Shirley Sherrod: Putting the Pig in 'Pigford"

What is more typical of the Democrats than going after widows and orphans of their opponents?

The Weapon of Unlimited Victimhood: Pigford and Shirley Sherrod’s Vengeance

Heads are still shaking about the unspeakable cruelty of Shirley Sherrod suing Susie Breitbart, a widow with four kids, as a substitute defendant for her late husband, because Sherrod blames Andrew Breitbart for her ouster from the Department of Agriculture.

Tom Vilsack demanded Sherrod’s resignation in July 2010 because Democrat political operatives at the White House panicked after Breitbart released the video of an NAACP audience’s enthusiastic approval of Sherrod’s story about how she denied assistance to a white farmer. The political panic occurred after that video got played in edited form on a Fox News broadcast, but Breitbart was not responsible for how Fox News depicted the story, nor was he responsible for Tom Vilsack acting as a political hatchet-man:

White House officials were in close contact with the Agriculture Department in the hours leading up to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s decision to fire USDA employee Shirley Sherrod in 2010, according to nearly 2,000 pages of internal emails released by the administration.

[T]he White House and Agriculture Department officials were sharing information and advice from the first minutes after the scandal began to emerge until Sherrod submitted a resignation hours later at the request of a senior USDA official.

And here’s the key fact:

Vilsack apologized and asked her to return to the department — an offer she declined. President Barack Obama also offered an apology after her ouster created a racial firestorm.

In other words, Vilsack and Obama admitted they wronged Sherrod.

Truth is the ultimate proof against slander under the United States legal system.  All Breitbart did was post an absolutely true, and despite what any liberal claims, unedited video of Shirley Sherrod admitting to denying a white farmer his civil rights because of his color.  She had the opportunity to get her job back.  Her reputation is gone beyond hope, and it's not Breitbart's widow's fault, it's Sherrod's own fault.

Instapundit provides this "Pigford" Round Up, the real scandal of Sherrod's tenure at Agriculture.

Megan McArdle: How a Discrimination Settlement Turned into a Bonanza for Fraudsters: Farm loans. Sympathetic administrations. And a judge who didn’t worry about false positives.

‘Breitbart is smiling’: NYT vindicates Andrew Breitbart with major story on Pigford scandal.

New York Times: Farm Loan Bias Claims, Often Unsupported, Cost U.S. Millions.

The Atlantic: A New York Times investigation into black farmers’ lawsuit and associated settlements vindicates conservative journalists’ concerns.