what's not to like about Ward Churchill?

Ward Churchill has become a darling of the liberals in this country but how long will it last?

A little background. Churchill is a professor at the University of Colorado (CU). He became a darling of the liberal establishment by writing a piece accusing the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of somehow being at fault for their own fate and being the equivalent of Nazis. Even more endearing to liberals, Churchill has claimed himself to be an American Indian. But as more and more facts have come out, it is unclear how long Churchill can remain a favorite of any but the most extreme liberals.

Conservatives found Churchill's comments blaming the 9/11 victims for their own cowardly murders to be patently offensive. His claims that the victims were equivalent to Nazis was the kind of comment that could only appeal to liberals as far left as the moveon crowd, who, after all, had attempted to popularize comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. Churchill immediately became a wanted speaker on liberal campuses but, at the same time, conservatives were asking why someone like this should be drawing a paycheck from a taxpayer-funded organization and, even worse, beginning to look into some of Churchill's other activities.

First, Churchill critics found that Churchill was not an American Indian at all although he had apparently claimed so when he got his position at CU. It is hard to understand how someone could keep their job after misrepresenting their ethnicity to a liberal quota-encouraging institution like a university but I guess attacking the 9/11 victims has tended to immunize Churchill from the kinds of things that would happen to most other people (particularly conservatives).

Next, it was discovered that Churchill had copied a piece of copywrited artwork and sold prints of the pirated material. When caught, Churchill claimed that he had received approval from the artist he had copied who, fortunately for Churchill, is no longer alive to make any comments on the matter.

Now, however, Churchill had been found to have plagiarized another professor's work and has apparently also made threats to his victim. In this case, the victim of Churchill's plagiarism is still alive.

"The CU Board of Regents ordered the review [of Churchill's work] after the public outcry over an essay Churchill wrote comparing victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to notorious Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. Since then, Churchill has come under fire for some of his other writings and speeches, his scholarship, his claim of American Indian ancestry, and even his artwork."

So, will the review panel be willing to take tough action against Churchill or will this turn out to be more like a CBS-style review panel? Even liberals who still love Churchill despite his flaws shouldn't shed any tears for him since, even if he loses his job, he is likely to find employment in some George Soros-funded enterprise if not with Osama bin Laden himself.