Does the union for the Cambridge police department read Hot Air? That was the first reaction from College Politico, who thought that their response to Barack Obama’s nationally-televised criticism of them as stupid amply demonstrated the ignorance of the issue that Obama professed. The union demanded an apology from both President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick for jumping to a very public conclusion, and they argue, the wrong one:

I’ve remarked at least twice on the blog that if you have to start off a sentence with “I wasn’t there and I don’t have all the facts,” the only correct conclusion to it is “so I have nothing to say about it at the moment.” Did they read that here? Actually, I rather doubt it. It’s pretty much a common-sense rule, which makes Obama’s failure to understand it quite indicting.

Update: That point applies equally to all sides, actually. I don’t know that Sergeant Crowley handled this properly; I don’t know whether Henry Gates was so disruptive that he had to be arrested; and even if Crowley didn’t handle this properly (which I also don’t know), I have even less knowledge of whether that came from some racial animus or just bad judgment in reaction to verbal abuse.  In that situation, it’s better to let the city complete its own investigation to determine what happened — which is exactly what Barack Obama and Deval Patrick should have done before leaping to conclusions on all of these counts.