Sunday, April 29, 2007

Sunday Roundup

The incomparable Kristin Butler penned her final column of the year by noting, with sadness, that Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann won’t be returning to Duke—and by asking some hard questions: “Why should our wrongly accused classmates come back after everything they’ve been through? Can we say we have learned anything from their (and our) ordeal?”

Certainly Durham seems to have learned little, if anything. Nifong, Butler notes, remains in place, having “not yet faced a single consequence for his actions.” The police still have in place a policy that led to “disproportionately targeting Duke students for arrest and citations.” And Butler’s words came before City Manager Patrick Baker publicly defended Nifong’s “multiple-choice-test-with-no-wrong-answers” lineup.

As for the University: silence appears to be the order of the day. Silence regarding the occasion when “Durham police officers entered (perhaps illegally) Edens Quadrangle last spring.” Silence regarding the “separate-but-equal” justice system of Duke students being punished more than Durham residents for the same offenses. And silence—or worse—on “a campus where so many still don’t seem to ‘get’ what happened to our classmates.”

Everything Butler has published on the case has been a must-read; so too was her column this week.

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Tara Servatius has done the best reporting on the relationship between the case and North Carolina’s open discovery law, and she did so again with a piece last week. The issue: a proposal—mentioned by Joe Cheshire in the April 11 press conference—to roll back the open discovery law, which Servatius appropriately dubbed the “Nifong Protection Act.” The measure stated, “Disclosure is also not required of legal research or of records, correspondence, reports, memoranda or trial preparation interview notes prepared by the prosecuting attorney or by members of the prosecuting attorney’s legal staff.”

Servatius sat down with Jim Cooney, who similarly was outraged by the proposal. Reade Seligmann’s attorney noted, “Under this bill, the DA wouldn’t have to produce it [notes of the interview] unless the DA believed that was evidence of innocence. The DAs would always take the position ‘no such thing.’” Indeed, this is just what Nifong tried to do regarding his: April 10 conversation with Dr. Brian Meehan; his April 11 chat with Crystal Mangum; and a June meeting with SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy.

Servatius then sat down with the legislative sponsors of the bill—and got them to admit they didn’t know the measure’s terms. Senate sponsor Tony Rand, according to Servatius, justified the bill as a way to protect social security numbers of victims and witnesses. When Servatius pointed out the bill didn’t even address that issue, Rand responded that he had “only seen [the wording] twice.” House sponsor Ray Warren similarly cited the social security number rationalization, but similarly failed to explain how the bill would address this problem. He confessed that he introduced the measure at the behest of the North Carolina District Attorney’s Association. But Wake County District Attorney Colin Willoughby likewise couldn’t explain how the bill on the table protected against identity theft.

Cooney’s conclusion:

What they have proposed essentially undoes everything that has been done the last four or five years and again it’s going to mask the truth in these cases and all that leads us to is innocent people being convicted. For the life of me I cannot understand in view of what has played itself out in Durham why the district attorneys believe this is a good time to actually cut back on the open file discovery provisions. This bill isn’t written for DAs who follow the rules. The bill is written for DAs who aren’t following the rules.

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From this week’s humor file: At Liestoppers, Joan Foster channels ABBA. The fifth verse is particularly good.

And espn.com’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback does its version of NFL draft. Its mocking selection for the Carolina Panthers also contains a serious message:

14. Carolina Panthers: Moezeldin Elmostafa, Durham, N.C. cab driver
Elmostafa is the witness who knew that one of the Duke lacrosse players couldn’t possibly have done what he was accused of doing, and stuck to his story despite police attempts to intimidate him into silence. And while everyone is rightly bashing the sleazeball district attorney, what about the Durham police department? The Durham police in this case come off looking highly suspect, yet no officers or commanders have been fired.

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The left-wing “netroots” hasn’t exactly distinguished itself in its approach to the case. First, Melissa Lafsky at Huffington Post said that rape charges shouldn’t be dropped as long as Susan Estrich didn’t call Crystal Mangum a liar—and then, when it was pointed out Estrich had called Mangum a liar, simply eliminated the sentence but kept the rest of her post unchanged. Then Amanda Marcotte embarrassed the John Edwards campaign with her vile language, presumption of guilt, and preference for airbrushing posts that proved intellectual indefensible.

