Apropos of post below

The writer mentions an interesting website: http://www.freerepublic.com

The enthusiasm of Palin faithful will not pale at past pork.

Just look at the crowd she drew to the April right-to-life dinner in Evansville. Watch the video of Republican National Chairman Michael Steele reduced to a warm-up act. Read the reactions afterward -- "Awesome!" "Amazing!" "Absolutely beautiful!" -- on the freerepublic.com Web site.

It is a doozy.

Welcome to Free Republic!

Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!

Their logo is simple and straightforward.



















Today it has this beauty:

• Officers Run Background Check On Obama; Placed On Leave

  Friday, July 31, 2009 11:42:04 AM · by Rodebrecht · 17 replies · 265+ views

  WSB Atlanta ^ | 7/29/09 | WSB Atlanta

  Two DeKalb County police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave after an investigation revealed they ran a background check on President Barack Obama. A representative for the DeKalb County CEO’s office identified the officers as Ryan White and C.M. Route. Officials said Obama’s name was typed into a computer inside a DeKalb County police car on July 20 and ran through the National Crime Information Center. The secret service was immediately notified and contacted the DeKalb County Police Department. A representative said both officers have been with the department less than five years. A representative said one of...

More beer

One more take on the Sargeant, the Professore and the President. Stanley Crouch is honet, smart, and blunt.

Nothing brings out more American madness than race and nothing is more available for exaggeration than the “plight” of black people, especially black men, most especially those now behind bars. They are the most authentic because real black men always run afoul of the law or are forced by poverty to murder, rape, and brutalize other black people when not selling them drugs. Authentic black men are not academic milquetoasts. They wake up angry, they go to bed angry, and they sleep in anger.

But if one listens to conservative race-baiters like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — professionals who are loons on demand and for pay — one notices that they also live inside of shared toxic exaggerations. Or at least spout them. As they speak of Barack Obama’s supposed hatred of white people, the red seems to grow from their necks and rise under the skin on the backs of their heads until continuing to their faces which then take on the kind of purple white people call “wine stain.” I doubt a brew will calm them down. Nor will a pain killer.

This is a weird moment.

All three beer drinkers have Irish blood in their ancestry.

This moment of ethnic trivia made molten by our media but also unavoidably high profile by Obama’s choosing to answer an inappropriate question about the arrest at the end of a press conference on health care! His choice showed the President to be far more vulnerable to lack of discipline than at nearly any moment during his long, long march to election.

The public confessions of “me and my gal on the side” made by Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign have pulled us closer to a formerly secret Washington, D.C., prayer group on C Street. The Christian group is called, like Charles Manson’s followers, The Family. It has an ominous philosophy that transcends morality with a small first letter in favor of a heavenly Morality out of which God chooses men for the execution of power rather than to act by the standards used to assess men with lesser positions of authority. According to Malcolm X in his Autobiography, this was the explanation Elijah Muhammad gave him to explain having impregnated a few of his young secretaries. As it was once said in the streets, “Either it is what it is, or it ain’t what it ain’t.”

Sgt. Crowley will have been happy every second that he was there. Arresting a Negro doesn’t always get you to the White House.

Both Sanford and Ensign pray—or some would say prey—with those men who gather on C Street. They have been counseled by the group in matters of the spirit and the booty—I mean the body.


Ishmael Reed’s extended diatribe in Counter Punch lays out all of the black complaints most often made about Gates behind his back. Like most academics, the black ones are distinguished more by their cowardice than any dedication to intellectual rigor. Gates has long been under attack for being trendish, for selling out to feminists, to homosexual liberation, and to whatever point of view comes up if aligning himself with it will guarantee his further success. A disreputable brother, mostly because he makes so much goddamn money and is on television more than his mediocre colleagues.

Where Reed’s logic veers into ethnic solidarity rather than substantial ideas or opinions is very obvious, but his charges are much more common than those reading about the Gates arrest would assume because he is so often referred to as “America’s top black intellectual.” Reed correctly asks just who might be the most prominent white intellectual. Hmm. No answer. Silent night.

Now, there we go, a very good point. Who is the smartest white guy? George Will? By Yahweh, no!

Beer Summit

Capitol City Brewing, a pub located a few blocks from the White House, lobbied Obama to serve its 'Equality Ale.'










The president's plan to toss back a few cold ones with some high-profile guests at the White House has the American beer industry hopping mad.
Is the industry all malted up? In a barley?
This afternoon, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor and race-relations expert, and James Crowley, the police sergeant who controversially arrested Mr. Gates, are to stop by for a round of brews that President Barack Obama hopes will promote racial comity.

