Brendan Nyhan

The Mike Nifong reign of terror is finally over — he’s asked to be removed from the Duke lacrosse case:

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has asked to be removed from the Duke University lacrosse case.

* Nifong made the request in a letter delivered to the office of N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper.

* The attorney general’s office could take over the case.

* Duke University officials said they will welcome the perspective of an “independent party.”

Nifong sent a letter to Cooper this afternoon, according to Noelle Talley, a spokesman for Cooper. The letter asked Cooper to appoint his office’s special prosecution unit to take over the case, Talley said.

How long will it take an independent third party to drop all charges after reviewing the state of Nifong’s case? An hour?

Read the latest on the Duke lacrosse case and try to believe that District Attorney Mike Nifong has not dropped all charges — the accuser has changed her story yet again, and none of the details survive scrutiny:

In her latest statement to investigators, the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case changed her account again about when the alleged gang rape occurred, who attacked her and how.

Defense attorneys filed the statement in court today, arguing that it was more evidence that the woman is an unreliable witness.

The woman adjusted the timing of the assault to earlier in the evening, a time point preceding the well-documented alibi of one accused player, Reade Seligmann. The defense, however, introduced yet more alibi evidence for Seligmann: he was on the cell phone with his girlfriend during the height of the attack as the accuser now times it.

The new version of the events comes from a Dec. 21 interview by Linwood Wilson, chief investigator for Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. The statement marked the first time anyone from the District Attorney’s office discussed the case with the woman since charges were filed in April. The interview came less than a week after a private laboratory director testified that he and Nifong agreed not to report DNA evidence favorable to the three accused players.

It was the Dec. 21 interview that prompted Nifong to drop rape charges the following day against the three players after the woman said she was no longer certain that the men had vaginally assaulted her with their penises.

The three players, Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty, have called the accusations lies and said they are innocent.

The statement layers new and contradictory accounts over the woman’s previous statements:

* In her latest statement she said the attack ended at midnight.

In previous accounts, the woman said the gang-rape ended shortly before she left in the car driven by Kim Roberts, the second dancer. Roberts called 911 as she was driving away at 12:53 a.m., according to police records. This new account leaves 50 minutes unaccounted between the end of the rape and the departure from the party.

The new statement runs contrary to time stamped photos of the party, which show the two women dancing between 12:00 and 12:04 a.m. in the living room of the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.

* In the latest statement, the woman says she arrived at the party at 11:10 p.m. on March 13 and that the rape began at 11:40 p.m. Her cell phone records show that she was on phone with her father and others up to one minute before the rape allegedly started.

* The woman now said her alleged assailants used multiple names.

In previous accounts, she said she was assaulted by three men named “Adam”, “Brett” and “Matt.” She has given conflicting descriptions of the three men and contradictory accounts of how they assaulted her.

In the Dec. 21 interview, she said for the first time that the players used multiple names. “Dan, Adam and Brett was used by Dave Evans,” Wilson wrote. “Adam and Matt was also used by Reade Seligmann. She does not remember a name being used for Collin Finnerty or if he was called by a name.”

* The accuser has changed her description of Evans. On April 4, she viewed a photograph of Evans and said it looked like one of her assailants, except that the assailant had a moustache. In the Dec. 21 statement, the woman said the assailant had a five o’clock shadow, not a mustache. Evans has a visible five o’clock shadow in the photograph.

* In her recent statement, the woman said that Evans stood in front of her and made her perform sex on him. In past statements, she said that Seligmann did this.

Perhaps learning from George Allen’s experience, Mitt Romney moved quickly yesterday to try to prevent a YouTube video of his 1994 debate with Ted Kennedy from becoming the next “macaca”:

A video recording of former Governor Mitt Romney expressing liberal views became an Internet sensation in the political world yesterday, prompting Romney to call a conservative webcast to say that he has “grown a bit wiser” in the past 13 years.

…The five-minute clip from an October 1994 debate against Senator Edward M. Kennedy shows Romney endorsing a series of liberal viewpoints and includes statements of support for abortion rights and gay rights. The clip was viewed more than 12,000 times on Youtube.com yesterday by 10 p.m.