And now DailyKos has gotten into the act, with a post from Betsy Angert, who proclaimed that she could “stay silent no more and needed to “flush out what I believe is folly” “Stunned and sickened” by the dismissal of charges, Angert announced that “a subtlety [sic] violent, destructive, and abusive action took place.” That Mangum (who Angert describes as a “financially strapped student” and a “scholar of lesser means” but who the AG’s report portrayed as a mentally imbalanced person who had a drug dependency) chose to strip for a living “speaks to a society in trouble.”

How, Angert cried out in anguish, can we forget “the accuser’s vivid account of racist and misogynistic taunts?” (Apparently Mangum had no trouble forgetting them: ) Dismissing the support petition for Reade Seligmann, Angert mused, “Are their [sic] enough affluent and admired Black persons able to plead a similar case?” The accused students, Angert fumed, had lives “filled with achievements, accomplishments that few Black Americans have available to them.” After meandering off into a discussion of Tiger Woods and Oprah(!), Angert compared the lacrosse party to an event with people “dressed in blackfaces, Klu [sic] Klux Klan costumes, and carrying a noose.”

Quite an analysis.

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Duke Basketball Report has a common-sense reaction to the release of the AG's report:

The mystery here is, as it has been: why did Mike Nifong do this? Was it just for a pension?

Given the magnitude of the crime committed here - and in our opinion, even if Nifong is never charged, using an unstable woman to frame three innocent men is at least a moral crime - one has to wonder about his other cases. Which seems more likely to you - that he would start cheating on a high-profile case like this? Or that this is part of a pattern? We have no idea, but it’s a disturbing yet important question to ask.

What takes our breath away is the arrogance of it, the idea that the D.A. could just so blatantly spin a case out of nothing.

In fact, given the magnitude of what has transpired, we’d really urge attorneys, or law students, or journalists (which rules out just about anyone from the Herald-Sun) to pore over the records of the office for the last decade or so to see if anyone else was hung out to dry. Our hunch is that what happened in the lacrosse case didn’t happen in a vacuum.

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Yet another in the long line of Herald-Sun factual errors about the case: both the summary of the AG’s report posted Friday afternoon and John Stevenson’s Saturday article contained the following assertion: “For the first time, the alibi defense that accused lacrosse player Collin Finnerty planned to use came to light in the report.”

Actually, 60 hours before the report appeared, Finnerty’s alibi was publicly revealed here.

In the time between the staff reports article and the appearance of the Stevenson article, I alerted H-S editor Bob Ashley about the error, and he acknowledged receipt of my e-mail. Yet not only did no correction appear, but the error was repeated--even after Ashley knew the statement was false.

At this stage, why should anyone be surprised?

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Last week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Thomas Stinson had a superb article on the lacrosse team's quest for the 2007 national championship. He noted the irony of what had changed since 2006:

Pressler was gone. Teammates Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, the first players charged in the case, had left school with no plans to return. The third, David Evans, had graduated.

Yet Duke president Richard Broadhead, who canceled last season, remained. Athletics Director Joe Alleva, who forced Pressler's resignation, remained. Many of the students who had banged pots and pans at the rallies in support of the accuser before the case began to unravel, remained. And suspicion remained.

Coach John Danowski astutely summarized the attitude of the team:

The kids are angry; they're angry at the world. They're angry at the faculty. They're angry at some administrators. They're angry at the media. They're angry at those people who jumped to conclusions without even meeting them, without even getting to know who they were and getting to know the real circumstances of that evening.

And Stinson noted that despite AG Cooper's call for apologies--and the willingness of some people, such as Ruth Sheehan, to accept his advice--the Group of 88 "has yet to respond." And, given their behavior over the past 13 months, few would have expected any different behavior from the Group.

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At Real Clear Politics, Dennis Prager listed eight lessons of the case, in which “America’s news media, an amoral university, an opportunistic district attorney, and a police department that seems to have collaborated in framing innocent students all combined to nearly destroy the lives of three innocent young men.” He added that “given the political correctness of our time and the inverted values that prevail among America’s elites—particularly the news media, the universities and the legal profession—lessons [of the case] will rarely be expressed, let alone learned.”

A few worth noting: At Duke, “eighty-eight professors, abetted by Duke’s president, created a mob mentality against the young men not unlike that of a lynch mob”—though “of course, nothing will be done to Duke’s president or to those professors.” And “the next time you hear that someone was indicted by a grand jury, unless you have knowledge of the case, or reason suggests possible guilt, don’t assume it.”

