Nobody should be all that surprised that leftist mobs and their mainstream media allies perpetrated a false story about Covington Catholic schoolboys in MAGA hats supposedly "mocking" a Native American, followed by a Twitter feeding frenzy that's going to get them a lawsuit.  As John Hinderaker notes, the blue checkmarks are now swiftly deleting and scrubbing their Twitter statements in a pathetic bid to avoid getting sued.

MAGA kids, of course, know what the left is like from other incidents and probably can deal that behavior on some level. 

But what isn't good is the embrace of the dishonest narrative from the kids' own school and their own Catholic diocese, falsely condemning them in some amazing public calumny they have yet to retract.  It's shocking, actually. 

The joint statement the diocese and the school put out is here:

The Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School have issued the following statement:

We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C.  We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips.  This behavior is opposed to the Church's teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.

The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.

We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those who attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement.

The clerics and their educators haven't retracted that statement, although both websites – that of the diocese and the school itself – are now down.

So much for the Church's teaching on "dignity and respect of the human person."  Based on that statement, they've made an exception for MAGA-hat wearing kids even if they're inside the Church's own educational care.  Talk about not loving your own kids.

The full video has since shown that in fact, the kids were the ones being provoked, first by a group of fringe fanatics called the "Black Hebrews" who shouted racist and homophobic slurs at the kids, fighting words, which, if they drew a reaction, would be protected by law; and then by the media-vaunted Native American "elder," who, the video shows, walked up to the kids and beat a drum into one of their faces.  The targeted kid, who, it must be noted, was a kid in need of protection from his chaperones and didn't get it, was a kid who returned the act with a smile, a perfect expression of non-violent resistance on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  The provocation from the radical followed an earlier attempt by the same man to beat his drum into the face of a 15-year-old girl who expressed terror at the act, something that didn't suit the camera shots his activist buddies and media allies sought, which is why he moved on to the next kid. 

This is sick stuff, because the facts show that the kids acted with admirable restraint in the face of a genuine provocation to violence.  They should actually be drawing praise from their diocese.

But there they go, condemning their own kids, publicly threatening to expel them, and apologizing to a professional agitator who tried to provoke a fight, all in the name of appeasing the rabid left.

What weakness.  And that's the best scenario.

What an outsider might conclude is that the diocese has some amazing contempt for its own paying customers, the kids whose parents pay top dollar to educate their kids in that Catholic school system.  To condemn them without the full facts and then slink away with a broken website, saying nothing, is rather insect-like.  I've taught in Catholic schools, and I know what the teaching experience is like – if you are to be an effective teacher, you really need to love your kids, all of them, even the ones who don't behave.  This statement threatening to expel the kids for something they didn't do in the name of appeasing the gods of political correctness is exactly the opposite of that kind of love.

It's also a misreading of what's happening here.  The attack is not on particular individuals, although some got caught up in the leftist scam; it's an actual attack on "Catholic schoolboys" and, by extension, Catholic schools. 

Did Brett Kavanaugh's Jesuit Catholic school come out and condemn him when false accusations were lobbed against him during his Supreme Court hearing?  Not in the slightest.  It correctly recognized that the attack was groundless, with a secondary aim to discredit all Catholic education.  The school stood up for itself and its values, knowing full well what was at stake.

Not so Covington.  I do not know much about the bishop, but he appears to be elderly, which doesn't mean conservative, and the best I can guess is that he doesn't know what's at stake or how the next target of this attack is likely to be Catholic education itself.  Throwing a bone to this baying mob and kowtowing to its lies is pretty much feeding a crocodile in the hopes it eats them last.

The kids are the diocese's customers – and now it's just condemned them falsely.  Right in the wake of Church scandals about its crimes against children, this diocese and school has gone and committed another crime against kids.

Is that going to make people want to enroll their kids in this school?  I sure wouldn't. 

Can you imagine Howie Schultz condemning his Starbucks customers?  He certainly didn't defend his employees who asked some non-paying customers to leave in Philadelphia a few months back, but it's inarguable that he defends his customers even when they are utterly wrong.  He's a businessman, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on.  The diocese and the school, not so much.

Yet the clerics persist in condemning the boys and sticking to their story.  Not even the prospect of a lawsuit scares them.  Maybe one of them should look up "calumny" on the "sin" scale and see if it registers. 

If they don't, they're just molesting the kids another way.