warning that the almost total failure of the 2001 harvest means some five million people will require humanitarian food aid to survive.(emphasis added)

When Kingsolver wrote her op-ed, America's military was in the midst of extensive and heroic relief operations to avert the famine.

Excerpts from the Oct. 20, 2001 NY Times:

The C-17 cargo plane was 10 minutes from its drop zone when the rear door opened onto the night sky high above Afghanistan. Frigid air burst into the cabin, washing over food boxes that stood like soldiers at attention before an American flag.

Crouching before the door, his oxygen mask pressing hard against his face, a staff sergeant named Paul signaled that the plane was one minute from its target.

Suddenly, with a rush like a powerful freight train gathering speed, 42 boxes flew out the door, opening in midair and raining their contents -- bright yellow packets of food -- on the countryside below.

Within seconds, the C-17 and two sister planes had spilled 51,000 plastic packages, each containing two ready-to-eat meals, over a remote valley in northern Afghanistan. Each wrapper bore a message, ''Food gift from the people of the United States of America,'' in English. . . .

For all the apparent simplicity of tossing food from a plane, the air drops are complex missions. . . .

Each flight requires a large supporting cast, including KC-135 tankers, Awacs command and control planes and fighter jets to protect the C-17's over hostile territory. . .

The planes fly at unusually high altitudes -- typically over 25,000 feet -- to avoid Taliban antiaircraft fire.

But at those heights crews run the risk of decompression sickness, caused by the bubbling of nitrogen out of the blood, when the cabin is depressurized so the cargo door can be safely opened.

In extreme cases, those bubbles can clog veins, causing severe pain and even death. Flight surgeons or physiologists have been assigned to the crews to watch for early symptoms of the illness.

By Jan. 4, 2002 the State Department was able to report:

U.S. and U.N. efforts in Afghanistan appear to have averted starvation in the country, U.S. State Department officials said Jan. 3.

Aid organizations have moved more than 200,000 tons of food into Afghanistan since Oct. 1, according to U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios and Alan Kreczko, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

"Of that 200,000 tons, 64 percent of it came from the United States," Natsios said. "So almost two-thirds of the food that went in came from America."

Natsios forecast earlier that more than 1.5 million Afghans faced starvation unless help could flow into the war-torn country.

Many of you who know Duke now under Brodhead's and BOT Chair Robert Steel's leadership may be saying Kingsolver was a very suitable commencement speaker selection.

True enough, but Duke can do better.

Here’s another look at what Kingsolver wrote Nov. 23, 2001 concerning America's efforts to displace the Taliban and prevent starvation in Afshanistan:

”Freedom from fear, freedom from want -- these clearly aren't meant just now for the millions of Afghan civilians placed at risk of starvation because of the war.”

A note re: readers comments

Folks,

Comments have come in the past few days concerning Duke's Lax cancellation, N&O's withholding info it had re: lax players' cooperation with police, Sen. Obama's reaction to President Bush's Knesset speech, and media pro-Obama bias.

I want to respond to those comments on the main page.

But I'm traveling most of today, so I won't start on those posts until this evening.

But I will respond.

Thank you for your understanding.

John

The Churchill Series - May 20, 2008

(One of a series of daily posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Readers Note: The following post, first published in December 2005, is one of my favorite Series posts.

From time-to-time, I think of reasons (excuses?)to republish it.

It's republished today because this is the time of year most honorary degrees are awarded.

One other item: In the last week or so a number of you have made informative comments of the threads. Thank you very much.

John
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At a critical time during World War II, an American military leader Churchill trusted set in motion plans to thwart something he felt the Prime Minister was planning. It sounds ominous, but if you read on I think you'll say things worked out for the best.

Just before Pearl Harbor, Churchill sacked Britain's Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshall Sir John Dill. It was arranged that Dill would finish out the war in a backwater post.

Following Pearl Harbor, Churchill decided to go to Washington to develop a joint American-British war plan. He knew the British would need Dill's knowledge at what would be complicated and contentious planning sessions.

So Dill was brought along with Churchill's party to give what he had, and then be shuffled off.

But it came about that he stayed on in Washington in a new position; one in which he made a vital contribution to the war effort.

How so?

Well, since the American and British chiefs of staff would jointly plan Allied strategy and allocate scarce resources; and since the joint chiefs would meet only occasionally for planning sessions; there was a need for liaison between the two nations' chiefs between meetings.

That difficult task was given to Dill.

It was agreed he could best fulfill it in Washington with direct access by cable to each of the British chiefs and right to attend the American chiefs' meetings.

Dill performed splendidly. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said no one surpassed Dill in explaining to the chiefs of each nation the ideas, needs and temperaments of the chiefs of the other nation.

But during the first months of 1944, with D-Day approaching, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall feared both countries' chiefs would lose Dill's service because Churchill felt Dill was tipping too much in the Americans favor. Marshall thought Churchill might recall him.

Marshall wanted to convince Churchill that Dill was so well thought of in America that recalling him would harm Allied relations.

So Marshall hatched a scheme.

What if Harvard gave Dill an honorary degree, he asked an aide. Wouldn't that impress Churchill? The PM wouldn't want to pull such a man out of the States, would he?

The aide was dispatched to Harvard whose president said he would like to but there was so much that went into an honorary degree, he didn't see how it could be done.

The aide duly reported back to Marshall.

"Try Yale," Marshall barked.

Yale had some of the same problems with an honorary degree as Harvard. But its President, Charles Seymour, said Yale could award Dill the Charles P. Howland Prize.

And what was that?

It was awarded for outstanding contributions to international understanding.
The award ceremony, the president said, would include mace, academic procession, anthems, etc.

Marshall thought that would all be just fine.

The War Department informed the press that the Chief of Staff would be taking time from his very busy schedule to travel to New Haven to attend this most important award ceremony. What's more, Secretary of War Simpson and Asst. Secretary of War Lovett were also planning to attend.

The press reported on the ceremony with what Simpson later called a big "splash." Marshall stayed long after the ceremony talking informally to the press and posing for pictures, actions not typical of the General.

Soon other colleges and universities, including The College of William and Mary and Columbia University awarded Dill honorary doctorates.

Marshall later told the aide he'd heard Churchill had said, "Dill must be doing quite a job over there."

Of course, there was no more talk of recall.
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Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory. (pgs. 336-337)