Shirley Sherrod sues Andrew Breitbart over damaging video

Former USDA official targets conservative blogger with aggressive lawsuit

By Peter Finocchiaro
Salon.com

While most gathered at CPAC this past weekend were busy gobbling up buffet-sized servings of Republican rage, one outsized commentator was left eating a slice of humble pie.

Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative firebrand and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. The suit stems from the notorious video Breitbart posted online last year, showing an out-of-context excerpt from a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP Freedom Fund in March 2010. The clip suggested she had used her position at the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. The media devoured the Breitbart's version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The charge was, in fact, entirely untrue.

Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip "damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work." Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech."

(More here.)