Read his full column here.

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of the civil lawsuits don't need to wait for the bar association action on Nifong. Why haven't some of these been filed?

Anonymous said...

Ethics charges are not enough! Why did Martha Stewart go to jail for telling a lie about a stock trade when Nifong escapes CRIMINAL prosecution for hiding evidence and telling lies in court under oath?
Nifong must be crimininally prosecuted.
http://prosecutenifong.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Litigation equals discovery. It should prove to be very enlightening, especially with respect to the academic lynch party.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

"The kids are angry; they're angry at the world. They're angry at the faculty. They're angry at some administrators. They're angry at the media. They're angry at those people who jumped to conclusions without even meeting them, without even getting to know who they were and getting to know the real circumstances of that evening."

What happens when a media figure slanders a collegiate sports team? They get fired, right? Isn't that the precedent established by MSNBC regarding Don Imus?

Oh, I guess that only happens if the sports team is populated by minorities.

Anonymous said...

How is it that Brodhead fell over himself to launch a whole series of inquiries and initiatives to address the problems of racism and sexual violence on campus when this case first arose last spring (steps that only made sense on the assumption that the charges were valid), yet now, when serious abuses of legal procedure, fairness and (anti-white) racism have been well-established, he says and does NOTHING?

How on earth can it be that everyone who acted wrongly in this case (Nifong, Brodhead, Gang of 88, police) is still in their posts with apparent impunity, exercising power, making decisions, drawing pay?

I ask these questions rhetorically, since the answer is all-too-obvious: the racial double standard in American public life.

Anonymous said...

So, I'm assuming that Angert has talked with the accuser/drug-addled, mentally unbalanced prostitute. No?

I might leave Melissa Lafsky out of the company of Amanda Marcotte. Marcotte and Houston Baker seem to be more of the same class of wingnut. Lafsky seemed somewhat contrite and apologetic after her slip up.

Anyway, I can't believe that so many people are will just to forget about the ethical and moral tragedy that has befallen our country. The underworld of our society that this last year has exposed is no different from the bigoted throngs of the Klu Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations. Nobody seems to care.

Anonymous said...

2:03

We all want payback, but here is the harsh realities for the enablers:

1. AAAS has been successfully linked to academic welfare. Lubiano et al are jokes.

2. Brodhead is finished. He's counting days. The poster boy for lefty fecklessness. If I saw him in a bar, I'd laugh in his face.

3. NY Times' rep keeps getting worse, profits are down, shareholders are fed up.

4. Panties' social worker will be keeping an eye on her. The upside for Panties is her hourly rate probably has risen.

5. Nifong may lose his virginity in prison.

6. Contributions to NAACP surely will dwindle.

7. Next Duke president might cripple Angry Studies.

IMO, the best thing that happened because of this joke is that people of goodwill are waking up to black parasitism, the dirty little subject few have the balls to address.

Anonymous said...

A few points (most of which are not that original)

1. There is no question Duke will begin a slow decline in status, quality, and academic/sports reputation. Can anybody imagine another Laettner or Grant Hill enrolling at Duke? Why would anybody enroll at Duke if they had the opportunity to enroll at say Vanderbilt/Georgetown/etc at this point?

2. Academia is more rotten then most realized.

3. Durham always had a nice national reputation. Now it seems like a cesspool. And, from my viewpoint, too few in the city/state/or at Duke care.

4. Had these guys had a lapdance (very common these days, in Vegas 1000s of guys each night) they likely would have gone to jail.

5. It is impossible to imagine a guy like Nifong staying on the job in most cities. Incredible.

6. As somebody pointed out, people need to look at EVERY prior Nifong case. Every one.

7. To the group of 88/pot bangers/NYT: guilty people (including rapists) will go free over the next few years because of this case. No question. And most will rape again. They will have helped this happen.
The Wall Street Journal has a nice opinion piece which talks about how rarely innocent people going to jail actually is and the consequences of forgetting this fact.

8. People that look at everything through the prism of race generally have poor judgement.

9. The New York Times can no longer be considered a great newspaper. Their arrogance reminds me of the arrogance of the US auto industry just as foreign cars became a factor.

10. If the Bush administration does not pursue civil rights violations it will cost them some percentage of votes from their base in 2008 and beyond.

