I Hope He Loses His Shirt

Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart over a video released by the conservative personality that lead to her ouster as an official at the USDA.

...The video first gained widespread public attention when it was posted on Breitbart's BigGovernment.com. The two-minute, 38-second clip was widely received as an admission by Sherrod, who is African American, that she had discriminated against a white farmer. Under immediate pressure from the Obama administration, Sherrod resigned from her position as the USDA's director of rural development in Georgia.

When a full 43-minute copy of the video surfaced, additional context turned the story into one of reconciliation. Sherrod had actually saved the man's farm and started a lifelong friendship.

Breitbart is going to attempt hiding behind the First Amendment, saying that he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech and, to reiterate, looks forward to exercising his full and broad discovery rights."
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think slander and libel are protected by the Constitution.

Let's not forget that the Obama administration and the NAACP were quick to judge Sherrod as well, their sole basis being the edited video on Breitbart's website. But if Breitbart were actually a journalist and looked deeper into the matter instead of a vainglorious nutbag, he wouldn't be claiming he was duped. He knew exactly was he was doing and didn't care about the consequences - the rubes only get to know the first half of any tainted story before pulling out their pitchforks and torches.

GOP Attorneys General File Suits Against Health Care Law

Breaking News from MSNBC: Thirteen Republican attorneys general are filing lawsuits against the individual mandate. This is going to get interesting.

The lawsuit — which names the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor — was filed immediately after the president's signing ceremony Tuesday. Attorneys general from Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado are joining in. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.

The issue at the heart of the lawsuit is the constitutionality of the so-called "individual mandate," which requires most Americans to have an insurance plan or else pay a federal penalty.

Where In the World Is Vicki Iseman?

Oh, there she is... and she's suing the New York Times for defamation.

A Washington lobbyist on Tuesday sued The New York Times for publishing an article that she says suggests she once had a romantic relationship with 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

The lawsuit, filed by lawyers for Vicki Iseman in a Richmond, Virginia, federal court, seeks $27 million in damages.

It claims that Iseman, a lobbyist at the firm Alcalde & Fay, was defamed by the Feb. 21 article and that she suffered damage to her reputation as well as to her emotional and mental health.

Okay, I have no problem with someone who believes they have been publicly defamed to sue. But what the fuck took so long? Why is this suit coming TEN MONTHS after the article? If I remember correctly, no one, NO ONE, could find this woman as she apparently went into hiding after the article was published. We couldn't even find a fucking current photo of her and still can't. All we got was this.

And now she's deciding to sue for $27 million?! I'm sorry, but if there was a time to do this, it was February 22, 2008 - the day after the article came out - a sign that she wasn't going to take this shit and was going to vigorously defend herself. Instead, she did her best impression of Greta Garbo*. If she had nothing to hide, why go into hiding? And I'm not going to accept the argument that it would have been a distraction from the presidential race. I'll dismiss that faster than you can say Rev. Wright. That's a bullshit excuse.

There ought to be a statute of limitations on stupidity.

* - Rumor has it that John McCain dated Greta Garbo in high school.