Vince Carroll, pessimist

The Post's newest op-edist isn't sanguine about CU's chances in its defense against Ward Churchill's lawsuit:

If O.J. Simpson could find a sympathetic jury, who's to say Ward Churchill won't? All he did is murder scholarship, and in this day and age even some academics don't take that crime too seriously.

Why should we expect a random group of citizen jurors to care more about academic integrity?

Maybe my pessimism is misplaced. Maybe the University of Colorado will mount an eloquent case during the next three weeks in federal court. Maybe it will persuade the jury hearing Churchill's lawsuit to reject the professor's grotesque attempt to return to his job of inventing historical events and indoctrinating students.

But Churchill has slipped through legal nets before. He's been acquitted more than once, for example, of trying to disrupt Denver's Columbus Day parade even though he was clearly guilty of doing just that.

It's depressing enough that a fraud like Churchill has a chance of prevailing against the facts. Even more demoralizing is the evidence that many of his colleagues won't care if he does — or would actually applaud such an outcome. . . .

While another new Postie, the insufferable Mike Littwin, blames CU while giving the Warthog a pass:

Whatever you hear, the Churchill story is not about what the revisionists tell you it's about — that Churchill was deservedly fired for plagiarism and other acts of academic fraud. He may have been guilty of all those things. He may deserve to have been fired. He was certainly guilty of writing an essay that violated the first rule of essay-writing: Never compare anyone to a Nazi, even to a little Eichmann.

But however guilty Churchill may or may not have been, he was never as guilty as the University of Colorado. . . .

Update: Lance Hernandez live-blogged this morning's continued examination of Phil DiStefano. Bobblehead Bill Owens will likely take the stand this afternoon. The D-blog will be there with his unique blend of ignorance and stupidity.

Update II: It wasn't Lance Hernandez, but as JWP points out in comments, Steve Saunders, who's no Lance Hernandez. Then again, who is?