11. Please read Bonfires of the Vanities and I am Charlotte Simmons to learn more about the players in this case. Amazing really. T Wolff really hits the nail on the head.

12. Imus has been making idiotic remarks for decades. I have no doubt his remark would have gone unnoticed had there been no Duke case. This is quite obvious and I am surprised so few have pointed this out.

13. The key bloggers in this case deserve a Pulitzer. No chance.

14. On balance AG Cooper should be considered a hero. The same looneys that defended Nifong will hate him. Not a great situation.

15. Of course, he SHOULD have called for the prosecution of Mangum. A mistake. She had advisors that should be challenged and questioned. It was no fluke that 3 well off Northeners were IDed. People that falsely accuse others generally get away with it.

16. WHY does the New York Times still not name the accuser? What rationale?

17. I wonder if anyone really understands the pressure on the Duke 3. If they undertip, are cranky one day, get a speeding ticket, divorce, in short, act like normal human beings jokers like the New York Times will have a field day. Look at how they reacted to college kids having a beer with strippers.

18. When they make a movie about this case, they ought to look at the Pacino film A Scent of a Woman. The actors who played the weasels at Bard in the film could easily play the Nifong supporters. And the guy that played the dean of Bard would be perfect for Brodhead.

19. I hope the bloggers keep up their great work. Truly inspiring.

Anonymous said...

One is struck by the realization that even if Mangum were to now admit that her story was a hoax, there still would be the same reaction from those who enabled her, "she must have been paid off", "those elite white boys were able to buy silence" etc. The intellictual and logical dishonesty of the enabling left is simply astonishing.

Lives, careers and reputations have been irreparably damaged by this fiasco and at the end of the day, it's only those lives, careers, and reputations of the players and close associates of the lacrosse team that have been affected. The 88, the senior administration, the Durham PD, Durham Crimestoppers, the various national and local writers, and self-proclaimed 'academics' all collect paychecks (many with my tax dollars) and have experienced no consequences of their destructive actions. Cooper's vindication is still the only unequivocal positive these men have seen in the past 13 months. They will never fully get their lives back, no matter the compensation that will eventually result. For that, society owes them, at the very least, an apology they will never hear.

Anonymous said...

KC, the gratuitous shot at Daily Kos was pretty much complete crap. Some idiot posted a dairy (which anyone can do) and the subsequent commenters ripped it to shreds. Sloppy work, if not deliberately deceptive.

I would have thought you'd be more thoughtful than this, especially after so many people wrote this blog off as a right-wing hate site because of the racist loonies who used to pollute the comments after your posts. I'm glad that you got rid of them by enabling moderation for a while, but the experience should have taught you not to tar an entire orchard because of a few bad apples.

Anonymous said...

If Angert had bothered to check any actual facts (which she clearly does not care about), she would know that both Kimmie and Precious had plenty of opportunities to make something of their lives. Kimmie was reportedly a student at UNC Chapel Hill at one point (before she decided that stealing was a quicker way to get what she wanted, so she embezzled $25K from her employer). Precious was in the Navy for a while (which afforded her all sorts of opportunities for academic and other achievements) before she entered into an adulterous relationship with another sailor (not her husband) and had two children by him. Kimmie and Precious both chose to be sex workers (just as they both chose to be liars, cheats and [at least in Kimmie's case] thieves). Both had better opportunities available to them. The question we should be asking is not what accounts for the economic disparity between the Duke defendants and the two women. Instead, a better question is what accounts for the character disparity between them.

David said...

Talk about "enablers," Duke's student body has much to answer for.

Gallaudet University (for the deaf); Students went on strike in 1988 demanding, and then getting, their first deaf president. At the time, their actions were characterized in the press as “revolutionary.”

The current situation with regard to deposing Brodhead suggests a reverse correlation – wherein Duke’s students would strike for a “hearing” president.

Anonymous said...

I'm assuming that Duke is silent because it's had legal advice. Just about anything anyone says at this point can be used against them. Nifong, I suspect, though he hasn't had legal consequences for his actions, is having to pay attorneys -- I would guess those bills aren't much different from the ones the lacrosse players' families had to pay. Same, I would also guess, for the 88: some number of them have probably hired attorneys, too.

Anonymous said...

Theres alot of good university's in this country to send your kids. Why send them to Duke and have to worry about them for 4 years ? Its not worth it.

Anonymous said...

