Posted on 03/04/2010 2:45:18 PM PST by OldDeckHand
Everyone is wondering: Where did that erroneous rumor of an imminent retirement by Chief Justice John Roberts come from? The gossip spread like wildfire, triggering thousands of texts, blog posts, and emails — a few hundred of them to the ATL tips line — before Radar, which first published the rumor, retracted its report.
We were skeptical, which is one reason why we didn’t write about the gossip as quickly as some other outlets. We reached out to the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office after we heard the rumor, and we didn’t want to write about it until we heard back from the PIO (or at least gave them a little time to respond).
Of course, we have many Supreme Court sources other than the official ones — and they reacted with extreme skepticism when we ran the Radar report by them. One of our SCOTUS experts actually laughed out loud after we (sheepishly) asked, “Have you heard anything about a possible Roberts retirement?” This source noted that JGR would sooner die — literally — than give Obama the chance to appoint his successor.
Like many a promising legal career, the Roberts resignation rumor traces its origins to a 1L class at Georgetown University Law Center….
Here’s an account of what went down in Professor Peter Tague’s criminal law class this morning, from a 1L at Georgetown Law:
(Excerpt) Read more at abovethelaw.com ...
I did a keyword search on Roberts. It came up blank. Was the thread yanked?
Take off the tin foil hat. You’re not making sense.
Before the hippies, colleges were already infiltrated. Joe McCarthy was generally right.
So what if he did? Maybe the people in his classroom weren’t the only ones who had something to learn about informants.
It may backfire but , the prank worked here . The posting was fast and furious . Hook line and sinker .
Especially when you post them twice! ;)
Define trial balloon for (possibilities)
Back in the mid-1980s, a university near where I lived (NYC bedroom community) saw a similar situation.
Professor was teaching a media/mass-communication class and tasked his students with a group project to get local news outlets to run a story. What the story was, didn’t really matter.
A student team went out and formed a student group called “Students for Nuclear War Now”. Based on the premise that 40 years of unused nuclear weapons and technology represented a very poor ROI and imploring President Reagan to put them to good use against the godless Commies.
They somehow managed to get ~1500 names on their membership roll, making them the second largest student organization on campus after the Catholic Students Association. Then they decided to hold a rally, putting out press releases to just about all the news outlets in the tri-state area.
Result: they had not only the local and state media show up to cover their rally, they actually had news crews from the major NYC stations.
I suspected all along this was false because of who they chose to report. Had it been a more tenured justice, it would have been more believable but Roberts and Alito “just got there” in terms of arriving at the Court so they’d make the least sense in wanting to step down.
IOW, if you want to start a rumor that you don’t want seriously believed, you pick the unlikeliest of candidates for it to be true - like Phyllis Schafly coming out as a lesbian (note to any dimwits - that’s not true. I’m just making an absurd example) so it would set off the b.s. meter of most thinking people.
If the prof wanted to make the rumor believable, he’d have picked on Thomas or Scalia.
Good point!
Obama lies to us all every single day. I’m not going to get concerned with students actually learning a lesson in class as opposed to being further indoctrinated.
LOL! That’s been happening a lot lately. Sometimes triples. I vacuumed out the keyboard....
parsy
I didn’t have a heart attack but I felt heartbroken at the thought of losing that fine jurist.
I was heartsick for America.
Tomorrow’s class should be most interesting!
Huh?
;-)
Good man.
Nope- still there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2464096/posts
What a fascinating case study in sourcing stories- “who do you trust and why” should be a required paper for these law students.
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