We must say up front that we sympathize with Vice President Biden for the loss of his wife and infant daughter in a 1972 car crash. It is, however, unfortunate that Biden himself lacks the common decency not to misuse and pervert the memory of his spouse and child for political gain, and not to misuse the resources of the U.S. Senate to inflict pain on an innocent family for the same reason.

As reported by Inside Edition, a police investigation of the accident showed that Mrs. Biden pulled into an intersection after she failed to notice an oncoming tractor trailer, which apparently had the right of way. The truck’s driver, Curtis Dunn, put his own life at risk in an effort to avoid the collision; he twisted the wheel so hard that he overturned his vehicle. Delaware Online adds emphatically that neither driver had consumed alcohol. Senator Biden, as reported by the New York Times, nonetheless chose to publicly and falsely accuse Mr. Dunn of killing Biden’s wife and child while driving drunk (emphasis added):

“Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Biden told the crowd at the University of Iowa. “I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries.”

A false accusation of a crime such as killing somebody while driving drunk is of course automatically libel or slander, but Mr. Biden waited until Mr. Dunn had died of natural causes to make this accusation. A dead person cannot sue for defamation, nor can his family sue on his behalf, which means Biden attacked somebody who could not defend himself. This makes Barack Obama’s running mate a coward as well as a liar.

Mr. Dunn is not in a position to care what Biden said about him, but he left a daughter (Pamela Hamill) and doubtless other family members who do care. These are ordinary Americans who do not have the power and media access of a United States senator, who used his Senate website to perpetrate his malicious defamation of Ms. Hamill’s father (emphasis added):

To the loved ones of the victims [of 9/11], there is nothing really we can say to erase this tragedy. And, those of you who think it’s presumptuous of me to say that … in a different circumstance, I got one of those phone calls. I got one of those phone calls like Davis Sezna got. I got a phone call saying, “Your wife’s dead; your daughter’s dead.” And I’ve only said that three times in public before. But, I say it here because it’s so important for you to understand. I got one of those phone calls. It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit a tractor-trailer, hit my children and my wife and killed them.It wasn’t an airplane, but it was a phone call: “They’re dead.” And, I can tell you from experience, and some of you can, too, that feeling that inside your chest is a black hole and you’re being sucked inside it. I know from experience there’s nothing in the near term we can do to bring solace, relief or peace to those people.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/barack_obamas_running_mate_a…