Would You Have a Beer With Someone Who Slandered You?

I hope Sgt. James Crowley politely tells Barack Obama where to go with his invitation to come down to the White House for some cheap photo op. This mess is all the making of Henry Louis Gates and Obama. There should be no valid reason that Crowley allows himself to be used any further.

In an abrupt reversal, President Obama yesterday said he was wrong to criticize a white cop for arresting a black Harvard professor -- and he invited both to the White House to have a beer with him and talk about the incident that set off a national racial firestorm.

It was a sharp break from Obama's comments Wednesday, when he charged that the Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" by arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., his friend, at his home near Harvard.

Two hours after his spokesman said Obama wouldn't be commenting any further on the matter, the president made a surprise appearance in the White House press room and revealed he had just called Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley, who had arrested Gates.

Obama stopped short of apologizing but said his impression of Crowley is that he is an "outstanding police officer and a good man, and that was confirmed in the phone conversation. And I told him that."

Ironic, isn't it, that Barack Obama has spent much of his first six months in office unnecessarily apologizing for perceived misdeeds by this country. Yet when it comes time to apologize for being so egregiously wrong in this case he refuses to apologize.

Our "post-racial" president has a racial chip on his shoulder the size of Texas.

When the tape of this incident is released Obama is really going to look bad.

Maybe then he'll actually apologize.