But you won’t see wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC or in the New York Times.

The alleged rapist is a prominent gay health researcher at Duke University.

The victim is his own adopted, five-year-old son, whom he offered up on the Internet to other molesters.

Thomas Lifson and Mike Adams do the job the selective media won’t do.

Yes, she still believes she was a rape victim.

Read on an empty stomach:

Crystal Mangum, the woman that rattled Duke University in 2006 after accusing three lacrosse players of rape, made her first public appearance on Thursday with a memoir in which she insists she really was raped by the players.

Crystal Gail Mangum held a news conference at the Know Bookstore to promote, “The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story.”

Magnum said she is “looking forward to opening old wounds,” but wants people to know her side of the story.

“Even as I try to move on with my life, I still find it necessary to take one more stand and fight,” she writes in the book, “The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story.”

“I want to assert, without equivocation, that I was assaulted. Make of that what you will. You will decide what that means to you because the state of North Carolina saw fit not to look at all that happened the night I became infamous.”

Jim Cooney, who represented player Reade Seligmann in the criminal case, said attorneys would review the contents of the book.

“For 2 1/2 years, this woman has attempted to destroy Reade’s life,” Cooney said. “We aim to put a stop to it.”

Magnum accused former Duke University lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty, and Dave Evans of brutally beating, strangling, raping, and sodomizing her in March 2006.

Mangum was hired as a stripper the night the incident happened in March 2006. After a long court case, the state attorney general’s office concluded that there was no credible evidence to prove an attack had occurred.

LaShawn Barber diagnoses Crystal Magnum’s tenacity at mendacity.

Duke University will be sued by 38 members of the 2006 men’s lacrosse team who claim they suffered emotional distress when school officials failed to support them during a rape investigation, a spokesman for the players said.

The lawsuit, to be filed today in U.S. District Court in North Carolina, also will name Duke President Richard Brodhead, Duke’s medical center, and the city of Durham, North Carolina, according to a statement posted on a Web site run by players’ spokesman Bob Bork. University officials remained silent during the rape probe though they had evidence that the players were innocent, according to the statement.

“These young men want acknowledgment that they were wronged by institutions and individuals that they trusted to treat them honestly,” attorney Chuck Cooper said in the statement. “They were victimized by a corrupt investigation that ignored or suppressed evidence that would have cleared them. And, all for a crime that never took place.”

Three players were charged in the case. The prosecution of team members David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann began with a stripper’s accusation that she was attacked after dancing at a team party. The charges were dropped in April after state Attorney General Roy Cooper took over the investigation.

More info here via Duke Students for an Ethical Duke and the new Duke Lawsuit blog. Here’s the full news release:

More than three dozen members of the 2006 Duke University men’s lacrosse team and members of their families filed suit against Duke University, its President Richard Brodhead and other officials, Duke’s medical center, and the City of Durham and city officials for emotional distress and other injuries in connection with false rape charges and a corrupt police investigation against team members in 2006.The charges were dismissed and the players exonerated by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper in April 2007 after he took over the investigation from the local district attorney, Michael Nifong. Nifong was disbarred for violating legal ethics in his conduct of the investigation. Three players had been charged with a gang rape of an exotic dancer who was hired to entertain at a team party in March 2006.

The suit, filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, said University officials remained silent even though they possessed convincing evidence of the
players’ innocence and also “lent credibility to the rape allegations by capitulating to an angry mob’s demands to condemn and punish the innocent players and their blameless coach.”

University Leaders Stood Silent While Team Members Were Harassed

“For more then a year, the lacrosse players were caught up in a horrifying personal nightmare. They were harassed in class by teachers and their fellow students. They were the target of protest marches and threats; they were called rapists and racists; they were surrounded in their own homes by screaming protestors. They were victimized by a corrupt investigation that ignored or suppressed evidence that would have cleared them. And, all for a crime that never took place,” lead attorney Chuck Cooper said in announcing the lawsuit.

The suit says that Brodhead and other Duke officials actively blinded themselves to and suppressed exculpatory evidence; discredited exculpatory evidence that had been publicly disclosed; stood passively while faculty and student protestors waged a campaign of abuse and harassment against the lacrosse team members; issued statements and imposed discipline on the team that signaled the players’ guilt; and remained silent when an inexperienced nurse at its medical center falsely characterized a medical exam at Duke Hospital as indicating that a rape had taken place. Brodhead later conceded that Duke students and faculty “were quick to speak as if the charges were true.”

