Topic category:  Other/General

Reaction to my lengthy review of Until Proven Innocent has been particularly heavy, positive and noteworthy.

Hero of the Hoax Bill Anderson:

"Wow! Now THAT is a review!

"I am surprised they left out La Shawn [Barber], since K.C. linked her.

"Indeed, conservatives and libertarians were much more quick to jump on the 'this case is ridiculous' POV than were the leftists, and the socialists still insist there was a rape....

"...my guess is that this book will do well, and I am glad both of us are mentioned. I have not read it as of yet, but I hope to be receiving my copy soon. I'll be reviewing it for LRC.

"Anyway, great work!!"

That's a keeper, but the best response came from LieStoppers' Baldo:

"Just wanted to say hello.

"your article about this being a democratic scandal is something which I think is very true...."

Baldo then helpfully pointed me toward this material in a LieStoppers post that he had collected:

"Durham and Duke’s Activist Community

"With the proximity of the many universities in the Triangle area, Durham has become a center for activism. From protesting about the war in Iraq, women’s issues, racial diversity, environmental concerns, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Progressive Alliance Movement has become a force in local politics.

"In the center of much of this activism is the Indy Weekly, an alternative newspaper, which associates itself with progressive causes in NC. Local activists use their list-servers and e-mail accounts to communicate back and forth regarding issues and upcoming protests. Indy staff members & Duke employees would later forward e-mails from the local activists into the Trinity Park Association List-server where sympathetic residents would post them.

"On March 7th, some in Duke's professorial community were outraged at the prospect of a lecture given by David Horowitz: author, conservative TV guest, and publisher of FrontPage Magazine. Most recently he had been promoting his book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. One of the professors mentioned in that book was a Duke 88 co-signer, Miriam Cooke. Mr. Horowitz was warning about the growing campus culture of professors who promote agendas, and indoctrinate their students in fields of study that don’t stand up to scholarly standards. It was a packed lecture hall where Mr. Horowitz spoke.

"In that audience was another Duke 88 co-signer, Professor Diane Nelson whose idea of a protest against Mr. Horowitz’s demanding higher standards for the professors, was to encourage students to strip to their waists. Fortunately the protest never came off as the tops stayed on.

"On that same night, March 7, there was a Hip Hop Forum called 'Mic Check: The Hip Hop Generation Has Something to Say' held in Von Canon C at Duke. Manju Rajendran served on a panel that also included Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal (Duke 88) and Clyde Williams, former adviser to President Clinton, and the chief domestic policy adviser in the Clinton Foundation.

"'Manju Rajendran is a 25-year old artist, activist, and biologist. She is on the Future 5000 team of the League of Young Voters, which means she is part of creating an incredible online directory of dope progressive youth organizations across the country. She has worked with Hip Hop Against Racist War, NC Lambda Youth Network, Youth Voice Radio, Movement Rising, National Child Rights Alliance, and more.' CampusProgress.Org: Speakers

"Campus Progress is the college outreach organization under the Center for American Progress, which is headed by President Clinton’s former Chief of Staff John Podesta. Manju is on a Speaker’s Bureau list of over 160 members that includes the likes of Duke 88 Professor Neal, Rev. Sharpton, and former President Bill Clinton.

"Manju Rajendran is a skilled organizer from UNC with a proven track history of projects ranging from the anti-war movement to her 'Hip Hop Against the Racist War' group, which she co-founded. Currently she is in South Carolina as the Communication Director for South Carolina Equality Coalition opposing the Constitutional amendment to make same sex marriages illegal.

"Rann Bar-on is another Duke activist well known to President Brodhead. A Duke Graduate Student in Mathematics, Rann co-organized Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference at Duke, much to the angst of Alumni and Jewish groups. From being shot by a rubber bullet in a protest against the Israelis in the West Bank, being arrested in an anti-war protest in Fayetteville, to his hobby of taking photos, Rann seems to be always where the protests are. He was there that day at 610 protesting.

"The intervention of experienced protesters was about to explode these allegations not only in the community, but across the nation."

