Mary G,
Vilsack should have used more caution and, yes, should have consulted with Sherrod privately before taking any other action. That's just common decency as well as showing respect for the truth instead of fear in the face of slung mud.


Joe O, even if Sherrod's job was "exempt" and she held it "at the pleasure of the President," that doesn't make Vilsack's knee-jerk reaction wise or fair.   I think Vilsack ended up hurting both Sherrod and the administration by acting like a scared dog and by making the administration look cowardly and disloyal, afraid to stand their ground and stick to principle in the face of attacks by the right-wing media.

Bobert, you're right that Fox & the Tea Party will glom onto anything 'scandalous' they think they can pin on a Democrat.   They can and will get such stories (often lies) spread around the world before the truth can get its proverbial pants on. But that doesn't mean the Obama administration helps their own cause by kowtowing to that.

Sawz, Vilsack may have sacked Sherrod before Fox News showed the altered clip on TV, but not before they had been running it on their website with many, many people viewing it.
Contrary to what Brent Bozell said, Andrew Breitbart DID do something wrong. Very wrong.
If he didn't deliberately set out to distort & deceive, at the very least, he acted with reckless irresponsibility in a way that was harmful to another person.
And given the shenanigans he pulled with the set-up & the doctored ACORN videos, it's pretty likely it was deliberate.

Sherrod owes Fox News no apology, because they (except for Shepard Smith) DID run the edited and misleading video over and over, complete with denouncing of Sherrod, well before they had investigated the context of the excerpt (including when it was made, by whom, and what her overall message was).