Cooper said the University turned its back on the players in a bid to protect its own image.

Cooper noted that Nifong could not be named in the lawsuit because of the protections offered him by federal bankruptcy law. But the suit strongly condemned Nifong and his investigators for hiding and fabricating evidence, tampering with and intimidating witnesses, rigging photo lineups, and ignoring and hiding DNA and other evidence that demonstrated the players’ innocence. He said the City of Durham must be held responsible for Nifong’s misconduct, who was motivated in part by his desire to boost his flagging election campaign.

Suit Demands Accountabilty; Aims to Find the Full Truth The suit seeks underdetermined monetary damages, but Cooper said the suit seeks the full truth and accountability of those whose misconduct caused and prolonged the lacrosse team’s ordeal. “These young men want an acknowledgment that they were wronged by institutions and individuals that they trusted to treat them honestly. The pain and suffering they experienced cannot be erased; the misconduct of the University and town officials cannot be undone. But this suit will enable them to learn the full truth, to put the facts in plain view in a court of law, and to hold Duke’s leaders and town officials accountable for their wrongdoing.” Cooper said.

The players and their parents are represented by the law firm of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, in Washington, D.C.

More information about this lawsuit, including a downloadable PDF of the complaint and other
materials about the case can be found at www.dukelawsuit.com.

SOURCE Cooper & Kirk, PLLC

The North Carolina State Bar on Thursday issued a formal order disbarring former district attorney Mike Nifong for his handling of the now-discredited Duke lacrosse rape case.

Nifong must surrender his law license to the bar no later than 30 days from when he is served with the order. He also must pay costs associated with his June ethics trial.

A disciplinary hearing committee decided to disbar Nifong after finding he had committed at least two dozen violations of the state’s rules of professional conduct. The violations included lying to the court and withholding DNA evidence that showed genetic material from several males – though none from a Duke lacrosse player – had been found on the accuser.

The indefatigable K.C. Johnson continues to hammer the Duke faculty witch hunt club.

Defense attorneys for three Duke lacrosse players are expected to file a motion Friday asking a judge to enter criminal sanctions against disbarred Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong.

Nifong was disbarred June 16 by a State Bar disciplinary committee for his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. The committee unanimously agreed with the Bar on 27 of 32 charges, including the most serious allegations — that Nifong’s actions involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.”

Three men — Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty — were charged with rape, sexual assault and kidnapping in connection to an off-campus party in March 2006. All charges against the three were dropped in April 2007 after the state Attorney General Roy Cooper declared them innocent.

If the motion is granted, Nifong could face a possible fine and/or jail time.

While we’re on the Duke case, reader Maurice sent me a heads-up on a galling headline in the local Duke Chronicle last week:

“Duke announces settlement with indicted laxers.”

Writes Maurice: ‘How about “Innocent Laxers’ or ‘Wrongly Indicted Laxers’ or even ‘Vindicated Laxers?’ If we needed a further example of how the media contributed to the injustice to which these gentlemen were subjected, this is it. The Chronicle’s editors should print a retraction and issue an apology for continuing to slander these three upstanding young men.”

Bob Parks names the shameful “Duke 88″ faculty members who hung the innocent Duke lacrosse players out to dry.

A judge ordered Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong on Monday night to leave his duties immediately after he was disbarred for his misconduct in the Duke University rape case.

The veteran prosecutor had announced earlier in the day he would leave July 13. But that wasn’t soon enough for Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson, who decided to immediately suspend Nifong from office.

As part of the suspension, Hudson said he would order the sheriff to prevent Nifong from carrying out any duties of the district attorney.

More Nifong coverage.

In related news, as you’ve probably already heard, Duke has settled with the innocent lacrosse players that the school’s faculty so recklessly smeared:

Duke University has reached a settlement with each of the three former lacrosse players and their families.

The university made the announcement this afternoon.

According to a press release issued by Duke, the terms of the settlement will not be disclosed.