Some fair-minded liberals also came to the defense of the players, but the folks who were out to scapegoat, frame and destroy were Democrats, not Republicans, and on the Left, not the Right.

Baldo: "I stayed away from the political aspects in my writing and concentrated on the mechanics of how the PD, press, & activists & moved this story. I have often thought somewhere in this story is a cover-up of a local democratic scandal...."

Those LieStopper instincts have been vindicated!

The Duke case obviously is a Democrat scandal. Mr. Nifong is a Democrat appointed by a Democrat who was running behind in a Democrat primary in a heavily Democrat county when he decided to manipulate black Democrats to keep his job and maximize his pension.

Naturally, Democrats are out to limit the damage and afraid of an impartial investigation involving the police, the prosecution and even the judiciary that would divide the Democrat base and be politically devastating for Democrats.

The LieStoppers homepage has a clock counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds that it has taken Democrat North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to start a criminal investigation of the Duke case. The clock has not stopped. Mr. Nifong's interim replacement waited until after Mr. Nifong's criminal contempt conviction to ask state officials to determine whether current or former government officials should face criminal prosecution over their handling of the Duke lacrosse case and it is not clear that any of them will. Mr. Nifong, perhaps, but not all his knowing enablers.

Remember: Roy Cooper gave a pass to false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum (and quickly received the support of former state Democrat Party chairman Wade Smith).

Remember: Democrat Governor Michael Easley, who foolishly appointed Mr. Nifong, kept it secret until long after Election Day 2006 that Mr. Nifong had lied to him about not running for election.

Remember: the vilified Hero of the Hoax Ryan McFadyen recently reported in an open letter to Hero of the Hoax Bill Anderson that "the police used a bogus conspiracy to commit murder charge and elementary scare tactics while searching my dorm room and car in an attempt to get me to say anything to incriminate my teammates. At one point a short, balding officer even put me on the phone with Sergeant Gottleib, who threatened me saying physical force would be used to gain entry to my car if I didn’t help the officers find it. (I had at this point still not seen a search warrant.)"

Baldo:

"I studied the Indyweekly Listserver, Trinity Park Listserver & Durham Access Listserver for months trying to make connections. The Indyweekly posted the photos in their listserver. They were taken by Rann Bar on. He was the one who took all the photos at 610 we put up on the Blog. He had Indyweekly press credentials and is quite the activist and Anti Israeli, even though he is Jewish. He was very active on campus and is a grad student in Mathematics. Brodhead knew exactly who he was as he had already faced off against him over a Palestinian Conference and caved in. The Indyweekly was really the home of the activists and Socialism is their moderate philosophy.

"The connection to the core faculty at the Hope Franklin Center is pretty obvious. Professors Neal, Lubiano, and the rest of the Marxists that infect Trinity College were pushing their graduate students to talk with the Press with anecdotal stories of racism. It is shocking indeed just how far left the Humanities programs at Duke have gone. Brodhead knew full well the Duke contingent of this Hoax.

"What also bothers me is the press and their acting as a conduit of false information from Nifong, the PD, and the Duke 88.

"I can't help but think Stephens was too helpful in the framing these guys. The release of the McFadyen search warrant prejudiced the case. There was no need to do that.

"I just have a suspicion there is an unspoken political solution that pins it all on Nifong and I don't think he was alone by any means. Why the AG did not start a criminal investigation into the Hoax makes no sense.

"Smith let Nifong slime Evans on the stand. The prosecutors against Nifong were weak. They really didn't know the case as well as they should. They were chosen by Smith. One day sentence was an insult to Justice.

"I read the statutes regarding the Grand Jury in NC and can't believe they did nothing this past legislative year to at least demand a transcript of witness testimony. It just seems to be a very corrupt system.

"I have as many questions as answers."

That's Dem politics in North Carolina, Baldo.

LieStoppers received a succinct, by superb and deserved, tribute from Stuart Taylor for "an amazing performance of journalism on the fly."

What especially impressed Mr. Taylor was the way LieStoppers battled The New York Times and won.