Little enough good will result from this debacle. I do not dismiss the declaration of innocence by the Democratic State AG, but then there should never have been charges; and he could no longer ignore that. He has so far done the least permissible under the circumstances, while exhonerating the wrongful accuser in the process. Meanwhile:

- Nifong remains in office.
- Brodhead remains in office.
- Duke trustees retain their "trust."
- The DPD rolls along.
- The Gang of 88-1 continue to ply their largely execrable trade.
- Biased media remain biased.
- Radical ranters continue to rant.
- True believers continue to believe.
- Black race mongers continue to preach hate.
- The NAACP continues to lie in order to survive, rather than reform.
- Millions remain convinced of a falsehood.

and silence is the order of the day for the many other enablers, until the next cause celebre.

This is the Left. This is how it operates, and will continue to operate. This is the essence of the Democratic Party Left and the left-wing media, the relentless race/class/gender/victimology outpouring until something proves them wrong, then silence and a quick shift of emphasis to the next excuse for being.

This is a sad, recurring, pathetic refrain; and now the workings are ingrained in our culture - especially including our political and educational systems, among other leprotic foci.

Yes, this great country has a disease. Spawned by Marxist elite and radical feminist cant, its name is Modern Liberalism; and what we see displayed at Duke is just one squalid instance of its insidious effects.

Anonymous said...

10:23

Brodhead is finished

Anonymous said...

P Rich, I have to disagree. AG Cooper did not do "the least permissible." The least permissible would have been to do nothing. Instead, he conducted a thorough investigation.

The next least permissible would have been to declare that the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. He didn't do that, he went further and declared that the accused were out and out innocent.

The next, next least permissible would have been to declare them innocent and leave it at that. Again, he went further and released an extremely detailed report explaining why, exactly, the guys were innocent, and where the original investigation went wrong.

Very impressive, if you ask me.

Anonymous said...

"Center on integrity to leave Duke"

This was one of the lead stories in the Duke Chronicle this past week. Could anyone have come up with a better headline?

My questions would be; (a) Hadn't integrity left Duke a whole lot earlier? and (b) If not, what took them so long?

Anonymous said...

Mike Pressler built the lacrosse program to become a top contender last season. How is it then that he is not able to lead the program effectively because of this hoax? IMO, lacrosse is not a revenue sport which is why Coach Pressler was not given the benefit of the doubt which they otherwise would have afforded Coach K had this happened to the basketball team. What a financial drain on the athletics department it must be to provide scholarships to more than 12 students in a program that does not generate any revenue for the university! Hey football players, your program doesn't generate much revenue either, so watch out!

Anonymous said...

To Anon 1:12:00, author of the new blog at http://prosecutenifong.blogspot.com/
-

Two tips:

1) Switch from black background/white text, to white background/black text. You're attempting something that ought to be word- and thought-intensive, and nobody feels like slogging through multiple paragraphs of white text on a black background. It's exhausting and, at some resolutions, illegible.

2) Enable anonymous posts. Maybe there are a few cowards and cockroaches who post anonymously because they can't stand the light of day, but most people simply dislike registering, because it's annoying, time-consuming, distracting and it invites spam. You're cutting your blog off from participation by about 98 per cent of the people who post here. You can always disable anon posts later, if it becomes a problem.

Just my $.02. Suit yourself, dude. So far, gotta say you're no KC Johnson. Too bad, because your topic is a good one. Good luck. *shrug*

Anonymous said...

RE: The H-S's fallacious "scoop" on the Finnerty alibi.

Ashley and Paxton have utterly no understanding or appreciation for the internet. During a WUNC interview in early 2005, Ashley confessed he'd never heard of the term "blog." (I'm sure he's familiar enough now). It doesn't matter to them the DIW had it first. "We're a newspaper and you're not," goes their archaic logic.

Paxtopn is operating the paper as a stripped-down, small-town, chicken-dinner, hayseed publication, a formula that simply won't work in Durham, a town that for all its problems is far better-educated and wealthier than Paxton's other markets like Jonesboro, Ark., or Owensboro, Ky.

They don't care about journalism. All that matters is not angering its black readers and thus further eroding its circulation.

Speaking of which: the national circulation report is supposed to be issued tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how the HS fared over the past year.

Anonymous said...

Brodhead is finished

BS. He is fully supported by academia and if he leave, his new post will be President of Princeton or Yale. He is now even more famous and admired among the far left wing academia which consists 85% of faculty in this country.

