And, as usual, they are bad for the prosecution and its flimsy case.

he dancing partner of the woman who accuses three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her refutes a key part of her partnerÂ’s account of the alleged crime.

Kim Roberts, who danced at the same party where the alleged rape took place, makes the revelation in an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley this Sunday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Roberts' answer to BradleyÂ’s question directly contradicts a crucial statement the accuser gave to police. Bradley asks whether she, Roberts, who goes by the stage name "Nikki" when she performs, was holding onto the accuser at the beginning of the alleged crime.

Says Bradley, "In the police statement, [accuser] describes the rape in this way: 'Three guys grabbed Nikki,' 'That's you,'" says Bradley, "'Brett, Adam and Matt grabbed me. They separated us at the master bedroom door while we tried to hold on to each other. Bret, Adam and Matt took me into the bathroom.' Were you holding on to each other? Were you pulled apart?"

"Nope," replies Roberts, who says she was hearing this account for the first time.

Roberts also denies the accuser's statement to the police that after the alleged rape, Roberts came into the bathroom and helped one of the rapists dress her.

When pressed by Bradley about whether she saw signs of rape from the accuser, such as complaining about pain or a mention of an assault, Roberts says, "She obviously wasn't hurt...because she was fine."

Bradley's report also contains interviews with the three defendants, Collin Finnerty, Reade Selligmann and David Evans, all of whom proclaim their innocence, and others involved in the case.

It seems to me that, unless there is some bombshell information is ut there, DA Nifong needs to drop this case.

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After all, a ban on a symbol is a ban on a symbol -- even if the symbol is being mocked and deprecated.

Juergen Kamm, the owner of a small German mail-order business, makes a modest living fighting neo-Nazis. His firm sells sloganeering T-shirts, music albums and books as part of a campaign to rid the country of extremists. "Smash Fascism!" one hot-selling button urges.

Last week, however, a court in the city of Stuttgart ruled that under German law Kamm might as well be a Nazi himself. His crime? Selling items bearing swastikas, the Nazi symbol that has been forbidden here since the end of World War II.

Never mind that Kamm's company, Nix Gut, loosely translated as "No Good," displayed the swastika only inside a crossed-out circle or as part of other designs intended to impugn Nazis and their ilk. A panel of judges agreed with state prosecutors in Stuttgart that any reproduction of the symbol, no matter the context, risked making it socially acceptable again in Germany.

"The danger of familiarization is ever present," said presiding Judge Wolfgang Kuellmer. "In particular, this mass-market business risked undermining its taboo status."

I hate the swastika. I also hate the ubiquitous Che photo. But I wish that they are never banned -- because making them illegal just makes them attractive to a small segment of non-conformist, not just the moral midgets who accept the underlying philosophy.

Free speech is the key to killing malignant ideologies -- from Nazism to Communism to Islamism.

Posted by: Greg at 02:00 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Bt then again, why should anything different be expected of the party of slavery and segregation?

httpBlack business owners and religious leaders say there is an undercurrent of discontent with the Maryland Democratic Party's lack of black statewide candidates and think it will encourage support for Republicans -- especially Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's run for the U.S. Senate.

"There's a lot of nervousness. You got a whole lot of black folks who are going to move towards Steele and possibly [Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.]," said Wayne Frazier, a black business leader in Baltimore and a supporter of Mr. Steele's opponent, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

The Rev. Grainger Browning Jr., pastor of the 10,000 member Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, said: "The Democratic Party does have a challenge now to show that it wants to make sure the African-American leadership is included in decision making."

The Baltimore Sun yesterday reported that Maryland's 10 black state senators met last week with Mr. Cardin and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for governor, to register complaints that the party's top candidates for statewide office are white men.

The black senators, dubbed the "Committee of Ten," told Mr. Cardin and Mr. O'Malley, who are both white, that they are hearing about discontent among their constituents over the party's lack of diversity.