A LieStoppers favorite of Baldo celebrates that:

"KC Johnson has a post regarding the one-year anniversary of Duff Wilson’s much maligned NY Times article in which Sgt. Mark Gottlieb’s immaculately concepted 'Magic Notes' first appeared. He also gave us a nice pat on the back for our rapid response to it, which was called Enough from Duff. We wish to thank him for remembering. We urge you all to read his Duff's Anniversary post.

"We thought we would give you just a little insight into our response to that article. One of our members saw the Drudge Report byline that a NY Times article regarding the Duke Lacrosse Case was developing. We looked upon that news with trepidation, since the NY Times had previously gotten little if anything right about the case. In fact, as their reporting from the start had been misleading, error ridden, and inflammatory, we fully expected a hit piece.

"We went on alert, notifying each other to be ready. When the article finally hit the web, we poured over it. Incredulity soon turned to outrage, as the LieStoppers Team saw the astonishing number of misstatements and falsehoods littering Wilson’s article. Coincidentally, all the 'mistakes' were to the benefit of now disbarred, former DA Mike Nifong and the Police investigation. [Note: That was men meant facetiously, right?"]

"What Wilson and his editors at the NY Times did not understand was that we and other bloggers had been pouring over this case for over five months, reading everything that Nifong and the press were saying from the very start. One of our members was going to the courthouse and copying the case file. We read the file documents which were not sealed. Our members constantly debated the issues privately and posted on CTV and other message boards discussing the case. And we followed closely the daily posting of Professor KC Johnson in his blog - Durham-in-Wonderland. We've greatly respected and admired KC's work in leading the blog hooligans' dissection of this malicious Hoax.

"We also were developing our own team on the ground, so to speak. Yeah, we were amateurs, but we were honestly seeking the truth, not willing to watch from the sidelines and ignorantly accept the dubious, disintegrating narrative that was being pushed by the 'professional' press.

"From across three time zones, we went to work that night. It was really a group effort from NYC, DC, NC, Ohio, and California. One member in particular was responsible for the basic article with a lot of input from our editor, proof readers, and researchers. I cannot reveal his name because we took a pledge of solidarity and agreed our work would always remain a joint effort. But when the rest of us were temporarily stymied about where to begin our response, due to the sheer enormity of the inaccuracies and outright lies in Wilson's piece, this brilliant young man presented the group a rough draft which closely mirrored the final response which soon appeared to much praise.

"He knows who he is. That night we fought the NY Times, and we won!

"PS: It was also the night Baldo was created."

More important to the likes of LieStoppers that even Stuart Taylor's high praise was the appreciation of victim parents, illustrated by this poignant post:

"As parents we read the NYT article with jaws dropped. How could the article get so much wrong when the truth was there IF you wanted to see it.

"LieStoppers quick rebuttal, exposing the outright lies in the article, helped keep us somewhat sane during a completely insane time.

"Thank you Liestoppers...Thank you!!!"

Baldo also explained to me, in general terms, how LieStoppers came to be:

"At the start we as a group made a pledge to keep who we were a secret unless we all agreed to come out. It is no big deal. Some of our members were from Durham and there was a time that speaking out in Durham just wasn't acceptable. We are citizens that came together in cyberspace.. Each of us has unique abilities. Some don't ever want their names revealed. We never did this for the money or fame. It was & is for the Guys.

"We were mainly posters who met on Court TV Boards very early and got thoroughly disgusted with what Nifong was doing. LieStoppers was born out of a desire to stop the Lies. We read everything we could. Meadow created meadow's quotes where we used Nifong's words against him. One of our members had an ability to recall and find anything about the case and present it.

"Joan is a pen name. The real Joan Foster is a wonderful human being. I can't say enough good about her. Some of our members were Duke Graduates and cared deeply about their University which they so loved. It troubled them that this great memory of their college years was being destroyed as Brodhead and Burness mishandled the affair.

"Out of LieStoppers came the effort to Recall Nifong. Beth Brewer took on Nifong when the community was cowering. It was a very courageous action. We were a pain in his ass. I take great pride in that.