Anonymous said...

Jamil

re Brodhead

This is the probable Duke scenario:

Administration knows that Duke will be named a respondent in the lawsuit, along with other sundry scumbags employed by Duke. Duke attorneys will advise Duke not to fire Brodhead until litigation is resolved. Once resolved, Duke alumni will ask for his head, and get it.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

11:50

You wrote something profound re Ashley's "we're a newspaper, and you're not."

Conceptually speaking the difference between a blog and the editorial content of a newspaper is censorship: newspapers don't want to offend their advertisers.

Johnson is the only censor here, and I've found him unburdensome in the main.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

I don't know how smart the normal DA is these days,but if this whole deal has not caught their attention to keep it clean and legal, I would be surprised. Knowing that a spotlight could at anytime be shown on your activities,secrets and credentials is a powerful tool to keep persecution from out of your metanarrative. KC thanks for the word and sorry if I spelled it incorrectly.

Anonymous said...

Such a gorgeous and luscious Sunday-almost-end-of-April-day!

All decent people are rightfully thrilled because this spring three innocent men no longer must bear the burden of false charges from a woman who should be in jail right now.

I must totally agree with columnist and commentator Dennis Prager that Crystal Mangum should be prosecuted for true justice to be realized.

Does anyone notice just how "robot-i-cized" and how willing we are to think it's ok for someone like Mangum to just move on down the road as if she has done nothing?

Look at the news coverage. No one is making a big deal about the horrific damage she did......and that she was still pushing Roy Cooper to continue the hoax up until the present. Only he put the brakes on.

Mangum is NOT mentally ill. She's just a typical Durham bum who thinks she can bleed the system at will. Those who follow such a person--and we all know who and how vast their numbers still are--obviously agree with her way of life.

The minimizing of this destructiveness along with minimizing the violent words written in a school newspaper by one Solomon Burnette are examples of the black community's value system: almost never being held accountable when they do damage to someone who is not black.

Quite the opposite. There seems to be satisfaction.

Can any normal person believe that the NCCU school paper still has the Burnette column posted?

Guess what would happen if a non-mostly-black school printed such a column in their paper.

Burnette is an ex-convict who was put into prison for robbing and assaulting Duke students. In his ignorant and violent diatribe he seems to have special hatred for Duke students because he victimized them and got caught.

Notice how the local newspapers are all too anxious to stop covering the Duke hoax, especially on the editorial pages.

They want their personal prejudices swept under the rug.....and no editorial staff played into stereotypes more than the News & Observer's editorial staff did when this case broke.

Thank heavens for Joe Neff's reporting.

Debrah

Anonymous said...

Well, a Doctor at UNC disagrees with your assessment that Crystal is not mentally ill. Everything about this woman cries "Mentally ill," I doubt that the Doctor wil take either your diagnosis or Nurses Peggy Perfect into account.

Anonymous said...

TO 2:14PM--

So effing what? Am I supposed to put life on hold on the word of a doctor? Please!

The woods are full of "words from doctors".

You obviously live in white-bread-milquetoast-America. The behavior of Mangum is not all that different from much of certain segments of society and in certain boroughs near and far.....hither and thither.

The mindset of Mangum is pretty much business as usual for many. Have you not kept up with her followers and what they continue to say and write about this case?

Debrah

Anonymous said...

I do live in a white bread world today, but lived for thirty years in the heart of Washington,DC. So what,!!! Does that validate or invalidate the UNC Doc's diagnosis?

Anonymous said...

Devorah - No one is asking you to put your life on hold - just contribute to the conversation.

Anonymous said...

TO 3:28PM--

Further solidifying my opinion about Mangum from what we all have gleaned over the past year were the comments of Joe Cheshire when he, Wade Smith, and Jim Cooney did a segment on "Larry King Live" the evening after all charges were dropped.

Larry King asked many of the typical softball questions. Then he asked a very provocative one. Smith and Cooney demured, but Cheshire spoke with fervor about Mangum in a way that I hadn't heard previously.

When asked why they thought anyone would do something like this.....invent a story and refuse to back down.....keeping it alive with tales that would divide communities across the country, Cheshire answered.....

"Larry, she has a meanness about her. She is a very nasty person."

Keep in mind: Cheshire has seen all her records which are sealed from public scrutiny. IMO, he's seen evidence which perhaps reveals that character accounts for her behavior rather than mental illness.

