I am not a lawyer, nor do I have any experience from being in traffic, or any other court, but I have a question.
Are we ( on this thread) confusing police action and Court action? The police charge people with crimes all the time; some times the DA gets a conviction-sometimes not. But that is the function of the Court.
Are the police not supposed to arrest, restrain, or do anything until the Courts decide? That seems absurd. Courts have the benefit of time, and an emotion separation from the events, police must act in the present.
Again, its a difficult tension that we maintain between anarchy and a police state--it seems we a re never too far from either extreme.

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Definitely. We should avoid second-guessing the police. Their job is just about impossible. In this case, I think that Crowley's emotion got the better of him and he made an arrest he shouldn't have made. IMHO.

The Gates of Political Distraction

Obama’s mistake was falling for a culture war diversion


The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week’s arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”

“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The “elitism” narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

The Gates incident was a trap that could not have been better crafted to ensnare President Barack Obama, who is himself a loyal son of academia’s most prestigious reaches, and to whom it was immediately obvious, even without benefit of the facts, that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the situation.

Mr. Obama’s way of backing out of his gaffe was just as telling: He invited Mr. Gates and the policeman who arrested him to the White House for a beer, the beverage so often a gauge of a politician’s blue-collar bona fides. One symbolic gesture, hopefully, can exorcise another.

Class is always an ironic issue in American politics, and the irony this time is particularly poignant. We are in the midst of a great national debate about how to make health care affordable; almost nothing is more important to working-class Americans. “For the health of the nation, both physically and economically, we need a system with a public option,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, wrote recently in the Huffington Post. “And we need it now.”

But whether working families get it now depends to a large degree on Mr. Obama’s personal popularity. And now comes Gates-gate, this latest burst of fake populism from the right. Waving the banner of the long-suffering working class, the tax-cutting friends of the top 2% have managed to dent the president’s credibility, to momentarily halt his forward movement on the health-care issue.

Umbrage at a Harvard professor’s class snobbery, in other words, might derail this generation’s greatest hope for actually mitigating the class divide.

Another irony: Long before he became a hostage to the culture wars, Henry Louis Gates had another career as a pithy commentator on the culture wars. The false appeal of victimization was something he understood well. In “Loose Canons,” his 1992 book on the subject, he joked that his colleagues should “award a prize at the end [of a conference] for the panelist, respondent, or contestant most oppressed.”

But when he sits down for that can of beer in the White House, it is another passage from his book that I hope Mr. Gates remembers. Speaking for liberal academics, he wrote in 1992 that “success has spoiled us; the right has robbed us of our dyspepsia; and the routinized production of righteous indignation is allowed to substitute for critical rigor.”
Today the cranking out of righteous indignation is a robust growth industry, and it threatens to do far worse than cloud our critical faculties. Help us to put the culture wars aside, Professor Gates. Too much is on the line these days.

Write to thomas@wsj.com


I don't agree with Mr. Frank very often, but this is well reasoned and spot on, imho.

I consider myself a moderate, usually agreeing/disagreeing from both parties. This article is sheer hyposcrisy in that the author goes on and on about liberal elitism. So does calling liberals names make him any better? Did this article do anything but try and slander liberalism? A little bit, but unfortunately the author is too clouded by his political views to make a valid argument to a modest middle-of-the-road American. Ah, just another editorial from WSJ - don't know what they are thinking with the opinion board but at least their content is decently balanced.
Both liberal and conservative commentators are obviously just trying to play it up to their arguments with this situation. Many conservatives have a deep-rooted hatred for academia (as the author noted, though implying that he was not included in that group) and seeing one of these folks talk down to a blue collar Joe-the-plumber-esque figure enrages them. So yes, it is somewhat about class but more to do with party association and audience appeasement (since both sides want to appear to be the "victim"). Obama didn't help it, but to be honest it detracted from health care reform coverage which has been dismal within the past week.
One party accusing the other of being elite, snobbish, immoral, etc. is one of my pet peeves. IMO the worst is the conservative television hosts (mainly Hannity) who regularly accuse "the media" of incorrectly analyzing a situation, blaming it on an inherent liberal bias. Unfortunately they fail to realize they ARE a medium...and often their own channel airs the exact thing that they later repudiate. Doesn't mean they are liberal too, but the blame is constantly placed in liberal elitism rather than the actual JOB of journalism and reporting. The other networks aren't much better but at least they don't blame themselves, or the "rest of the media".

Reading that article reminds me of reading Rick Santorum's It Takes a Family. The book had great points but its shameless swings at liberal opponents eroded so much from the actual content that it became superficial.

