Embarrassing softball question of the day

Still trying to figure out why the brilliant, highly educated harvard prof had no keys, no back up key, no friends with a key, no other way to get in the house but to ram the door with a shoulder?

ncsully on July 23, 2009 at 12:15 AM

If you bothered to read the story, Gates was out of town, and this was broad daylight, before 1PM. He came home and he and his driver discovered that the front door was jammed. They used his key to enter by the back door. Once they had entered the house and brought in his luggage, they went around the house and forced the front door open, which is what the neighbor saw and reported.

Gates produced both a Harvard faculty card and his drivers license. At that point the cop should have left. If he was polite, he should have apologized to Prof. Gates for the inconvenience. Instead, the cop had to show Gates who was in charge. Since Gates had done nothing illegal at that point, but he had pissed off a cop, the cop told him to come outside, where the cop knew he could arrest him.

No wonder the DA dropped the charges. This was a hairsbreadth away from entrapment. I just read about someone who had a DUI conviction overturned because they were somewhere where the cops were clearing out a joint, they told the cop they were drunk and couldn’t drive, and the cops said they had to leave anyway, and then they busted them for DUI down the street.

The cop’s action with Prof. Gates is directly analogous to the DUI case. The cop knew that Gates behavior would be arrestable if he went out on the porch, so he baited him to do so. It’s classic entrapment because Gates had no criminal mind. Telling a cop something about his mama ain’t no crime.

As someone said on another blog, you should be able to walk up to a cop and tell him how you’d love to screw his wife, with his daughter participating as he watched, and the cop shouldn’t be able to do a thing to you other than maybe use his mouth and even that he shouldn’t do because he should respect civilians as a condition of his job.

I have every right in the world to say whatever I want to say, short of assault, to any public official in this country.

I live in a free country, not a police state.

rokemronnie on July 23, 2009 at 12:31 AM

You win the long, idiotic post award for the evening.

Every policeman I’ve ever had contact with called me “Sir”.

I responded by calling him “Officer”.

guntotinglibertarian

Buzzzz! Ad hominum. You lose.

rokemronnie on July 23, 2009 at 12:45 AM

Suppose instead I respond with obscenities and refuse to show him my ID?

I get the same treatment as eminent Professor Gates got.

guntotinglibertarian

If you bothered to read the police report, Gates produced his Harvard faculty card and his driver’s license while still in the house. At that point Gates had every right to be pissed.

Cop comes into my house and demands ID? I have every right to verbally abuse him while I’m looking for proof that it’s my house. At that point he should get the hell out of my house. Period, end of question.

Yeah, so Gates was a jerk. Being a jerk in your own home isn’t an excuse to have your liberty taken away. The cop, however was a jerk who was abusing his power as an official of the state.

I can’t wait to watch you squeal when some cop tries to violate your own 2nd Amendment rights.

The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged and a libertarian is a conservative who has been arrested.

You’re no different than the folks who have no problems with Fourth Amendment violations because they do see themselves as criminals.

You’re not a libertarian, you’re a gun fetishist. I’m all for gun ownership, but you only care about your own rights.

See, the reality is that you can’t just pick saints for test cases. Miranda was a criminal. So was Gideon. If rights only apply to saints who say yes ma’am and no sir when an officer of the state demands certain behavior, well then, they aren’t really rights.

rokemronnie on July 23, 2009 at 12:52 AM