When Will Obama Apologize for Acting Stupidly?

This was worldwide news last year when Obama's crackpot friend played the race card after being arrested. Now when it's demonstrably shown race played no part in the incident, it passes by with little fanfare. If it were proven the officer in the incident was racially biased it would be front page news. Instead, it's greeted with stifled yawns.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for Obama to apologize and say how stupid he was for speaking out before having the facts.

When Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent Harvard professor of African-American studies, was arrested for disorderly conduct by a white Cambridge police officer last summer, President Obama led a chorus of critics denouncing the local Police Department.

Gates, who is African-American, described his arrest as a “teaching moment’’ about race relations in America.

His case drew national attention to the relationship between policing and race. Obama wound up hosting Gates and the officer who arrested him for a so-called beer summit at the White House. And the arrest, for some, raised the question of whether officers disproportionately arrest blacks for disorderly conduct, considered one of the most discretionary and most abused charges in the nation’s criminal justice system.

But a review of the Cambridge department’s handling of disorderly conduct cases from 2004 to 2009 finds no evidence of racial profiling. Instead, the analysis by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting finds that the most common factor linking people who are arrested in Cambridge for disorderly conduct is that they were allegedly screaming or cursing in front of police.

Of the 392 adults arrested for disorderly conduct, 57 percent were white, and 34 percent were black. That racial breakdown almost exactly mirrored the racial composition of the population that Cambridge police investigated for disorderly conduct, the center’s analysis shows.

Cambridge is 68 percent white and 12 percent black, the latest US Census data show. But multiple racial profiling specialists said the fairest way to analyze the Cambridge Police Department’s conduct was to compare the racial makeup of those charged to that of those investigated and not to the racial makeup of the overall population.

The most striking conclusion of the review of Cambridge police data is that the majority of those arrested for disorderly conduct were allegedly yelling, often screaming obscenities, in front of police before the handcuffs snapped shut. More than 60 percent of the disorderly arrests reviewed by center involved some sort of allegedly inflammatory speech, such as talking back to the police, more commonly known as “contempt of cop.’’

Gates and Obama seem to have a contempt of everything.

It's time for another teachable moment, one when these race-obsessed hucksters actually man up and apologize for acting stupidly.

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.

D'Oh! Cop Insulted by Obama is Racial Profiling Expert

I wonder if Baracky would like to remove the foot from his mouth now?

The white police sergeant criticized by President Barack Obama for arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on racial profiling.

Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

"I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy," Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The course, called "Racial Profiling," teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community "and how you don't want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from," Fleming said.

Obama has said the Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates last week when they responded to his house after a woman reported a suspected break-in.

Naturally, those who are quickest to play the race card are usually the slowest to apologize for slandering people.

Obama spokesthing Robert Gibbs tried to weasel out of the mess today.

"Let me be clear, he was not calling the officer stupid," Gibbs told reporters as Obama landed in Cleveland for two health care events Thursday. He said Obama felt that "at a certain point the situation got far out of hand" at Gates' home last week.

He acted stupidly, but he's not stupid.

Thanks for clearing that up.

'I Don't Know All the Facts'

He doesn't know all the facts, yet he makes a judgment and calls a police officer stupid.

Nothing like being a post-racial president.

"I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home," Obama said in response to a question from the Chicago Sun-Times's Lynn Sweet.

Gates, Obama allowed, "is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts."

Oh, he might be a little biased, but it's OK to ruin an innocent cop's life and basically call him a racist.

For his part, James Crowley isn't backing down. Good for him.

“I just have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “It will never happen.”

More from Dan Riehl.

Update: If Obama wants to avail himself of the facts, maybe he ought to read the police report. Of course doing so would show Obama is a total chump and Gates is an angry racist asshole.