The meeting is raising some sensitive issues, such as: What kind of beer?

The politics of beer.

Late Wednesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs hinted the presidential cooler will likely be stocked with what he understood to be the two guests' own personal favorites -- Red Stripe and Blue Moon.

At first, the Professor's lawyer said the Prof doesn't drink beer. Blue Moon is a curious choice: a wheat beer, it's a Belgian-style white beer. Not an every-day, common-man type of beer. Were either the President of the Professor to choose that, the right would be apoplectic, charging them with being unAmerican and elitist, not just black.

Last night I caught a snippet of Glenn Beck talking, and offering this nugget: this guy (yup, Beck called the President guy), has shown “over and over and over again, who has a deep-seeded hatred for white people or the white culture.”

What the hell white culture is Beck left undefined. But, back to beer.

"The president will drink Bud Light," Mr. Gibbs added.

The problem is that all three beers are products of foreign companies. Red Stripe is brewed by London-based Diageo PLC. Blue Moon is sold by a joint venture in which London-based SABMiller has a majority stake.
And Bud Light? It is made by Anheuser-Busch -- which is now known as Anseuser-Busch InBev NV after getting bought last year by a giant Belgian-Brazilian company.

Yeah, but it's America's beer.

Among rival brewers, the news fell flat. "We would hope they would pick a family-owned, American beer to lubricate the conversation," said Bill Manley, a spokesman for the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., a California-based brewer that happens to be family-owned.
Flat as yesterday's beer.

Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams, decried "the foreign domination of something so basic and important to our culture as beer."
Beer is a part of American culture. What could I add?
Genesee Brewery, Rochester, N.Y., released a statement congratulating the president for having beer at the meeting but adding: "We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee."

Jenny cream ale.

Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Congressman who has also written the White House amid the beer ferment, also hopes the meeting will promote beer-drinking nationalism. In a not-so-subtle dig at Bud, he said he knew he and the president "both share a common interest in fostering the success of American-headquartered companies."



In general, the White House strives to showcase American food, wines and traditional concoctions at official meals and parties. Sometimes, even menu items with a foreign provenance are Americanized. In the George W. Bush White House, a favorite chocolate dessert was referred to not as a French-style soufflé, but as a "chocolate freedom."

Can freedom fall flat if it is taken out of the oven too quickly? [Awmygawd!]

Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew, The Story of American Beer," said that by holding the summit, the President risks criticism from groups working to persuade the public to drink less alcohol.

Some people have way too much time on their hands.

For instance, there is the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which led the fight for Prohibition in the early 20th century. Rita K. Wert, the group's national president, said her organization is disappointed that the president is serving beer at all. "There are so many other beverages he could have chosen that would have served just as well," she said, mentioning lemonade or iced tea.

A Man's Home Is His Constitutional Castle

There are the things you can try when confronted by a cop, and there are the things that you can't—or had better not. Last Memorial Day, I was going in a taxi down to Washington, D.C.'s Vietnam Memorial when a police car cut across the traffic and slammed everything to a halt. Opening the window and asking what the problem was and how long it might last, I was screeched at by a stringy-haired, rat-faced blond beast, who acted as if she had been waiting all year for the chance to hurt someone. (She was wearing a uniform that I had helped pay for.) I often have a hard time keeping my trap shut, but I saw at once that this damaged creature was aching for trouble and that it would cost me days rather than hours if I supplied her with any back chat.

Back chat sounds so much more innocuous than back talk.

Gates has a limp that partly accounts for his childhood nickname and is slight and modest in demeanor. Moreover, whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that he should in that home be handcuffed, and then taken downtown, after it had been plainly established that he was indeed the householder. The president should certainly have kept his mouth closed about the whole business—he is a senior law officer with a duty of impartiality, not the micro-manager of our domestic disputes—but once he had said that the police conduct was "stupid," he ought to have stuck to it, quite regardless of the rainbow of shades that was so pathetically and opportunistically deployed by the Cambridge Police Department. It is the U.S. Constitution, and not some competitive agglomeration of communities or constituencies, that makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right. And such rights cannot be negotiated away over beer.

Gotcha!

A very interesting take on the current story of the Professor and the Cop.


Gotcha! Henry Gates, Jr. arrested by the victim of a tarnished myth

By Bob Sommer, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices panelist

Taking on the police in the post-9/11 era means dealing with a lot more than Frank Serpico faced 35 years ago when he took down a heavily-corrupted New York City police department. At great personal risk Serpico faced the unwavering fraternal code of police loyalty, “Thou shalt not rat out a fellow police officer”—that and a lot of self-interest. But in the 1970s, police departments didn’t have the popular image they do now, when uniforms and flags and New York’s “singing cop,” Daniel Rodriguez, evoke tears almost at their mention. Last week, however, we all had a chance to witness the reserves of mythology that police can now call upon when their behavior is questioned.