In a statement, Duke officials said the board of trustees and Duke President Richard Brodhead had determined that it was in the best interests of the Duke community to eliminate the possibility of future litigation and move forward

“This past year has been hard for many people who care about Duke — for students, faculty, staff, alumni, families and friends — and for the three students and their families most of all,” the Duke statement said. “We resolve to bring the Duke family together again, and to work to protect others from similar injustices in the criminal justice system in the future. “

***
Update: Michael Gaynor is not a fan of Judge Hudson.

K.C. Johnson continues to chronicle Durham-in-Wonderland.

Reader Jerry e-mails a reminder about the other Duke rape case that didn’t make national news.

And Thomas Sowell weighs in on unfinished business:

The disbarment of Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong should be just the first step in remedying the gross and cynical fraud of last year’s “rape” case against Duke University lacrosse players.

Not only is Nifong still liable to civil lawsuits from the three young men whose lives he tried to ruin, and criminal prosecution for his obstruction of justice and making false statements to a judge, there are many other people who disgraced themselves in hyping a lynch mob atmosphere when this case first broke last year.

The New York Times, which splashed these Duke students’ pictures on the front page, along with inflammatory charges against them, and went ballistic on its editorial page, carried the story of Nifong’s disbarment for prosecuting them on page 16.

The 88 Duke University faculty members who took out a hysterical ad, supporting those local loudmouths who were denouncing and threatening the Duke students, have apparently had nothing at all to say now.

Not only did many Duke University professors join the lynch mob atmosphere, so did the Duke University administration, which got rid of the lacrosse coach and cancelled the team’s season, without a speck of evidence that anybody was guilty of anything.

This is one of the few times when Jesse Jackson is speechless, even though he was loudly supporting the bogus “rape” charges last year.

Update:

Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong says he will resign as the Durham County district attorney, regardless of the outcome of his ethics trial.

Nifong says many of the allegations against him are justified, but he says he’s not a liar. He apologized to the lacrosse players who were charged and later declared innocent, and he says he was trying to do the right thing in the case.

Nifong made the announcement that he would resign as he took the stand in his own defense. The North Carolina State Bar has charged Nifong with violating rules governing professional conduct in his handling of the case.

Video coming.

Here are the video highlights and lowlights of my first of two guest host stints on The O’Reilly Factor.

Tonight’s show replays at 11pm Eastern. I’ll be back tomorrow night.

In a nutshell:

One Opio Sokoni informs us it’s all the Founding Fathers’ fault that hip-hop “artists” treat women like meat and can’t finish expressing a thought without throwing in three “niggas” in every sentence. Yep, blame George Washington for R. Kelly and Young Jeezy.

Next, one Malik Shabazz, leader of the “New Black Panther Party,” refuses to apologize for lynching the innocent Duke lacrosse players–and then proceeds to call me a “political prostitute” and mouthpiece for whites. Like I haven’t heard that a half-million times before. (The Left’s whore fixation continues. See also: The vile bile we have to put up with.)

He could have at least rapped it. Or said something about my hair. Maybe borrow a page from Wonkette next time and toss in a gratuitous ping-pong ball joke.

Yup, I’ve heard it all before. Comes with the territory when you’re an uppity brown woman who strays from the liberal plantation, you know.

Just so you know how poisonous this clown is–and why he really never deserves another second on TV airwaves, here’s my full column from Nov. 2, 2001 about Shabazz and his “party:”

More Muslim enemies from within
Nov. 2, 2001
By Michelle Malkin
Copyright Creators Syndicate

There was a venomous hatefest in the nation’s capitol on Halloween night. It was hosted by Malik Zulu Shabazz of the militant New Black Panther Party. Deadly rhetorical spores of Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism permeated the air for more than four hours.

But there has been no panic. No uproar. Nothing.

If this event had been an anti-Muslim rally, the story would be front-page news. Editorialists and academics would be decrying racial and religious intolerance. Left-wing celebrities and MTV veejays would be hectoring us about the need for unity and harmony. Politicians would be condemning the hatemongers as radical extremists who undermine the American way of life.

Instead, the Muslim marathon of malevolence I watched Wednesday night on C-SPAN-2 received absolutely no mainstream media criticism. In fact, it got no mainstream newspaper press coverage at all — an especially ugly irony since it was held at the prestigious National Press Club in the heart of Washington, D.C. Where are all the dogged, brave-hearted members of the Beltway press corps when you need them to cover a war story in their very own lounge?