Last night, Romney called in to the conservative Internet broadcast “The Glenn and Helen Show” to react to the distribution of what his presidential exploratory committee called “ancient footage.”

But if you want real entertainment, don’t miss Mitt TV, where the first clip begins with this cheesy movie preview-style voiceover:

The great American story. It’s about overcoming great obstacles. It’s about finding the future and seizing it. It’s about turning around lives. This is the story of Governor Mitt Romney these past four years. And this is how it started…

(Personally, I would have opened with “In a world where there are no Republican presidents from Massachusetts…”)

CNN reporter Suzanne Malveaux’s analysis of President Bush’s speech last night is a perfect illustration of how “objective” journalism works. Claims on which the two sides of the political spectrum disagree are always presented as contested, but as soon as one side gives in, the claim becomes indisputable truth. Thus, within minutes of the president’s speech, Malveaux was describing the administration’s Iraq strategy to this point as “a failed policy”:

MALVEAUX: Essentially you have seen in the past this kind of public relations campaigns and speeches that have been done before and there has been a failed policy that has followed. So the big question of course, whether or not this is going to be a viable strategy or if it’s just going to be another pep rally.

Of course, the strategy didn’t magically become a “failed policy” at 9:30 PM EST last night. But CNN reporters couldn’t describe it as such until then without being accused of bias. It’s no wonder people are disillusioned with the mainstream press…

I know John Edwards specializes in emotional appeals, but given his need to appear more substantive, it was strange to see him criticizing President Bush for being too academic on Larry King last night:

JOHN EDWARDS, 2008 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I think what America needs from their president under the circumstances is, first, trust. They need to feel like they can trust their president. They need to have a sense of honesty and decency that the president is trying to make the right decision, the best judgment under very difficult circumstances.

What I saw was a very academic, analytical speech, making the case for putting more troops in Iraq. And I think that’s now what America needed from its president right now. I think the president is profoundly wrong. I think escalating the war is a huge mistake.

But beyond that, what’s happened is that the trust in the president has eroded. And America has to feel in their gut that whether he’s right or wrong the president’s telling the truth.

And instead of all of the statistics and information that he had in his speech, he should have said, “The situation is very bad in Iraq right now. We’re doing the best we can with a difficult situation and…”

KING: Is this what would you have said?

EDWARDS: That’s exactly what I would have said.

KING: It’s bad?

EDWARDS: I would have said, “It’s bad. The choices are bad and worse. We have to be honest. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m going to tell what you I believe is the best thing to do under these circumstances.”

Coming soon: Edwards blasts Dick Cheney for being too open and forthcoming with the American people.

Media Matters reports that ABC’s “Good Morning America” has named CNN Headline News/syndicated radio host Glenn Beck as a “regular commentator.”

Beck, of course, recently distinguished himself by telling Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies’” — part of a long pattern of hateful and offensive comments.

Sadly, this is hardly the first such attempt by network news divisions to preempt critics of “liberal bias” by featuring an extreme right-wing pundit. CBS Evening News ran a “Free Speech” segment featuring Rush Limbaugh in September, and he served as an NBC Election Night analyst in 2002. NBC’s Tim Russert and Brian Williams also suck up to Limbaugh all the time.

It may be true, as ABC’s Mark Halperin put it, that “[A]s an economic model, if you want to thrive like Fox News Channel, you want to have a future, you better make sure conservatives find your product appealing.” But aren’t there better ways to appeal to conservatives than by kissing up to hatemongers like Limbaugh and Beck? Do they really need a bigger platform?

(For the liberal bias diehards, it’s also worth noting that no liberal commentator even remotely comparable to Limbaugh or Beck is featured on network news.)

Update 1/11/ 8:21 AM: Bruce Bartlett offers a novel explanation in comments:

I am convinced that the reason such nut cases are put on the air is liberal bias. Liberals know that presenting people like Alan Keyes as spokesmen for conservatism is the best way of making America liberal. I really believe this.

