If you pick out somebody who was known to be overseas at the time, there goes your credibility. But District Attorney Nifong was not about to risk having the accuser's credibility tested, and certainly not before his election.

All the evidence that has come out has pointed the other way. One of the alleged rapists has a paper trail that shows he wasn't even there when he was supposed to be raping the "exotic dancer."

A black cab driver says he was with him, going to a bank's ATM to get some money -- and bank records show him there at the time when he was supposed to be committing rape.

When confronted with the fact that DNA tests failed to show that any of the Duke lacrosse players' DNA was present on the "exotic dancer," Nifong said that they could have used condoms.

Every part of your body has DNA that is left wherever you have had bodily contact. When you shake someone's hand, you leave your DNA. Each Duke student would have to have had a giant condom covering his whole body to avoid leaving DNA on someone he raped.

Far more is involved in this case than the misdeeds of one District Attorney. There is a segment of the black community -- a small segment, we can hope -- that figures it is payback time for all the black men who have been railroaded to jail on trumped-up charges involving the rape of white women.

The local branch of the NAACP, an organization which fought against such injustices in times past, has thrown its weight behind those who are trying to railroad three white students, who were not even born when these other injustices occurred.

Winston Churchill once said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." Nowhere is that more true than when dealing with the explosive mixture of race and politics.

Nifong deserves to be removed from office and disbarred. If he gets away with all this, it will be a blank check for every prosecutor in the country to abuse the powers of the office.