"Someday I hope to tell our story. It is really amazing and very funny at times."

Long ago I urged Phillip Wood, the LieStoppers spokesperson, to ask the members to go public: "It's the right endorsement, of course [LieStoppers' endorsement of Lewis Cheek], but it would be more effective if LieStoppers was not an anonymous group with people from five states."

Mr. Wood concurred: "You are correct in suggesting that the effectiveness of our endorsement will pale in comparison to similar words being issued by either a completely local publication, a more established entity or a tangible identity."

But apparently for similar reasons that some great people down there in NC who were a great help to me in writing about the Duke case do not want publicity, identification of all the LieStoppers has yet to be.

Notwithstanding, LieStoppers prevailed in its main mission, as its one-year anniversary post on July 28, 2007 celebrated:

"Today marks the one-year anniversary of LieStoppers. It is fitting that on Thursday of this week we witnessed the disgraced, disbarred, and former DA Nifong issue an apology to Reade, Collin, and Dave along with his statement that they were totally innocent. LieStoppers was started by a group of posters on Court TV, who seeing the injustice that DA Nifong was planning, became determined to do something about it. We formed a group and began recruiting members for our efforts. Our first post was the wanted poster.

"Our early works were satirical and aimed at the power structure in Durham. We quickly followed the wanted poster with a parody of the Duke 88 'We're listening ad.'

"Along the way we pick up some stellar members and thus began our journey to stop the lies that were being spread. Our goal has always been the search for the truth and the exposing of lies. It was a group effort and we spent thousands of hours scouring newspaper articles, watching the TV Pundits, and doing our own independent research. We read NC Statutes, court decisions, and learned how DA Nifong and the Durham PD were abusing the system. Individually we all played a role in creating LieStoppers. Some of us acted as editor, writers, proofreaders, cartoonist, researchers, and as moderators in the LieStoppers Forum we formed. In total we created 976 posts in one year. We posted the 'castrate' photo and detailed how activists move the local story to a national frenzy. My fellow Liestoppers were tireless workers. Always it was a joint effort with egos left at the door. It was always about the guys and their Moms.

"We created the LieStoppers Forum and enlisted the help of the Blog Hooligans. A finer bunch of Hooligans you couldn't find anywhere. We joined in the effort along with the work of other fine bloggers and columnists like the incredible KC, John In Carolina , Bill Anderson, Michael Gaynor, Right Angles, Johnsville News, Crystal Mess, Jason Trumpbour of FODU, and others. Technical experts on the Forum, like Kethra & Kathleen, dissected the forensic lies in this case. Many of our LS Forum members were attorneys, retired police officers, nurses, college professors, housewives, and from every walk of life. We have close to 1000 registered members and they all brought their common sense & wisdom to the forum. They inspired many of our posts.

"From LieStoppers came the effort to recall DA Nifong, which was led by our incredible Beth Brewer. If ever there was a heroine it was this woman, who with no political experience decided someone had to stand up to him and removed him from office. She fought him to the very end with her §7A-66affidavit and indeed saw him resign from office when the end became apparent.

"We were led by our editor, Philip Wood, who demanded we fact check and wrote many of our best articles including Occam's Razor I & II.

"In many ways our original goal was completed Thursday. The Families won. We all won. The truth won and the lies lost. We will continue to report on this case and follow the wheels of Justice as it slowly moves through Durham. We will continue to fight for Lady Liberty.

"It is summertime and frankly the crew of LieStoppers are going on a reduced schedule. The guys are declared innocent and it's time for us to get on with our lives. Don't worry we are not going away. We will continue to push, probe, make jokes, and report what we see! We will demand the Durham City Panel do a thorough investigation and those than need a criminal investigation will be pursued.

"We wish to say to Reade, Collin, and Dave go live your life. Go work, study, have fun, walk on beaches, go to a ball game, and love your families and friends. You deserve it."

They do!

But the people of America in general and North Carolina in particular need to learn the whole ugly truth, to punish the guilty and to establish a just government of, by and for the people, as the Framers intended.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.