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April 11, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - April 11

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE NIFONG, DURHAM CO. DISTRICT ATTORNEY: A lot has been said in the press, particularly by some attorneys yesterday, about this case should go away. I hope that you will understand by the fact that I am here this morning that my presence here means that this case is not going away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIT HUME, HOST: That is Mike Nifong. He is the prosecutor in the community that surrounds Duke University and he was telling an audience at the very college where the alleged rape victim attends school that the case is not going away despite the fact that the DNA evidence proved negative for all of the members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

So the question is -- what's going on here? Some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor for "The Weekly Standard," Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent for the "Washington Examiner" and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent at National Public Radio, Fox news contributors all. Already in this case the Duke University lacrosse team season, the remainder of its season has been canceled in a year when they thought at long last that they might really be the big national power that could win the national championship. The coach of the team has lost his job and these students have obviously been placed for the time being anyway under -- that is the coach there, Mike Pressler, ex- coach, under a considerable cloud that may last for a while. Is it possible or is it fair to say that a major miscarriage of justice could already have occurred here, Mara?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, I don't think -- first of all, nobody's been charged yet. Something perhaps has been miscarried. I don't know if it's justice, because this case hasn't been adjudicated, but the administration at Duke clearly made some judgments right away and took some punitive actions before we know exactly what happened, before anybody's been charged.

HUME: And before it had been established that really -- we do know a party occurred and we do know they had strippers and we heard, guessed (ph) that these college lacrosse players were drinking beer.

LIASSON: Unless that is what they are being punished for, that is what we know now.

HUME: And why would that -- has anybody - has it been made clear whether the lacrosse coach would be responsible in some way for that kind of.

LIASSON: It's possible that the university, the coaches are responsible for their players' actions. I don't know that. We do know that this has become a racially charged incident in that community.

BILL SAMMON, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: It's starting to remind me of the Tawanda Brawley case from 1987 when a 15-year-old girl claimed that she had been raped by a bunch of people, including a cop, a white cop, turned out to have been all made up.

HUME: This was up in New York State?

SAMMON: Al Sharpton came to prominence by exploiting this case and later had to pay defamation damages, along with two other guys, to a prosecutor that they had called a racist during this controversy. This is starting --

LIASSON: What political figures have started to exploit this?

Well, I mean - not in the sense that a political figure has started to exploit it that.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: I have an answer to that. Let me answer that. Did you see the prosecutor? For heaven's sake -- wait a minute, Mara. Here's a prosecutor not -- who is still investigating the case and he's out talking about it and using it in his behalf at political events. That's who's using it. I have never seen anything like that before in my life, a prosecutor talking about this. He's had dozens of interviews and using this at campaign events. He talked about it in campaign forums. I think on the basis of that alone, the case should be thrown out. It's clear now that look, clearly these Duke lacrosse players put themselves in a harmful situation but now with the DNA -

HUME: How so?

BARNES: A stripper at a beer party and you have a stripper there and so on that can lead to trouble

HUME: Stripper or two.

BARNES: Stripper or two, not an exotic dancer. These were strippers.

LIASSON: I don't want to hear about the difference.

HUME: This is a stripper with a criminal record.

BARNES: I don't think (INAUDIBLE) But without the DNA evidence proving that, not necessarily proving anything, but not the way a prosecutor would need to prosecute this case, the prosecutor has to know he has frankly no chance of winning this case if he does charges these Duke players. If he goes ahead with it, we will know why.

SAMMON: There's a lot of people in the community, the professors, some of the students, seem crestfallen that the DNA evidence has proven negative because they were already off to the races on investigations into lacrosse culture and sexism and racism and the athlete culture on campus and how athletes always get their way. And you have to understand that Duke is a notoriously politically correct university, like a lot of elite universities and this kind of stuff runs rampant. So I'm wondering now that it looks like the case is falling apart, will the Duke University president apologize to the team for canceling their season, rehire the coach? Will charges of perjury be brought against this woman if indeed it proves that she was making up a story to accuse innocent people of something they didn't do? I doubt it. I don't think we should hold our breath in a place like Duke University for that kind of action to actually happen.

BARNES: You know, Brit, they have fired coaches before. Think of the case at the University of Maryland when Lefty Driesell, the basketball coach, lost his job after his star player, who already finished playing basketball at Maryland, Len Bias, died of a cocaine overdose. So the coaches do, whether they fairly bear responsibility or not, they often get blamed for scapegoating.

HUME: Does this say anything the system which has prosecuting officers and for that matter judges, elected rather than appointed and without lifetime tenure or at least tenure through the pleasure of a governor or, in the case of a Federal officer?

BARNES: I don't think so because all this prosecutor has to say is, I'm sorry, this case is under investigation by my office and I can't talk about it. That's all he has to say.