Debrah

Anonymous said...

Mangum may be ill - or not.
IF her behavior is a result
of the many medications she's
taken (as is well-documented)
then mental illness isn't
the question, any more than
drunk driving is an excuse
for running over pedestrians.

Anonymous said...

I love the Duke haters on here saying Duke will decline in status and the poor parent of some kid who could never get into Duke if their life depended on it saying, "Why would anyone send their kid to Duke?" Duke is so much more than this case, so much more than Brodhead or lacrosse or any of these things that will all go away with the passage of time. Duke continues to get great athletes, continues to send kids to great graduate schools, Duke students continue to do loads of volunteer work in Durham and high school seniors continue to apply there in the thousands. Sorry, no decline for Duke because of this silliness, in spite of the haters fervent hopes.

Anonymous said...

Excuse me, people - this is off topic - but where is Crystal getting money to pay for her drugs? I'm not talking just the costs of the drugs themselves - Ambien, methadone, Paxil and amitriptyline - but also the costs associated with them.

Speaking from personal experience, many years ago (for a short period of time), I took Lithium - the most common and cheapest anti-depressant then on the market. The experience was an eye-opener in terms of the massive costs of treating even mild depression. To begin with, simply getting the drug requires at least two doctor visits - a psychologist ($100 a visit) who evaluates your emotional need for the drug, and a doctor ($100 a visit) who prescribes it (psychologists are not doctors and therefore can not write prescriptions). Only then can you actually purchase the Lithium ($200 a prescription - and always only for one month). But that's only the beginning of the cost.

ALL anti-depressants require simultaneous psychological and medical treatment the entire time you take the drug. You don't do the follow-up, you don't get the drug. Therefore, the moment I swallowed the first Lithium, I entered into a ritual of weekly treks to my therapist ($100 an hour), plus monthly blood tests at the hospitals ($100 a visit, plus $200 for lab tests) to measure the level of Lithium in my system, then a monthly trek to the doctor ($100 a visit) to study the lab results. All in all, just for one month, I incurred a minimum of $1100. For one drug.

Crystal is taking FOUR - ambien, methadone, Paxil and amitriptyline. At the minimum, we are talking at least $3000 a month. And remember, my costs came from two decades ago which means the current price must be at least half again as much. Plus, Paxil and amitriptyline are each incredibly more expensive than Lithium. So I ask you? Where's Crystal getting the money to pay for all this?

She has no job, no medical insurance, she's not living at home, she's not married or living with someone who can pick up the tab, etc. She hasn't done interviews to be paid for - and, praise the lord, her blackmail of the families of Collin, Reade and Dave has failed. So - where's she getting the money?

And damn, I'm not even talking her car, her house and her three kids.

Anonymous said...

What is there to gain by prosecuting Crystal Mangum?

Seriously

Anonymous said...

5:56 None of these drugs have to be tracked like Lithium. If she is still working at the old job, she has the money - maybe she gets it for free from UNC. Although, I think she is buying most of this on the stree. She is obviously not going to the Methadon clinic as pts go daily for their dose that day.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Jen. "Permissible" means in this context "the least he could get away with under the circumstances."

Once the NC State AG stepped into the spotlight, he faced a political problem on prime time: how to terminate a wrongfully brought case involving out-of-state accused students, address the Nifong problem and not aleniate the local and national Democratic class/race/gender/victim believer voter base. You and others are apparently so euphoric he pronounced the boys innocent (an interesting quasi-legal declaration) you cannot see anything else, and the else is his actions were nicely judged to accomplish what they did - tamp down the mounting flames with a minimum of further Party damage. In the process he sacrificed Nifong, a minor loss, and did nothing but restore a condition (the accused' innocence) that never should have been threatened.

The AG could have come down like a ton of bricks on many other participants, or at the very least alluded to them. So far he has not, and likely will not. And of course he painted Magnum as a helpless, innocent victim - the standard Party line. Some here see admirable focus. I see business as usual - too little, too late, too limited by partisan political interests..

Anonymous said...

I am not a lawyer but I think "john bruce" is right in his Apr 29, 2007 10:10:00 AM post: The almost total silence by most of the worst offenders in the hoax caper is due to the strong possibility that they may be indicted or sued.

Meaning that all or most of the worst characters in the hoax will probably never apologize, or will only do so in the future if they think it will somehow help them legally. (Would be nice to hear a sincere apology from these characters, but I know a sincere apology isn't going to be forthcoming from most of them even if they knew there would never be any legal action against them.)

