"All the facts laid out in recent days point to one unavoidable conclusion:

Churchill did plagiarize, and he did invent historical events to suit his political agenda," the Rocky Mountain News said in an editorial June 10th.

"If Churchill's shoddy work is not beyond the pale, then the integrity of all research at the university is in doubt."

But the University of Colorado has been about as eager to examine Churchill's wrong-doing as the Volcker Commission has been to investigate what UN Secretary General did or did not do in the Oil for Food scandal.

Both "investigations" have inched forward only after vigorous outside prodding.

"Several of the clearest violations of scholarly practice aren't even being investigated yet by the university, although they clearly ought to be," the News said. "As reporter Laura Frank recounted a week ago, Churchill also presented as his own, without apparent permission, an essay produced by an environmental group. And he reprinted the work of three scholars under their own names but without permission in apparent violation of copyright law."

Churchill, you'll recall, came to national attention in February when it came to light (thanks to the editor of a student newspaper at Hamilton College, where Churchill was scheduled to speak) that Churchill had called the victims in the World Trade Center Sept. 11th "Little Eichmanns."

Doubtless it is Churchill's virulent anti-Americanism that has permitted him to keep his job for so long, despite clear and massive evidence of academic fraud.

CU acted with far greater dispatch in the case of Prof. Phil Mitchell, canned in March after 20 years when his department chief discovered that he was a conservative and a Christian.

The grounds for firing Mitchell, 1998 Teacher of the Year at CU, were that he quoted black conservative Thomas Sowell in a discussion of affirmative action.

"The progressive head of the department berated Mitchell, calling him a racist," reported Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi. Two of Mitchell's nine children are black.

The final straw came when Mitchell used a book on liberal Protestantism in the 19th Century in his history class. "So repulsed by the word "G-d" was one student, she complained, and the department chaired fired him without a meeting," Harsanyi reported.

Mitchell's situation is hardly unique in academia these days. DePaul University in Chicago suspended without a hearing Prof. Thomas Klocek in May after he vigorously defended Israel in a discussion with Muslim students.

Dean Susan Dumbleton said Klocek had "insulted and demeaned" the Muslim students by attempting to impose his "erroneous views" on them.

Economics Prof. Hans Hoppe nearly lost his job at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas when a student took offense to his (accurate) statement in a lecture on money and banking that homosexuals tend to lead risky lifestyles and tend not to save for the future, a trait they share with the very young and the very old.

There is free speech aplenty at our colleges and universities for those who malign the United States, white males, Christians, Jews, soldiers and Republicans, no matter how false and vicious their criticisms be. But woe be unto the professor or student who strays from the path of Political Correctness.