No White House Summit Between Obama and Shirley Sherrod

On Tuesday, Shirley Sherrod, who had been sacked by the Obama White House in response to a doctored videotape of a speech she gave as Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program in Georgia, met with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for 90 minutes, after which she rejected the new job offered to her in compensation for her firing by Obama without due process.

Sherrod told reporters that she could not accept the job in the Office of Advocacy and Outreach offered to her, after "all that has happened." Sherrod said that she thought the U.S. Department of Agriculture's leadership would have supported her in the new job but that she questioned whether that was enough for her to be effective. "The secretary did push really hard for me to stay and work from inside, but I look at what happened to me," she said at a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "I know he's apologized, and I accept it. A new process is in place, but I don't want to test it."

Sherrod, who has been a civil rights activist and an advocate for farmers, would have been the first person to fill the outreach position, which was created in the 2008 farm bill to deal with an agency that picked up the nickname "the last plantation" years ago.

Apparently Sherrod decided that she would not be able to challenge the policies in effect on the plantation—now run by Obama.