I’m not sure I agree. It could be that the networks are sincerely attempting to pander and think conservatives want Limbaugh, Beck et al on the air. (Of course, many do.) Alternatively, putting on extreme pundits may be intended as a costly signal to conservative viewers that the networks are serious about countering perceptions of liberal bias. Putting David Brooks on the air doesn’t carry the same reputational cost.

In another sad chapter in the history of post-9/11 attacks on dissent, Sean Hannity has started a weekly “Enemy of the State” award, which carries an obvious implication of treason. The first award was given to Sean Penn for no reason other than the fact that he doesn’t like Hannity or the Bush administration. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin has an excellent new post up analyzing new favorability data on the 2008 presidential contenders. The coolest graph illustrates just how unpopular John Kerry is. Kerry’s rating of 22% favorable/48% unfavorable is far worse than anyone else in the poll. To give you a sense of how unpopular Kerry is, Tom DeLay’s favorability rating back in April (months after his indictment) was 23% favorable/49% unfavorable. It’s more than a little ironic that Kerry, who says President Bush “lives in a state of denial,” thinks he can win the presidency with numbers like that.

Here’s a question that everyone seems to be ignoring: why does Hillary Clinton get a pass on the experience question while Barack Obama and John Edwards are portrayed as inexperienced? Here are their respective resumes in public office:

Clinton — six years in the United States Senate;
Edwards — six years in the United States Senate;
Obama — seven years in the Illinois state senate and two years in the United States Senate.

There’s no question that Clinton was highly involved in politics and policy for most of her adult life. But is her pre-Senate experience as a lawyer and a policy advocate really that much more substantial than Obama’s seven years as a state legislator? Implicitly, the Clinton experience argument seems to rest more on the fact that she was inside the White House advising her husband for eight years. But no one’s suggesting that other people who advised Clinton are qualified to be president on that basis — otherwise Rahm Emanuel and Leon Panetta would be throwing their hats in the ring. Sure, she was a closer adviser to her husband than those two, but to my mind, you either have experience being “the decider” or you don’t. And Clinton has no executive experience, no experience managing a large bureaucracy, and less experience as an elected representative than Obama. Just because she’s famous and has lots of experience in national politics doesn’t make her more qualified to be commander-in-chief than her rivals.

Correction 2/11 3:26 PM: Obama has served two years in the Senate, not four.

Everyone thinks John Edwards is hurt by Barack Obama becoming the “fresh face” in the Democratic presidential primary race. It’s also true that he can’t compete with Obama and Hillary on a number of dimensions — they’re celebrities who would make history if they became president, and both are brilliant at a level that he, apparently, is not. But what he can do is run a substantive campaign that’s based on issues and ideas rather than gauzy personality-driven appeals. As many people have noted, neither Hillary nor Obama has a distinct policy platform. Edwards will.

Hotline On Call has a typically sharp analysis of how Edwards is going to change the dynamics of the race:

Wisdom before it’s conventional holds that Ex-Sen. John Edwards will suffer mightily in the ’08 Democratic nomination position jostle once Sen. Barack Obama declares and subsequently sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

Here’s how Edwards plans to parry: throw caution to the wind and repeatedly draw media-friendly contrasts.

That’s the thought behind his clever “McCain Doctrine” appellation, which refers to the AZ Sen’s support for a troop surge in Iraq. It’s a catch slogan, and one that his ’08 opponents wish they’d thought of. Think Edwards will abdicate the foreign policy discussion to others with, you know, more experience? Think again. Obama endorsed the Baker/Hamilton report. Edwards didn’t think the report went far enough.

Speaking of Obama, here’s what Edwards said in New Hampshire:

“Identifying the problem and talking about hope is waiting for tomorrow.”

Again, the contrast: Edwards is a doer, Obama is a dreamer. Think Edwards will be nice to his opponents? Think again.

Obama right now gets applause because of who he is. Edwards get applause for what he says.

The good news is that Edwards’ candidacy will force Obama and Clinton to be aggressive in developing their own policy platforms and messages. Winning the nomination on biography, as Kerry did in 2004, is not good for the party or the country.