February 06, 2009 07:33 PM UTC

Owens: Thank God You Ignored Me

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Rocky Mountain News reports:

Former Gov. Bill Owens said in a deposition it’s a good thing the University of Colorado ignored him when he urged that professor Ward Churchill be fired over a controversial essay.

“I’m glad that the university, its counsel, and others who had a chance over a period of years to look at the law and look at the case didn’t follow my advice and, in fact, chose to ignore it,” Owens said in the deposition, taken one week ago today.

Had CU fired Churchill for the essay – as Owens wanted – the school would have violated Churchill’s free-speech rights, Owens said.

CU fired Churchill in 2007 because a faculty committee concluded he plagarized and lied about historical facts in his writings.

This isn’t meant to defend Ward Churchill, who is a plagiarizing, lying scumbag and had no business as faculty at Colorado’s flagship university. But it’s important to recognize that, whatever academic failings that occurred prior to Churchill becoming a national symbol of fraudulent nutjob academia, he was originally targeted by then-Governor Owens solely for his objectionable political speech.

They say “sometimes a witch-hunt actually finds a witch,” but not really as a compliment. Owens freely concedes (after consulting his attorney) that he called for violating somebody’s rights, and the only reason they weren’t violated is that his calls as Governor of the state for summary action against Churchill were ignored. In fact, it’s key to Owens’ legal defense against Churchill’s interminable civil rights lawsuits now.

How proud can you really be of that?