8511: Shirley Sherrod Vs. Andrew Breitbart.

From Politics Daily…

Shirley Sherrod Sues Andrew Breitbart Over Misleading Video

By Tom Diemer

Remember Shirley Sherrod? The former Agriculture Department employee has sued a conservative blogger for posting an edited video of her in which she appeared to acknowledge discriminating against a white farmer. Sherrod, who initially lost her job over the incident, is African American.

Sherrod filed the defamation lawsuit in Washington, D.C., Superior Court against Andrew Breitbart, who posted the edited video of Sherrod’s March 2010 speech before the NAACP. In it, she recalled an episode working for the USDA in Georgia when she could have helped a white farmer—but didn’t. That’s what went up on Breitbart’s website, BigGovernment.com. In fact, Sherrod was discussing something that happened in 1986, and she went on to say that she had overcome her prejudices and worked closely with the farmer and his family.

Before the whole story came out, Sherrod was forced to resign as USDA’s head of rural development in Georgia. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack soon discovered the error and tried to hire her back in a new position. But Sherrod declined, threatened legal action against Brietbart, and remains unemployed, the Washington Post reported.

In a statement Monday, she said, “This lawsuit is not about politics or race. It is not about Right versus Left, the NAACP, or the Tea Party. It is about how quickly, in today’s Internet media environment, a person’s good name can become ‘collateral damage’ in an overheated political debate.”

Breitbart, who was sued along with a “John Doe”—the alleged source of the entire video—was served with papers Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, the New York Times reported. Sherrod wants an apology, unspecified damages and assurances the video is taken down from the website. She asserts that she’s suffered “enduring damage to her reputation, as well as emotional distress and financial damages” from losing her federal job.

Breitbart said in a statement, “I can promise you this: neither I, nor my journalistic websites, will be or can be silenced by the institutional Left, which is obviously funding this lawsuit.”