Not criticizing you Dynalow, just the article. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

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TC
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Same here. Sarah Palin is one of the worst offenders these days. Her references to "real Americans" and disparaging remarks about people from San Francisco and New York show her to be the real elitist. People in San Francisco and New York are just as American as any farmer in Kansas or any factory worker in Illinois.

x2 Very well said, I was taken aback by that remark as well.

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TC
Current stable:
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Welllll..........

I thought my comment about Mr. Frank might have been correctly interpreted as being an all too rare agreement by me with a liberal POV.
Two things to understand. On a conservative scale of 1 to 10, I'm probably a solid 7. Mr. Frank, on a liberal scale is probably a solid 8 or 9.

Make no mistake, Thomas Frank is no dyed in the wool conservative. Far from it. Imagine! That right wing Murdoch rag WSJ having a liberal columnist. What's the world coming to!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Frank

Don't worry about criticizing me. I'm a big boy.

I am really surprised by that, this article strongly suggests otherwise from his choice of language.

Edit: that is probably why you agree with it - I'd give this a 4-5 on the conservative scale in terms of language and criticism. The fact that this is a departure from his typical views is quite surprising, maybe he should look into being a conservative columnist, he's good at it

__________________
TC
Current stable:
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- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Yes I agree. If I wasn't familiar with Mr. Frank's POV from previous articles, I would have reached the same (incorrect) first impression. Just goes to show you. Interesting thing. Thomas Frank has not been writing regularly for the Journal for very long...maybe a year or so. I'd be interested in knowing if he was signed up by Rupert Murdoch, whose buyout was last year too. (I think)

Larry Wilmore, "senior black correspondent" on the Daily Show, talks trash on Gates.

The guy is on the mark:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-july-28-2009/henry-louis-gate---race-card

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Gates was much more to blame in this incident than Crowley. The more I hear about this, such as the Harvard police arrival on the scene and Gates continued verbal abuse of Crowley during their presence, the more I think maybe the arrest was warranted.

My inclination would have been to say something like:

"Yo dude, people's houses DO get broken into now and then and sometimes the breaker is black, sometimes white or brown, and sometimes the breakee is black, white, or brown. It could have turned out that I came here to protect the sanctity of your home, perhaps even your person, and at possible risk to my safety. I, and police in general, deserve better than to have the race card pulled with so little provocation. Now STFU and listen to what this man has to say," then handing the ball off to someone else.

This followed by a discussion with all present - a sort of introducing Gates to some realities that he had not yet encountered in his role as "professional negro" (coined by the BBC in reference to Al Sharpton). Gates' carreer has been largely based on focusing on issues of abuse of black people such that his life began to revolve around the topic.

A sort of professional cryer of "wolf."

I don't care for Gates, much of anything about him. Guy's a candy-ass.

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I'm planning a visit to LA in late Oct. Dinner's on me..if I can make it up to SF. We'll have a beer "teaching" moment..... or two...... or three.....

"JUngle Monkey" Email author sure one dumb sumbeetch !

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1187845&pos=breaking

Officials: Hub cop used racial slur in Gates e-mail
By Jessica Van Sack
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - Updated 0m ago

Jessica Van Sack is the Herald's Boston police bureau chief covering crime and justice. She works out of City Hall where you can send tips to jvansack@bostonherald.com.

A Boston police officer allegedly sent a mass e-mail using a disgraceful racial slur in referring to Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., prompting the commissioner to move immediately to fire the cop, the Herald has learned.

Officer Justin Barrett, 36, a two-year veteran assigned to District B-3, was placed on administrative leave pending a termination hearing yesterday afternoon. When a supervisor confronted Barrett about the e-mail - in which he called Gates a “jungle monkey” - he admitted to being the author, according to officials.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis immediately stripped the cop of his gun and badge, according to officials. Barrett, who could not immediately be reached, has no prior disciplinary history.

Barrett is also a member of the National Guard, a source said, and the e-mail was sent anonymously to his fellow guard members and the Boston Globe. It was unclear whether the scurrilous missive was sent to members of Boston police as well.

“There is no room on the department for someone who uses those words,” said Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll, who declined to provide the specific text of the letter.

Gates, a preeminent black scholar, was arrested at his Cambridge home July 16 by a white Cambridge cop, triggering a national debate on race that reached all the way to the White House. Gates, 58, and the officer, Sgt. James Crowley, 42, are scheduled to hash out their differences over beers at the White House tomorrow evening. The meeting is being hosted by President Obama, who became embroiled in the controversy when he said, “Cambridge police acted stupidly” in arresting Gates.

Developing ...

What "mark"?

It was a comedy skit.

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Oh please. Crowley was on the job, being paid to be a professional. He failed.

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2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black