Mitt Romney and Michael Nifong

Glenn and Helen have an interesting podcast up today with Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachussets who would like to be President.

While they ask some interesting questions, and he spins some even more astonishing answers, there is one big question they failed to mention.

As Dorothy Rabinowitz reminds us in today's WSJ the current scandal engulfing Duke University and the seeming witch hunt the local prosecutor and educational establishment has launched against three white males, isn't anything new.

In fact, we saw the blueprints for this travesty laid out in Mr. Romney's own statein the mid 80s as the nation was paralyzed by ever more fanciful - and fictional - child molestation cases emenating from the Massachusetts model.

While most of those accussed, thankfully, have been able to move on . . . the original target of the white male haters in Massachussets still labors under the crushing burden of a state system of justice gone bad.

Neither Mr. Seligman nor the other accused Duke students will ever have to contend with a punishment like the one meted out to Gerald Amirault, who was sentenced to a 30- to 40-year term for something that never happened--atrocious sex crimes that never took place, of which there was no physical evidence, or anything resembling a credible allegation. What did it matter that the child's testimony that resulted in Gerald's conviction had claimed rape with a large butcher's knife--one that had magically left not the slightest injury? The jury's most important duty was, the prosecutors informed them, to believe the children and show that they honored their testimony. The same young witness also testified that Gerald was accompanied by a green, silver and yellow robot, R2-D2, from "Star Wars."

What did it matter, either, that special judicial hearings about the Amiraults' prosecution had concluded that it was a travesty, that a tough panel of former prosecutors, the Governor's Board of Pardons, had virtually declared Gerald Amirault innocent and voted for commutation of his sentence--or that he was finally granted parole nearly three years ago, after nearly 18 years' imprisonment? He was almost immediately classified by Massachusetts's Sex Offenders Registry Board as a Level 3 offender. The kind, that is, deemed the most dangerous and most likely to re-offend. This bizarre classification, the board made clear, had to do with the number of counts of sex abuse charged to him--and the fact, too, that he continued to deny guilt. He now has to wear a large tracking device around his ankle, and obey a curfew confining him to the house from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day. He has, not surprisingly, been unable to find a job. He is sustained, as ever, by the unstinting devotion of his family, and he grieves now mainly for the loss of the chance he had dreamed of in prison--of earning a salary and finally lightening the burden his wife had carried, uncomplaining and alone, during his years in prison. (He has recently been advised of pending legislation that will require him to pay $10 a day for the global positioning tag on his leg, that tracks him.)

As another gubernatorial presidential hopeful, Haley Barbour, has before him now in the case of Corey Mayne, Mitt Romney had an opportunity to at least stop the continued oppression of Mr. Amirault (nothing in his power as Governor could ever restore the 20 years of freedom he lost to the oppression of Massachussets) and failed to do so.

In light of Helen's questions to him regarding discrimination against white men, and the public interest in both the Corey Mayne and Duke prosecution, it would have been nice if the Instapundit Family had put this so called Republican on the spot for his greatest failing as a human being.