This was no ordinary forum of scholars, journalists, and bureaucrats of the sort who normally show up at the National Press Club to rub elbows and nibble croissants. It was a super-charged, anti-American grievance session populated by Muslim crackpots and conspiracy theorists. The so-called town hall meeting in the spacious ballroom of the Press Club was “moderated” by Shabazz, a Howard University law school graduate and fanatical racist agitator who was once described admiringly by a Washington Post reporter as “tall and lean as a pine” with “the grace of an athlete.”

He wore his usual garb – a dark Goebbels-like uniform with patches and stripes, close-cropped hair, and Malcolm X designer glasses. Surrounding him were a unit of peace-loving Muslims in black berets and paramilitary gear, who defiantly chanted “Black power!” on cue.

Shabazz defended Osama bin Laden, blamed President Bush for the 9-11 attacks, called our founding fathers “snakes” and likened them to terrorists, lambasted Catholicism, Christians, and Jews, and repeated his avaricious call for societal reparations to blacks. This is old hat for Shabazz, who rose to power under ex-Nation of Islam exile Khalid Muhamad. Among Shabazz’s resume highlights: stoking the recent Cincinnati race riots; organizing a legal support group for O.J. Simpson; leading a boycott of a D.C.-based Korean grocery store that was later firebombed; urging followers in Maryland to “crush” any “straw-chewin’, tobacco-chewin’ racist redneck” that assaults blacks; and threatening to kill whites and police officers if they interfered with his “Million Youth March” two years ago in New York.

“The only solution any time there is a funeral in the black community is a funeral in the police community,” Shabazz told the marchers at the time.

Consumed by hate of law enforcement, not a single person at the Press Club forum had a shred of gratitude for the hundreds of mostly white cops and firemen who sacrificed their lives to save their fellow Americans of all colors and creeds on 9-11. Instead, panelists and audience members stewed about racial profiling, blamed whites for drug abuse in black communities, and practically danced on the graves of the victims of 9-11 terrorism with repeated references to “the chickens coming home to roost.”

One audience member claimed that the hijackings, destruction, and deaths were “nothing more than a Hollywood lie.” An “imaam” named Abdul Alim Musa agreed, assailing the “Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C.” who “all collaborate” to oppress blacks and Muslims. Another audience member refuted the politically correct notion that the Muslim religion is rooted in peace. After all, he noted, true followers believe that “Paradise is under the shade of our swords.”

Co-hosting the Press Club forum was Mohammed Asi, an official of the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. – where President Bush proclaimed that “Islam is peace” less than a week after the terrorist hijackings. Asi said and did nothing to quell the racist, anti-American terrorist sympathizers in the room.

9-11 taught us that our greatest enemies lurk from within. Before the war, the Malik Shabazzes of the world were treated by the press as curious nuisances in funny costumes. It’s long past time to call and condemn them for what they truly are: Treacherous threats.

***

And for those of you who followed the Mohammed Cartoon Rage closely last year, you might remember Shabazz protesting at the Danish Embassy in D.C. We were there as he exhorted his little band of thugs: Watch Takbir! The video.

Andrea Peyser at the NYPost excoriates “all the lies fit to print.”

Worst of all, this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our “newspaper of record,” The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of “all the lies fit to print,” the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser’s story about the night she was “attacked.”

“While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury,” quoth the Times. And, “The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.”

Will the Times make reparations now?

Write the Times here.

***update: 330pm…Fox News’s Shepherd Smith announces that they will be naming the Duke accuser on the air…Crystal Gail Mangum…first time FNC has identified her, though she has been named before by lawyers on both sides of the case…Smith: “We do it now because it is the right thing to do.” ***

Flashback video: Duke suspects’ parents go nuclear on Nifong

Flashback video – David Evans – May 16, 2006:

“I am innocent. Reade Seligmann is innocent. Collin Finnerty is innocent,” Evans said, defending the two other players charged. “Every member of the Duke lacrosse team is innocent. You have all been told some fantastic lies, and I look forward to watching them unravel in the weeks to come.”

***
“A tragic rush to accuse.”

Fact summary of the case will be distributed next week.