Traveling to and from Boston during the week, I witnessed the coverage of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s arrest on local TV, as well as the reaction of travelers in several airports and squeezed into a few airplanes. With the help of highly solicitous and cooperative local and national media outlets, the Cambridge police department quickly ordered its narrative, made sure Sgt. Crowley could recite it, and kicked into gear. Reporters almost slobbered on their shoes as the scripted lines were recounted, and they reliably presented the desired imagery as it was presented to them.

Officers lined up square-shouldered and grimly serious for press conferences. Their image as infallible--as heroes--had been tarnished by an insult. Flags and seals and lapel pins and starched uniforms, the armament of the myth, were drawn into a defensive posture. All of the symbols which ever since 2001 are certain to evoke the unexpected tear, the sudden quake of emotion, as well as unquestioning respect and acceptance, were on display to win the publicity battle, for despite what anyone may say about “learning moments” or “conversations” or even “investigations,” this issue would heard and decided in a few short days in the court of public opinion; and the Cambridge police department, and now all of the police departments that have come to their aid with no more information than President Obama at least admitted he had, knows this.

And it worked. I watched at airport gates as the TV monitors ran endless loops about the incident—watched the response all around me. People stopped, watched for just a few moments, and shook their heads skeptically, cynically. What’s the world come to that this police officer, “just doing his job,” should be subjected to this?! I saw and even caught looks and stray comments from other white people affirming the righteousness of the now-victimized cop and his actions when he arrested Gates, because whatever he and his police chief and all police officers said happened is what happened.

Gates failed to cooperate as a black man should, as Sidney Poitier’s character did when he was arrested in The Heat of the Night, showing respect and deference. If this hadn’t been the most pre-eminent scholar of African-American Studies in the country, we never would have known about this incident—but that was partly Gates’s point. Absent his notoriety, a middle-aged black man would have been taken from his own home for no other offense than claiming his right to be where he was—and saying so in a tone to which tone Crowley took offense. No law was broken. But a cop took umbrage. Yet we’re more inclined, even eager, to believe the word of a unknown cop than that of a respected professor.

Gates was hired at Duke University about 25 years ago, when I was near the end of my graduate work there. In today’s New York Times, Prof. Stanley Fish, who as the English department chair hired Gates, recounts his experience at Duke, when the pre-eminent historian John Hope Franklin was also on the Duke faculty, just one flight down from the English department. I never met Gates (though I did meet Fish), but I did read his work and had occasion later in my career to assign his 1987 textbook The Classic Slave Narratives. To say it wasn’t a hard call to give Gates the benefit of the doubt when his arrest first became public is an understatement. For most of those who shook their heads in sympathy with Sgt. Crowley’s victimhood, I just wonder what would be their response to being arrested and handcuffed as they tried to unjam a swollen door in their own homes. Perhaps the neighbor who called in the incident can shed some light here.

Police tactics vary

Sgt. James M. Crowley, left, at a news conference Friday.








Police departments issue their officers Kevlar vests to stop bullets, and thick helmets and even shields to protect them from bottles and bricks. But there is nothing in the equipment room to give an officer thicker skin. That tool — as vital to an officer’s safety and the public’s as anything clipped to his belt — is developed in training, and its strength differs from one officer to the next.

The issue of tolerance, in fact, lies at the heart of the dispute surrounding the arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, Mass. The police say Professor Gates was arrested and briefly charged with disorderly conduct after he ignored warnings to stop haranguing an officer who had asked him for identification inside his home.

Though Professor Gates said he was not abusive and was the victim of racism, the police report said he told Sgt. James M. Crowley, “I’ll speak with your mama outside.”

Two people have very different versions of the incident.

Several officers interviewed in four cities on Friday said they tried to ignore such remarks. Others said they had zero tolerance for being treated disrespectfully in public.

Respect: I insist on it, but have some tolerance for it not being fully accorded. However, a police officer has a significantly more delicate, touchy.

A mounted police officer who has been with the Los Angeles Police Department for 25 years said that taking verbal abuse was a regular part of his job.

“We don’t get to tell people what they want to hear,” said the Los Angeles officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being quoted on duty. “Whether we’re giving them a ticket or responding to some conflict between a husband and wife, we’re not dealing with people at their best, and if you don’t have a tough skin, then you shouldn’t be a cop.”

