Law Prof Pleads Ignorance of Law & Facts -- About Herself!

According to reporter Mary Carmichael of the Boston Globe . . . that's right, the Boston Globe, the current leading Democrat Party US Senate candidate for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Harvard Law School Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, is sticking with her story that she was simply

"not aware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago."

Thus, Ms. Warren doggedly persists in making that claim of ignorance of federally-mandated diversity claims made about her, in spite of the fact that,

"for at least six straight years during Warren's tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves."

Could this possibly be the sole instance, in the long and storied parade of Harvard University legal academics, of a professor openly pleading ignorance of both the law and of the facts . . . especially when ipso facto it is given that both quite recently applied to her status, and her status alone -- at Harvard?!!

Not only was the University reporting this claim about Professor Warren in their federal diversity filings, but there were apparently cooperative efforts by the University to promote that claim in other venues, and even an intra-school effort to actively promote her "minority status" including in an article in at least one Harvard law school journal, thereby demonstrating that Harvard was quite openly touting the fact the University had a "woman of color" serving on the law school faculty.

Amazingly, we are now also asked to believe that Professor Warren somehow missed all of that as well?

As has been widely reported, recent detailed examinations have thoroughly undermined her various claims, including earlier reporting citing New England genealogists who had been initially contacted by news outlets regarding her ongoing personally promoted claims of Cherokee lineage.  Those initial contacts had led to some erroneous reporting about her claimed lineage-- most notably in a story that appeared in the Boston Globe.  It is now undisputed among various news accounts that there is simply no factual basis whatsoever to support her continuing "family lore" based assertions of such lineage.

So, in response to persistent media questions by reporters asking her on what basis she now personally relies in continuing to claim that she has Cherokee lineage, Warren has been reduced to saying that the reason she knows it is true is because her mother told her so! More detail on that angle here.

Today's Boston Globe story goes on to point out, however, that,

"both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet.

The documents suggest for the first time that either Warren or a Harvard administrator classified her repeatedly as Native American in papers prepared for the government in a way that apparently did not adhere to federal diversity guidelines. They raise further questions about Warren’s statements that she was unaware Harvard was promoting her as Native American."

Though for the time being she appears to be holding steady in the polls, John Sivolella, a new blogger at Boston Magazine has made the key observation that her campaign has recently made a significant and very expensive media buy, one that can easily explain much of that leveling. John's point is that her big buy arguably should have given her a nice lead, not just allowed her to stay even.

"The results of a recent Rasmussen poll have been portrayed (and then parroted) as showing that the Cherokee affair hasn’t yet had an impact on Warren because she remains tied with Brown at 45 percent. This doesn’t tell the whole story, of course, since it leaves out the critical fact that Warren had just embarked on a major, very expensive media buy featuring none other than the President himself. By showing her Obama cards so early, Warren must have hoped for a boost in the polls, perhaps trying to put 5-7 points of daylight between her and Brown. Instead, she’s spent a lot of campaign cash but remains in a dead heat. And the Cherokee affair lives on. This has to trouble her supporters."

Indeed, this story will not simply just go away, as amply demonstrated by the above-linked piece in today's Globe.

At some point, perhaps prior to their first debate, one suspects that Warren may feel compelled to somehow address the specifics, rather than just continuing to rely on such risible claims as that it is somehow all just a case of Scott Brown attacking her family!

Nor will it help her cause -- as it continues to dawn on more and more voters -- that this is a law professor who is now steadfastly denying knowledge of both the law and the facts regarding her own set of circumstances . . . a person who has been teaching at arguably the most prestigious law school in the entire country!

Gee! I'm thinking that might even make for a very good Saturday Night Live skit . . . oh wait!

UPDATE, 05/25/2012 at 5:20 pm: More on this from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

UPDATE II, 05/25/2012 at 8:00 pm: The Daily Caller "teaser" for this story; Warren may have told Harvard she was Native American for six years - TheDC.