AG: “I’m concerned that statements were made public that turned out not to be true.”

La Shawn Barber is all over it.

See also K.C. Johnson.

See also Lie Stoppers.

These are the victims:

This is the perpetrator:

This was the accessory:

This was the rape.

***

Transcript:

Good afternoon, everyone.

On Jan. 13 of this year, I accepted the request of the Durham district attorney to take over three Durham cases. At the time, I promised a fresh and thorough review of the facts and a decision on the best way to proceed. I also said that we would have our eyes wide open to the evidence, but that we would have blinders on for all other distractions. We’ve done all of these things.

During the past 12 weeks, our lawyers and investigators have reviewed the remaining allegations of sexual assault and kidnapping that resulted from a party on March 13, 2006, in Durham, N.C.

We have carefully reviewed the evidence collected by the Durham County prosecutor’s office and the Durham Police Department. We have also conducted our own interviews and evidence gathering. Our attorneys and SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) agents have interviewed numerous people who were at the party, DNA and other experts, the Durham County district attorney, Durham police officers, defense attorneys and the accusing witness on several occasions. We have reviewed statements given over the past year, photographs, records and other evidence.

The result of our review and investigation shows clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed on any of the charges. Today we are filing notices of dismissal for all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans.

The result is that these cases are over, and no more criminal proceedings will occur.

We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.

We approached this case with the understanding that rape and sexual assault victims often have some inconsistencies in their accounts of a traumatic event. However, in this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night.

The prosecuting witness in this case responded to questions and offered information. She did want to move forward with the prosecution.

However, the contradictions in her many versions of what occurred and the conflicts between what she said occurred and other evidence, like photographs and phone records, could not be rectified.

Our investigation shows that:

The eyewitness identification procedures were faulty and unreliable. No DNA confirms the accuser’s story. No other witness confirms her story. Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself. Next week, we’ll be providing a written summary of the important factual findings and some of the specific contradictions that have led us to the conclusion that no attack occurred.

In this case, with the weight of the state behind him, the Durham district attorney pushed forward unchecked. There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado. And in the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly. Regardless of the reasons this case was pushed forward, the result was wrong. Today, we need to learn from this and keep it from happening again to anybody.

Now, we have good district attorneys in North Carolina who are both tough and fair. And we need these forceful, independent prosecutors to put criminals away and protect the public. But we also need checks and balances to protect the innocent. This case shows the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor. What has been learned here is that the internal checks on a criminal charge — sworn statements, reasonable grounds, proper suspect photo lineups, accurate and fair discovery — all are critically important.

Therefore, I propose a law that the North Carolina Supreme Court have the authority to remove a case from a prosecutor in limited circumstances. This would give the courts a new tool to deal with a prosecutor who needs to step away from a case where justice demands.

I want to thank everyone in the North Carolina
Department of Justice. I want to thank our investigators, our SBI agents and especially attorneys Jim Coman and Mary Winstead for their hard work in this matter.

***

Reader Daniel G. notes the whitewashing at the NYTimes:

“The NY Times story makes no mention of Nifong’s party affiliation…but put ‘Democrat’ by Roy Cooper’s name.”

But he’s not the only one who has something to answer for in the Duke lacrosse case. That’s the column I was writing this morning, for ABC News.

This spring, 88 Duke faculty members published an ad in the Duke campus paper, which made reference to “what happened to this young woman” without qualification, and thanked students and protestors for “not waiting” to make their voices heard. Not waiting, presumably, for something as silly as due process.

This week, one of the 88 wrote a column for the Raleigh News and Observer, in which she referred to the accuser as simply “a single mother who takes off her clothes for hire partly to pay for tuition at a distinguished historically black college.” She charged that the real “social disaster” is that “we do not have national health care or affordable childcare,” and “a group of white athletes at a prominent university can get drunk and call out for a stripper the way they would a pizza.”

Local columnist Ruth Sheehan wrote in March, before any charges had been filed, “We know you know. Whatever happened in the bathroom at the stripper party gone terribly, terribly bad, you know who was involved. Every one of you does.”

