[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Exactly seven days ago I published here at Patterico’s Pontifications a piece outlining thirteen clear factual errors in Richard Stengel’s essay on the Constitution.  The next day, I published a substantially similar piece at Big Journalism, and by then the list of errors had grown to fourteen.

I said at the time that I considered it a journalistic scandal that such an error-ridden piece appeared in Time magazine, a once-respected publication.  I have dubbed this scandal “Stengel-gate.”  I also considered it scandalous because of who the author, Richard  Stengel, was:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

It has been seven days, and reportedly Patterico’s got six thousand hits in an hour, a week ago, very likely because of my original piece.  The story has even appeared on Fox News.  And yet there is apparently no correction, no retraction of the story, or even a defense of it.

So frankly in an effort to keep the heat on, I decided to explore the other end of the scandal: what on earth was he doing working at something called the National Constitution Center?  I plan to spend several days discussing that issue and to kick it off, I decided to write a letter to its current President and CEO, the man holding the position that Richard Stengel once occupied: David Eisner.

So tonight I have written to him directly.  You can see the letter I wrote below the fold (the format is slightly altered by wordpress itself).

I do not know if he will respond or how he will respond.  But whatever his reaction is, even a non-response, will reflect on him and his organization.  And that in and of itself is noteworthy.

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Okay, so Republicans are being told that we have to take Romney, even though he supported a law that looks an awful lot like Obamacare because 1) he would not be crazy enough to allow Obamacare to stand—he understands that Republicans are really opposed to it and 2) he is electable, especially because of his street cred on the economy.

So how is Romney doing on #2, in hammering Obama on the economy?

Well, this is what he said in mid June:

[Obama] didn’t create the recession, but he made it worse, and longer.

Sounds good so far and we agree.  And then he said this, when asked about that claim:

I didn’t say that things are worse, what I said was that the economy hasn’t turned around.

And now he has said this:

Speaking at the annual July Fourth parade here on Monday, Mr. Romney told a crowd of supporters and passersby, “the recession is deeper because of our president,” adding, “it’s seen an anemic recovery because of our president.”

Beats my head on the desk. Nice one Mitt.  You took a solid talking point on the economy, a winning case to be made, and you actually managed to flip flop on it, like a certain other Massachusetts politician.  And this is supposed to be the guy who is going to hammer Obama on his miserable economic performance?

He just defanged himself.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: By the way, you might enjoy Alexander Volokh’s irreverent piece on “n guilty men” exploring the principle that it is better to let 10/100/a billion guilty men go free, rather than convict one innocent.

I have followed this case with half an eye open.   It hasn’t “gripped” me as Cnn suggests it has others.  But I kept “half an eye” on it and the verdict is rolling in now.  Be prepared for updates, but what I am hearing is that the offenses related to the death of her child, Caylee, all resulted in acquittals, but she was convicted of offenses related to lying to the cops (which she obviously did).

Of course “not guilty” is not the same as innocent.  Our court system allows for many probably guilty people to go free, not the least of which was OJ Simpson, where the evidence that he murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman was sufficient for a civil suit, but not for a criminal trial.

I’m not saying that is the case, here.  I haven’t followed the trial enough to form but the barest opinion on her guilt and I won’t share my opinion because that is not fair to anyone involved to do so based on such thin reeds of information.  I just wanted to highlight that the jury’s determination is not a declaration that she is probably innocent.  It means nothing more than that the prosecution failed to prove she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Anyway, expect one update when the dust settles a bit.

And here’s a Fox breaking news link that will surely change as more becomes known.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: The NY Post claims that the charges are about to be dropped.  It wouldn’t surprise me given what I wrote below.

Last Friday, I was presented with a dilemma.  As evidence came out undermining the claim that Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who is a man) raped that maid in New York City, there was one thing that seemed to support her.  Via Hot Air:

[The accuser’s lawyer, Ken] Thompson claimed that there is substantial forensic and medical evidence that will be revealed in court. He said that Strauss-Kahn ripped the woman’s pantyhose, tore a ligament in her shoulder and grabbed her so hard that he caused visible bruising on her vagina. The woman said that Strauss-Kahn forced her to perform oral sex, after which Thompson said she crawled away from Strauss-Kahn, and as she was fleeing, she spit his semen on the floor and wall of the hotel suite. Thompson claimed that all of the details had been documented by crime scene investigators and would be revealed in the trial.

If the forensic evidence is as damning as Thompson claims, speculation about the case’s demise might be premature.

The problem?  Well go to Hot Air and look for yourself at the link they use for that.  It’s from Time magazine, a rag that has lost all semblance of credibility in my mind, not the least of which because it made mistakes that could have been fact-checked simply by reading the Constitution.  So over the weekend I attempted writing to her lawyer for verification and generally to get the accuser’s side of things, but he hasn’t responded and even if he was normally inclined to do so, well…  recent events might make him afraid to say anything on behalf of his client.  You see, over the weekend allegations came out that she was doing a little prostitution with hotel guests on the side, something that (allegedly) came out when New York prosecutors learned that she had accounts that she failed to disclose:

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Neal Rauhauser is now using Brett Kimberlin, Speedway Bomber, as a source to slander me.

If Neal Rauhauser wants to crawl into bed with a convicted bomber, that’s his choice.

P.S. They’re not really “new” friends. See: Indict Breitbart, etc.

P.P.S. He is accusing my wife of being involved in the online hoax, and asking people for a picture of her. And accusing me of being an online stalker!

When these people are doing something wrong themselves, it is their standard M.O. to accuse others of the same thing.

Speaking of which, he accuses someone else of being aware of “spoof cards” and using them to spoof numbers.

I am opening comments below.