SAMMON: I think it says more about the abandonment of common sense. Again, a stripper with a criminal record of assaulting a cop and larceny, charges - makes a sensational charge and before any of it can be proven or disproven, the Duke University president suspending the lacrosse team.

LIASSON: Maybe he suspended them for having a stripper. We do not know anything about the internal code that those coaches are supposed to live by. I would be very careful before we extrapolate huge political significance from this incident, which is unfortunate and racially charged.

SAMMON: The political significance, I'm talking about the lack of common sense.

HUME: Are you saying politics is not in play here?

LIASSON: No. What I'm saying is that we haven't heard yet from the Duke University administration to explain why it did what it did. Did it take the punitive actions merely because there was a stripper at a party or because they jumped to some conclusions that so far haven't been proved? We don't know that.

HUME: Well, there you are, president of Duke. Mara Liasson has questions. You owe her and others some answers. And when we come back with the panel, French youth are still protesting in the streets, despite their victory over an employment law they didn't like. So what is going on here?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALICE MARTIN, PROTESTER: We are in a country where there's 10 percent of unemployment. That measure economically is not going to produce any employment. Because if you don't know if you're going to have the job the next day, you're not going to spend money and produce money in an economy. So how is that going to produce more employment? I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And many, many thousands of French young people -- not that she was. She sounded British to me but she was there. So let's listen to her - didn't agree with her that this was a bad idea, this idea that the first two years of your employment until you're 26 years of age in France, you would not have the guaranteed job security that older French workers have and the idea was strongly promoted by the Chirac-de Villepin government and is now, they have now backed away and said OK, we will chance this law. We'll get rid of it. You win, protesters. Where does this leave France? Where does this leave Europe, Europe's economy? What is going on here?

LIASSON: It leaves France with the problem intact and unsolved. I mean after the riots of another sort in France, I guess it was last year, this was seen as a way to, believe it or not, bring more Muslim youth into the labor market. There's tremendous unemployment among young people in France.

HUME: It's about 10 percent national and about 20 percent --

LIASSON: Twenty or 25 percent among people under 25.

HUME: Why would taking away their job security - I know the answer I know you do -- why would that help to create more jobs?

LIASSON: The theory is that you can hire people who can do the job and you do not have to - and if they don't work out as an employer, you are assured that you can get somebody who can. You don't have to be stuck with them.

HUME: And because people are stuck -- employers are stuck with people, they're hesitating to hire them at all?

LIASSON: Yes and look, this is -- these are countries that enjoyed very comfortable social welfare systems which have become unsustainable. They have very rigid labor markets. The rules are very constricting and they have yet to be able to find a way to summon the political will to solve these problems and they're only going to get worse. The United States has its own version of that with the retirement problems and what to do about Medicare and Social Security. But in Europe, it's employment and they tried and they backed away.

SAMMON: It shows that Chirac and de Villepin are not in charge. The students and the labor unions are. This is a bad blow to the Chirac-de Villepin government and it comes a year after another bad blow, which is when they couldn't convince voters to ratify the EU constitution. This is an inauspicious ending to Chirac's presidency, which is supposed to end next year. And it also does not bode well for de Villepin's prospects to succeed Chirac even though he claims he never really wanted to succeed him but Chirac was grooming him to succeed him and now this - and de Villepin had really staked his political future on making sure this law stuck and instead he had to eat it and take it back. It was a tremendous humiliation.

HUME: It was.

BARNES: And it's clear France is in decline.

HUME: Why are you smiling?

BARNES: At de Villepin? The guy that traveled all around the world to thwart the U.S., to get U.N. support going into Iraq, didn't just oppose but went to Angola and campaigned against the U.S. He deserves a kick in the pants and more and he should have got it.

HUME: That had nothing to do with this.

BARNES: They got Al Capone for income tax evasion, remember that?

HUME: So (INAUDIBLE) de Villepin for something else but as a conservative and someone who supports the Bush Iraq policy, you will take it.

BARNES: I'll take it. France is in decline, clearly. They have a very aging society. They have a stagnant economy. They have huge unemployment and that's not going to change at all after this. They like to attack America as cowboy capitalism. That's what we have here. But it's also entrepreneurial capitalism. Can you imagine these young people out there. Look, to have an economy boom, you needn't entrepreneurs. These young people in France, all they want are cushy jobs which they cannot be canned. I don't think that bodes well for the future of that country.

SAMMON: In addition, to make matters worse, in addition to canceling this law, which would have helped modernize their labor force, they are now going to institute these additional government subsidized jobs that's for young people who don't have any skills or any qualifications to the tune of about $1 million a day. So in other words, they not -- didn't just cancel a good law. They are now making more bad law.

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