In a back-off column published this week, Sheehan wrote, “like others, I was outraged. And I wrote about it. I make no apology for that. It is not my job to wait for cases to be resolved and then walk through the aftermath and shoot the dead.”…

The Durham activists who banged pots and pans and hung wanted posters of the Duke lacrosse team have put up their own “wall of silence,” refusing to talk to press as Nifong’s case has fallen apart and their sympathetic victim has become a liar…

In Durham, it seems, it’s possible to learn exactly nothing in 10 months—that’s a trick a lot of people pick up in college towns, but it’s not encouraging in this case.

Read through the Duke 88′s “listening letter,” if you never have before. Then read through the recent column by Cathy Davidson of the Duke 88, to which I referred. It’s got some bonus blog-hatin’ in it:

On the other hand, most of my e-mail comes from right-wing “blog hooligans.” These hateful, ranting and sometimes even threatening folks don’t care about Duke or the lacrosse players. Their aim is to make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring. They deliberately misrepresent the faculty and manipulate the feelings of those who care about the lacrosse players in order to foster their own demagogic political agenda. They contribute to the problem, not to the solution.

Right, because the fact that 46 men’s names were dragged through the mud and three families were put through hell in the P.C. rush to judgement is not reason to reexamine the P.C. assumptions that caused the rush, as we “hooligans” suggest. The only possible solution to the problem is to double down on the very identity politics that brought us here. What’s confidence in the judicial system when there are “larger truths about race and gender” at stake?

The revisionist historians are hard at work in Durham. The potbangers were just speaking out “against sexual violence.” The Duke 88 were just focusing on “larger campus and national concerns.”

The needs to “examine” and “heal” trump the presumption of innocence now, just as they did then, which is why no real examination or healing will happen.

The columnist writing opposite me, on the Left of this issue– Ben Mankiewicz of Air America– predictably jumps straight into the “larger truths” instead of dealing with the injustice of the Duke case. Racism still exists, and we’ll never know what happened in that house anyway, so let’s just talk about how racist white Southerners are.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. These are the “healers,” mind you. Funny, everyone seemed very certain of what happened in that house before the lacrosse players were exonerated by evidence.

Durham is a good town full of many good, liberal folks, but it has its problems. The rush to judgment in the Duke lacrosse case was one of its darkest moments, and things will only get brighter if the people who rushed realize that.

On a lighter note, please enjoy my Tour of Things That Did Not Happen in Durham– a three-minute video walking tour of my fair city.

Update: I just noticed that the definition of “Nifong” is not blockquoted in my ABC column, as it should be, since it is from the Urban Dictionary. I’ll see if I can get that corrected.

Update: Betsy Newmark takes on Mankiewicz:

See, there are still racial problems in this country so it really doesn’t matter that three young men have maligned and persecuted by an out-of-control prosecutor.

I’d like to remind Mr. Mankiewicz that the plural of anecdote is not data. Perhaps he is just hanging out with a more racist crowd than I am. But I’ve lived in Raleigh, NC for 23 1/2 years and I can only think of one racist making comments about race that I’ve heard in that time. Can we generalize about racism from that? I doubt it. But I sure know that the Duke case doesn’t explode some hidden truth that should enlighten us about white racism.

DURHAM, N.C. — A defense attorney says prosecutors have dropped rape charges against three Duke University lacrosse players.

Charges of kidnapping and sexual offense still stand against the three players.

La Shawn Barber has tracked the case closely. Hot Air readers ponder the timing.

Betsy Newmark wonders how Nifong can proceed with the other charges:

[The accuser] doesn’t know now if she was penetrated. How can she not be certain as to whether or not she was raped? Especially after she was pretty graphic with her original report to the investigators about being raped both vaginally and anally. Now, she’s not so certain. Sure.

But I don’t see what Nifong gains by maintaining the charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. She will stay have to take the stand and testify as to what happened and all her former statements will still be fair game. As will the information revealed last week of the multiple men’s DNA found inside her, none of which matched the three defendants or her purported boyfriend. Her veracity and her ability to identify the men she’s now not certain raped her will still be open to cross-examination. Neither the prosecution nor the defense will be able to depend on the other stripper’s story since she has changed her story and been public about her desire to make money off the story. So, it will all come down to this alleged victim’s credibility. If these defense lawyers can’t raise a reasonable doubt from that, they should turn in their licenses.

Durham native Mary Katharine Ham weighs in: “It’s about damn time.”