One participant complained that blacks get nothing but lip-service from the Democrats, despite the overwhelming loyalty of African-Americans to that party. This points up two things. First, because of their monolithic voting patterns, Democrats don’t need to even throw a sop to the black community because their votes are secure. Second, it demonstrates that too many blacks have bought into the myth that the GOP is racist, despite the fact that the Republicans do run minorities for major offices for substantive offices and reach out to the black community despite having their hand slapped away by black “leaders” who have been bought and paid for by the Democrats.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bt then again, why should anything different be expected of the party of slavery and segregation?

httpBlack business owners and religious leaders say there is an undercurrent of discontent with the Maryland Democratic Party's lack of black statewide candidates and think it will encourage support for Republicans -- especially Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's run for the U.S. Senate.

"There's a lot of nervousness. You got a whole lot of black folks who are going to move towards Steele and possibly [Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.]," said Wayne Frazier, a black business leader in Baltimore and a supporter of Mr. Steele's opponent, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

The Rev. Grainger Browning Jr., pastor of the 10,000 member Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, said: "The Democratic Party does have a challenge now to show that it wants to make sure the African-American leadership is included in decision making."

The Baltimore Sun yesterday reported that Maryland's 10 black state senators met last week with Mr. Cardin and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for governor, to register complaints that the party's top candidates for statewide office are white men.

The black senators, dubbed the "Committee of Ten," told Mr. Cardin and Mr. O'Malley, who are both white, that they are hearing about discontent among their constituents over the party's lack of diversity.

One participant complained that blacks get nothing but lip-service from the Democrats, despite the overwhelming loyalty of African-Americans to that party. This points up two things. First, because of their monolithic voting patterns, Democrats don’t need to even throw a sop to the black community because their votes are secure. Second, it demonstrates that too many blacks have bought into the myth that the GOP is racist, despite the fact that the Republicans do run minorities for major offices for substantive offices and reach out to the black community despite having their hand slapped away by black “leaders” who have been bought and paid for by the Democrats.

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This from Pace University in New York City.

A paperback copy of the Koran was tossed into a toilet on the lower Manhattan campus of Pace University - the latest in a spate of bias incidents upsetting students and administrators at the college, officials said yesterday.

The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the vandalism of the Koran, and the university's private security also is probing the incident, sources said.
"A Koran thrown into the toilet? I am hurt, not just as a Muslim but as a human being," said Zeina Berjaoui, 20, president of Pace's Muslim Student Association.

In the past two weeks, vandals also scrawled a swastika and .anti-black slurs on the same bathroom wall at Pace's campus near City Hall. Someone also sprayed the N-word onto a car parked at the school's Westchester County campus, cops and university sources said.

"One of our university's greatest strengths is its diversity," Pace President David Caputo wrote in a letter describing the incidents. "When speech is hurtful towards a class of people or incites violence, we must condemn it and take measures to stop it."

The copy of the Koran had been taken from the university .library before being defaced Sept. 21. It turned up in the toilet approximately two weeks ago. Today, cops will quiz the student who last withdrew the book, police sources said.

Well maybe there is a crime here – someone stole the book from the library.

But apart from the theft, how exactly does the act of placing a Koran in a toilet constitute any sort of crime? Indeed, is it not like flag burning, expressive conduct that communicates a point of view -- perhaps “Islam is a bunch of shit.” Would a Bible in a toilet elicit a similar response from the University? How about an American flag? An Israeli flag?

I find the statement that the university wishes to “take measures to stop” speech that is “hurtful to a class of people” particularly chilling. Does this mean that expression of the “wrong” views on abortion, homosexuality, religion, or race are prohibited at Pace University? Will speech that targets conservatives, Christians, Jews, or white people be stopped by the University, or will the offended students and faculty members be told that they need to butch up and accept the right of their antagonists to speak out? Just wondering – but pretty sure about the answer.

Posted by: Greg at 12:08 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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