Oh, I don't see this as a big deal overall, except that I think it reveals a bit about him and his outlook on life....he admittedly did not know all the facts yet said the cop acted stupidly as his gut reaction.

I won't post the Obama rant until I have the time to thoughtfully put it together. I realize the suspense is building and I am am not intentionally making you wait. :)

Who leaked the document? C'mon! 'Fess up!

(I only tease people I like as well, flippy, so i get it.)

Of course. Obama can buy over lots of people with a chat and a cocktail.

Q: "Why'd you call me stupid?"

A: "Change...hope..hope...change change. Martini?"

Q: "Um, sure. Thanks!"

:eek:

It's like that episode of South Park where Kenny was dying in the hospital and the staff thought maybe he'd feel better in his final days by getting a personal visit from Madonna.

I'm surprised to see you gay fellers gettin' all law and order and cop deferentialish. I submit that if the complaint from the neighbors had not been that a black man had been breaking into a house that he turned out to be renting, but that a gay man was seen molesting a young boy who turned out to be an adult midget--and everything else played out the same way, you'd be posting different things.

Not me. I'm from a cop family. I see things through their eyes a lot of times. It's not a fun job and is often dangerous. Not that I agree with cops all the time, but I do get to hear how hard a job it is dealing with people sometimes.

Yeah, I hear that from a lot of CMs, too. Guess it's good they're not armed.

At the very least, the Frontierland CMs should be armed. It would match the theme.

That's a good blurb to remember if you find yourself in the jury box on a criminal case.

But, seriously, no one should dispute what you said. In this case, however, the cop had the choice between calming the situation down by making a perhaps technically unnecessary apology and ensuring that he got the last word in a way that only the cop can. He chose the latter.

So what's your take on White night?

I have no issue with the police showing up. If the neighbors didn't recognize Gates I have no problem with them calling the police to say it looked like someone was breaking in.

But the fact is that the triggering event for being arrested was calling a policeman a racist and saying he'd talk to his mama. In Massachusetts "disorderly conduct" is conduct likely to incite violence or significant social disruption. A man shouting on his porch yelling at you is nowhere near such a thing.

This is simply a police officer annoyed by someone and so decided to show Gates who was boss with an arrest he knew would be dropped and the expectation that the person being arrested wouldn't feel he could do anything about it and even if he tried nobody would care. He got really unlucky in who he decided to do this to.

I in no way suggest that race had anything to do with it. It may have, it may have not (and Obama didn't say the police acted stupidly because they acted in a racist manner, he quite explicitly said otherwise). He didn't have all the facts to know if race was a factor. We've plenty of facts (and none of them have changed) to know that the policeman was chose poorly in how to behave.

That is the stupidity on the part of the policeman. Throwing his weight around with an arrest he knows isn't supported by the facts simply to say "bow down or learn a lesson" and playing the odds that he'll get away with it (as they certainly do 99% of the time such arrests are made).

The idea that it is ok to be arrested for simply yelling at a member of the police (and from your own front porch) is kind of scary.