The airwaves and blogosphere have been buzzing the past week, of course, over the firing of Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod. Just in case you missed the debacle, her boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Valsack, fired her (or ordered her to immediately type her resignation over her BlackBerry, depending on whom you believe) over a speech she made this year to the NAACP. In a two-minute clip that went viral on conservative blogs and Fox News, Sherrod, an African American whose father was murdered as part of a hate crime, implied that she wasn’t inclined to help white farmers who needed her help.

But the clip missed the heart of her speech: she spoke of overcoming her own racism to help farmers in need, no matter what color their skin.

While there’s been much written and discussed about the whole racial flap, the political flap, and the sensitivity flap, what’s been ignored is a basic review of employment law. Hello! You have to do an investigation before you fire someone! If you’re the boss (that would be either Valsack or Obama in this drama) you’re required by law, to do a full and fair investigation and come to a reasonable conclusion in a situation like this.

I have no doubt that employment lawyers at the Agriculture Department, as well as the White House, woke up to the news and started howling: “How could they? Why didn’t someone call me?”

Unless you’ve had someone on a PIP for months, you have to hear their side of the story, not just haul off and fire them with no attempt to find out what really went down.

There’s a point to basic fairness in all of this. Sometimes the law really does make sense.