Churchill case heats up

RMN:

Ward Churchill and Bill Owens have frosty encounter

Former Gov. Bill Owens on Friday compared onetime CU professor Ward Churchill to a famous movie maker — and it wasn't a compliment.

"In retirement, he's starting to look a lot like Michael Moore," Owens said of the overweight and frumpy director of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

A fat joke? Real mature, Bill (he said as if he'd never pointed out what a bloated sheep's bladder Chutch is).

Churchill, fired by CU in 2007, is suing to get his job back.

Owens and others, including University of Colorado regents, are being deposed as part of the trial, scheduled to start March 9 in Denver District Court.

Being? Seems awful late in the game.

Owens declined to discuss in detail what kinds of questions he was asked and what answers he gave, but Owens wasn't shy about expressing his opinion of Churchill.

"Ward Churchill is a plagiarist and a fraud and, regrettably, we continue to pay for his deception."

My share: .0008 cents per year. I protest!

The deposition took place in the office of Churchill's attorney, David Lane. Owens, who left office in January 2007 and now is a businessman, was represented by the attorney general's office.

For his part Friday, Churchill refused to shake Owens' hand.

He never should have offered. Politicians want everyone (even people who would gladly kill them if they could get away with it) to like them.

So Owens took a verbal jab: "I said, 'Come on, you're a big guy.'"

Zing!

Lane said later: "I hope the governor's feelings weren't too hurt."

Churchill and Lane claimed the firing was in retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to free speech. . . .

"I very directly told David Lane that I also had a First Amendment right to speak on the subject, and I reflected what a vast majority of Coloradans were saying," Owens said.

"Unfortunately for David Lane, his client had a clear pattern of lying for virtually his entire academic career. That's why he was fired.

"I believe the jury will reject Churchill's (claims.)"

From your lips, etc., Billy.

Lane thinks his client will win, but if he loses, Lane said, at least Churchill will have been judged impartially.

"This is the first fair forum that we will have appeared before. Everything else has been stacked by CU," Lane said. "Bill Owens has been a staunch opponent of Ward Churchill forever, and I'm looking forward to a jury of citizens (reviewing the case.)" . . .

Can't wait to see what he'll say when the jury rejects Churchill's lies.

Update: Notice how reporter Lynn Bartels gets the comparison backwards in the second graf? Careless. Should be, "referring to the overweight . . ." and etc.

Update II: They fixed it. One other thing I just noticed: yesterday there were over a hundred comments on the thread of the story. Now there's only 48. Snapple, what did you do?