Blogoland

Meant to post something on this a few days ago, but got distracted. Bill Sammon, the Washinton Examiner's White House correspondent, was on Brit Hume's show the other day, and was just terribly upset at the Duke lacrosse case: [from Lexis-Nexis]

BILL SAMMON, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: It's starting to remind me of theTawanda [sic] Brawley case from 1987 when a 15-year-old girl claimed that she had been raped by a bunch of people, including a cop, a white cop, turned out to have been all made up.

HUME: This was up in New York State?

SAMMON: Al Sharpton came to prominence by exploiting this case and later had to pay defamation damages, along with two other guys, to a prosecutor that they had called a racist during this controversy. This is starting --

[ later...]

SAMMON: There's a lot of people in the community, the professors, some of the students, seem crestfallen that the DNA evidence has proven negative because they were already off to the races on investigations into lacrosse culture and sexism and racism and the athlete culture on campus and how athletes always get their way. And you have to understand that Duke is a notoriously politically correct university, like a lot of elite universities and this kind of stuff runs rampant. So I'm wondering now that it looks like the case is falling apart, will the Duke University president apologize to the team for canceling their season, rehire the coach? Will charges of perjury be brought against this woman if indeed it proves that she was making up a story to accuse innocent people of something they didn't do? I doubt it. I don't think we should hold our breath in a place like Duke University for that kind of action to actually happen.

Get it? It was deeply irresponsible to talk about the guilt of Duke's lacrosse players [something with which I agree] , but it is equally, deeply responsible, minus any facts whatsoever, to talk about the accuser as a potential Tawana Brawley. It is also deeply responsible to not so subtly suggest that she's a liar and that perjury charges should probably brought against her.

Does Sammon even understand how much he sounds like a nitwit?

UPDATE: RealClearPolitics has the transcript.