DOROTHY ON COAKLEY – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  When I write "Dorothy," I'm referring to Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal, one of the great investigative journalists of our day.

Dorothy is great because, unlike some "investigative" reporters, she doesn't follow the latest trendy cause, do a day of investigation, and then wait for the awards.  She goes where the truth takes her, even in the face of overwhelming opposition.  In the 1980s, it was Dorothy Rabinowitz (and some other brave reporters) who started to question the crazed "child abuse" convictions sweeping the country, convictions often based on "evidence" that appeared highly questionable, at best.  Dorothy was warned by colleagues not to take on the cause.  It was unpopular.  It might put her on the side of "molesters."  It was a career ender.

Being Dorothy, she would not listen, and she pioneered the probes that led to many, many innocent people being released from prison.  The "evidence" used to convict the wrongly accused "abusers" in the 1980s is not accepted in any American courtroom today, in large measure because of the work of Dorothy Rabinowitz. 

Dorothy was proposed for the Pulitzer Prize five times.  She was rejected on the first four tries, as powerful forces attempted to deny her.  Some were militant feminists, angered because she's a conservative, and furious that she would question "research" methods that were also used at the time to advance radical feminist "scholarship."  The child-abuse industry also weighed in.

Finally, on the fifth try, there was a revolt on the Pulitzer board, its members disgusted by the injustice.  Dorothy finally won the prize. 

One of the outrages that Dorothy covered was the Amirault case in Massachusetts, and one of the prosecutors involved was Martha Coakley, then a district attorney.  Three members of a family operating a day-care center had been sent to prison on child-abuse charges despite a scandalous lack of any credible evidence.  In the face of overwhelming proof of innocence, and judges who eventually saw the truth and expressed their outrage, and a state parole board that joined in the anger, and a host of newspaper editorial boards, Martha Coakley did her best to keep the innocent father of the family in prison, doing her bit to protect other prosecutors and members of the Massachusetts legal establishment.  This is the way one advances to become attorney general of the state.  Her predecessor was also involved in the disgraceful prosecution. 

Dorothy Rabinowitz revisits the Amirault case in this piece for The Wall Street Journal.  Please read it.  If you plan to read only one article today, this should be it.  It is illuminating, and the work of one of the most skilled journalists around.  Dorothy makes this observation about Martha Coakley:

Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amirault's in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amirault's was "formidable" and that she was entirely convinced "those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants."

What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amirault's to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.

If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.

Read the whole thing.  Martha Coakley is a fraud.

January 15, 2010