I like to think that I live freely in my writing, that I blog for me, that I try to put a little bit of myself into every post, that I enjoy sifting through straw looking for needles in haystacks, and that sometimes I just plain enjoy focusing on individual straws.
The New York Times reported the 2007 crowd at the University of Iowa grew silent as Biden gave his version of what happened that day.
"Let me tell you a little story," The newspaper quoted Biden as saying. "I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly -- and I never pursued it -- drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries."
Biden told a similar story when addressing an audience at the Bob Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit a tractor-trailer, hit my children and my wife and killed them," Biden said, according to a transcript archived on his Senate Web site.
Except there's a problem with that. Biden was lying. The case was thoroughly investigated, and it was determined that alcohol was not involved.
Alcohol didn't play a role in the 1972 crash, investigators found. But as recently as last week, the syndicated TV show Inside Edition aired a clip from 2001 of Biden describing the accident to an audience at the University of Delaware and saying the truck driver "stopped to drink instead of drive."
The senator's statements don't jibe with news and law enforcement reports from the time, which cleared driver Curtis C. Dunn, who died in 1999, of wrongdoing.
"To see it coming from [Biden's] mouth, I just burst into tears," Dunn's daughter, Glasgow resident Pamela Hamill, 44, said Wednesday. "My dad was always there for us. Now we feel like we should be there for him because he's not here to defend himself."
Biden spokesman David Wade said Wednesday that the senator "fully accepts the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."
It's unclear who first suggested alcohol was a factor in the crash, but since Barack Obama tapped Biden to be his running mate on Aug. 23, The New York Times, National Public Radio and The Economist have run stories that characterized Dunn as a drunken driver.
"The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver, is incorrect," said Jerome O. Herlihy, a Delaware Superior Court judge who was chief deputy attorney general and worked with crash investigators in 1972.
"If it were some part of a cause of the accident, there would have been a charge, simply because if you're driving under the influence and kill someone in the process -- whether it's the wife of a U.S. senator or anybody else -- there's going to be a charge," he said.
Herlihy said investigators discussed several possible causes for the crash, including that Biden's first wife, Neilia, turned her head and didn't see the oncoming truck as she exited the intersection of Limestone and Valley roads on Dec. 18, 1972.
I'd say shame on Joe Biden, except the man is shameless. This champion of the working man waited until the truck driver died (in 1999) to begin his self-promoting smear campaign. I'd call Biden's lies a "slander campaign" except that legally, it is impossible to slander a dead man. (Something Biden, a lawyer, surely knows.)
While there's nothing illegal about it, I have to say, it's about the most despicable thing I have read about any candidate doing in this campaign.
But it's just another news item among the millions floating around online, and it will probably never be widely reported. Certainly, it's not the sort of thing ordinary voters will ever hear about. So the fact that the guy who wants to be Vice President smeared a dead truck driver is just one straw in the haystack.
For me it's the last.
I don't need to know any more about Biden.
posted by Eric on 10.05.08 at 09:45 PM
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Comments
Unbelievable. Why is it that so many liberals are just such pathological liars?! Michael Savage is right. "Liberalism is a mental disorder". Or maybe the reverse is true... one has to be deranged to become a liberal.
Sillie Lizzie · October 5, 2008 10:50 PM
Joe Biden has just managed to out-scum John Edwards in whoring out personal, family tragedy for political gain. At least Edwards never defamed another person in attempting to benefit politically from his wife's cancer, and his dead son (remember Shrum's story about clutching his dead son's body.) But some limbo bars are set so low that even the Breck Girl himself cannot get underneath.
Enter Joe Biden. And here I labored under the misapprehension that Mr. Edwards was the gold standard in prostituting family tragedy.
Rhodium Heart · October 6, 2008 12:13 AM
This is sickening. Do you not know that Dunn lived his life wondering whether something he did or didn't do, no matter how small, might have contributed to that accident?
It comes as no surprise to me that Biden would, at the very least, exaggerate the circumstances. Why am I surprised that he makes this stuff up? It's about honoring or dishonoring his late wife and daughters, that's why. I didn't think he'd stoop this low.
In his defense, I wonder if making stuff up is his mechanism to cope with tragedy. That's not excusing it, but looking for an explanation. The story has to be better than it really was, else he really is just a common man, somewhat lesser than the common man he pretends to be.
No matter, his pathologies are ill-suited to any leadership position.
I'm still waiting for the talking heads to question Biden's committment to his family for staying in politics instead of devoting himself full time to raising his sons.
After all, isn't Palin a bad mother for entering politics and not staying with her family?
Steve Skubinna · October 6, 2008 04:47 AM
Slander isn't illegal?
Brett · October 6, 2008 08:16 AM
My son offered the following after the last debate: When Biden says "let me tell you..." he's lying. This episode would seem to be another confirmation of that theory.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Unbelievable. Why is it that so many liberals are just such pathological liars?! Michael Savage is right. "Liberalism is a mental disorder". Or maybe the reverse is true... one has to be deranged to become a liberal.