One exception: Mr. Nifong did issue an apology, but he worded it to try to head-off future legal action against him. Sincerity? Hah!

G in Texas

Anonymous said...

Does Medicaid cover such costs?
Medicare doesn't - unless perhaps
she's on disability (SSI?)
I don't know the details
with regard to the programs I'm
mentioning, but I THINK that
Medicaid has some limited
ability to pay for meds.
Then again, there's a thriving
underground market - ('Ludes
are a good example of the
manufacturer making more of
the stuff than is legally
prescribed, so it's said.)

Don't assume that she has
one doctor - or any doctor.
The AG's report would seem
to indicate that she has a
doctor, unless they're basing
their report on what she states
she's taking.

Another possibility is samples:
docs give stuff out all the time -
but usually not the types of med
that is controlled. Are these
controlled substances?

As far as Lithium goes: it can do
a lot of harm to the thyroid
gland, which is why blood testing
is required, so that the patient
isn't poisoned.

Anonymous said...

"What is there to gain by prosecuting Crystal Mangum?"

It's the only way to stop her.

Crystal did not stop herself in her teens from lying about rape. She did not stop herself on March 14, 2006 from lying about rape. She did not stop herself in the countless interviews with the nurse, doctor and police from lying about rape. She did not stop herself in front of the Special Prosecutors from lying about rape. In fact, she told the SP's she would lie some more on the witness stand.

And she will keep lying. Which means it's only a matter of time before she finds another victim to destroy with her lies. Crystal will never stop herself. She has to be stopped.

There is only one to do that. Prosecute her.

Anonymous said...

I admit this has nothing to do with the post; but in case anyone reading this blog doesn't know yet ... The Duke Men's Lacrosse team won the ACC title today!
I believe they go on to compete for the National title in a couple weeks with the schedule for the National championship TBA next week.
I was a bit disappointed Fox Sports Net picked up televising the ACC championship game today (I think relatively at the last minute. I'm pretty sure it was originally going to be on ACC select webcast.) I really hate it when one of the cable sports channels (that I don't get) pick up a game because no webcast. I guess it shows though that there's realatively more interest in these games.
In either case, I'm really happy for the guys! :)

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
I love the Duke haters on here saying Duke will decline in status and the poor parent of some kid who could never get into Duke if their life depended on it saying, "Why would anyone send their kid to Duke?" Duke is so much more than this case, so much more than Brodhead or lacrosse or any of these things that will all go away with the passage of time. Duke continues to get great athletes, continues to send kids to great graduate schools, Duke students continue to do loads of volunteer work in Durham and high school seniors continue to apply there in the thousands. Sorry, no decline for Duke because of this silliness, in spite of the haters fervent hopes.

Apr 29, 2007 5:21:00 PM


re the above:

1. Not everybody that has this opinion about Duke is a "Duke hater". Duke is a great university--anybody who has visited the campus or know some of their alumni realize this. Duke's grad schools are world class. Many of us
fear that what happened at Duke (esp Brodhead and the gang of 88) could easily happen other schools.

2. Again, would another Christian Laettner/Grant Hill go to Duke again (at least right now)? Doubtful. Will ambitious northeasteners look at Duke as a choice the same way again? Doubtful. A decline would not be noticed for years by the way.

3. The first things most people think when they hear "Duke" is this lacrosse case/the 88 alumni/ Nifong/ and the lack of support in Durham for these 3 guys.
Hopefully, for everyone's sake, this will fade with time.

4. In my view, most people do not hate Duke University. A few college basketball nuts hate a subsection of the players (in fact, Grant Hill was interviewed about this not too long ago).

Anonymous said...

There's no question that the stink of AAAS will affect Duke's ranking.

Anonymous said...

People go to the best school they can get into normally. If it is Duke, they will go. Although nothing could persuade me to go to NC, let alone Durham, that is not true for kids going to university.

Anonymous said...

KC said "And now DailyKos has gotten into the act, with a post from Betsy Angert..."

Wrong. It wasn't a post; it was a diary, of which there are several hundred daily. And the huge majority of commenters strongly rejected the diary; check the ratings on the many rejecting comments.

This is like tarring the whole of the NY Times with guilt by association.

Beneath you, KC, you normally superb reporter.