Conservative pundits and columnists won’t let the story of rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse team go.

Now, thanks to a story in The Baltimore Sun, I think I know why.

Last week, black conservative Thomas Sowell wrote what was at least his second column on the Duke lacrosse matter. Sowell, like television talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, went on at length about what an injustice is being done to the three white Duke lacrosse players who have been charged with raping a black North Carolina Central University co-ed.

That same week, The Sun ran a story about the third Duke player indicted in the case. David F. Evans is a local boy, from Bethesda, Md., who played on the lacrosse team of the Landon School. Deep in the story, we read that “Evans’ mother is a founder of a Washington-based lobbying and consulting firm. Gossip columns have noted her friendship with Marilyn Quayle, wife of former Vice President Dan Quayle.”

You may remember Quayle as the conservative Republican who was vice president under President George Herbert Walker Bush. We can’t say for certain what happened as a result of the friendship between Evans’ mother and Marilyn Quayle, but we can speculate, can’t we?

Mom calls Marilyn, who tells hubby, who calls conservative buddies in politics, who call conservative buddies in media. All of a sudden, we have a horde of conservative columnists and talk show hosts talking injustice who barely mentioned the word before, certainly not when it happened to po’ folks.

Anybody remember Sowell writing about what happened in Tulia, Texas in 1999? Anybody remember Carlson, Hannity or Limbaugh talking about it?

I thought not.

If you’re a columnist or television host -- and your politics shouldn’t matter -- if you want to talk about an injustice in the criminal justice system, what happened in Tulia is a textbook case of it. An “undercover” police officer named Tom Coleman, a known thief and perjurer, sent over 20 people to prison based on his uncorroborated testimony. Most of the people were black. A couple were white and Hispanic. Some were men and some were women. All were poor.

You see already how that differs from the Duke case, don’t you? All the suspects in that case are rich, white males.

Now, if you’re a conservative columnist or talk show host writing about or talking about a perceived injustice that could happen to three white males, that’s certainly your privilege. But if you were silent about what happened in Tulia, you have to know people will challenge your credibility when you write about the “injustice” of what’s happening to the three indicted Duke lacrosse players. Why, folks might actually believe you only get excited about “injustice” when it happens to rich white guys.

I did a Lexis Nexis search of Thomas Sowell and Tulia. It turns out Sowell hasn’t written word one about what happened in Tulia. A Lexis Nexis search of Tulia, along with Hannity, Carlson and Limbaugh reveals none of them has written or commented in print journalism about the Tulia matter. When it comes to Tulia, the lips of this conservative quartet have been welded so tightly shut that you couldn’t pry them open with a blow torch and a jackhammer.

How bad was what happened in Tulia? How much time do you have?

Coleman, the cop, wore no wire. There was no documentation of his alleged drug transactions with the defendants, except for the notes he scribbled on his leg.

That’s right: Coleman’s idea of “documentation” was to simply roll up his pants and write on either leg.

According to the 2005 book “Tulia: Race, Cocaine and Corruption in a Small Texas Town” by Nate Blakeslee, one of the judges who presided over one of the cases knew that Coleman committed perjury in a preliminary hearing and still let him testify against one of the defendants. Not only that, the same judge wouldn’t allow the defense to present evidence to the jury about Coleman’s criminal history.

Some of the defendants were hit with sentences as long as 361 years due to Coleman’s mischief, for nothing more than possessing small amounts of cocaine. Others were innocent people lied into prison by Coleman.

The next time you hear or read Sowell, Carlson, Hannity or Limbaugh talking about injustice in the Duke lacrosse case, shoot them an e-mail or give them a phone call and ask them where their voices were when injustice was occurring in Tulia, Texas.