Excellent point.

“I wouldn’t back down if there’s a crowd gathering,” the Brooklyn officer said, in part out of concern of sending a message of weakness that could haunt another officer later. “We’re a band of brothers. We have to be there to help each other out. If there’s a group and they’re throwing out slurs and stuff, you have to handle it.”

A 13-year veteran of the Denver police force, who did not wish to give his name, said likewise. “We’re not going to take abuse,” he said. “We have to remain in control. We’re running the show.”

Running the show?

But Robert Anderson, with the same department five years, said he tried to “let people vent” if they grew irate. “People usually aren’t happy to see the police,” he said. “They’d rather see a fireman.”

Cops and firefighters were many of the Little League coaches I knew, and his point is spot-on.

In New York, State Senator Eric Adams, a retired New York City police captain and co-founder of the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, said the rules for dealing with someone differed by setting.

“If it’s their house, they’re allowed to call you all sorts of names,” Mr. Adams said. “A man’s house is his castle. If they’re in the street, and they don’t listen to the officer’s warning, ‘Sir, you’re being disorderly,’ you can lock them up at this time.”

Not that the officer necessarily should, he said.

“Let’s say I do a stop,” Mr. Adams said. “I question, and it’s nothing. ‘Sir, I’m sorry, I apologize.’ What’s the reason for staying, if the anger’s directed at me? If it’s directed at a third party, a storekeeper, I stay.”

But if the officer himself is the provocation, the officer should leave, he said, and added that Sergeant Crowley did not use such common sense.

The Sargeant and The Professor

Seems a perfect plotline for a story.

Obama regrets remarks in racially charged case

President Barack Obama backed down on Friday from a statement that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting a black scholar in a racially charged case that was rapidly becoming a distraction for Obama.

This is proof of the savvy and political smarts of the Obama team. He should not have characterized any aspect of the incident, and he knew it: in his press conference he stated that he did "not know all the facts." Yet he went on to characterize the behavior of Cambridge police as "stupid." Aside from giving fodder to the right-wing nuts, and those people bray all the time, the incident was getting legs. So he defused it.

The president made a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing room shortly after he spoke by phone to Cambridge, Massachusetts, police Sgt. James Crowley, who had arrested Henry Louis Gates, a prominent scholar of African-American studies at Harvard, last week.

"Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama said. "And I could have calibrated those words differently."

Just as the wise Latina, Judge Sotomayor, recalibrated her own words.

Crowley suggested Obama invite him and Gates, to the White House for a peace-making beer, and a plan was in the works to do so, Obama said.

For Obama, who took office as the first U.S. black president in January. the incident was a distraction when his signature legislative priority, a healthcare overhaul, was stalling in the U.S. Congress. Obama said he hoped the event would end up being a "teachable moment, where all of us instead of pumping up the volume spend a little more time listening to each other" and improve race relations "instead of flinging accusations."

Indeed.

"Lord knows we need it right now -- because over the last two days as we've discussed this issue, I don't know if you've noticed, but nobody has been paying much attention to health care," he said.

They noticed at the White House, too. This defuses the incident, makes the President look good, and refocuses the discussion,

2 New York stories

Testy Bloomberg Calls Reporter a ‘Disgrace’ - He is the undisputed front-runner in November’s election. He is the richest man in the city. So why does Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keep losing his temper?

Because he's a bully. Accustomed to having it all go his way, in adversity he finds patience difficult.

... on Thursday, he seemed to reach new heights of peevishness ...

Peevishness: an irritable petulant feeling; petulant: easily irritated or annoyed

At a news conference in Queens, Azi Paybarah, a reporter for The New York Observer, asked the mayor whether an improving economy would undercut his reasoning for seeking a third term. Mr. Bloomberg had argued, during the battle over term limits, that tough times required his steady hand and business background.

Which is nonsense.

Yet at the Queens news conference, Mr. Bloomberg said he was “very optimistic” about New York’s economy. (Thus Mr. Paybarah’s question.)

A good question.

Mr. Bloomberg cut off Mr. Paybarah midsentence, saying that “the rationale for extending term limits is, the City Council passed it, and the public’s going to have a chance on Nov. 3 to say what they want.”

The rationale he offers is nonsense, misleading, and a lie. He insisted the Council amend term limits that citizens voted in, bullied them into doing so, and got his way because of a spineless, ineffective City Council.

“I don’t think we have to keep coming back to that,” he said, adding, “When you have a serious question about the economy, I’d be happy to answer it.”

That question was a good one, because it probes the very rationale the Mayor offered for extending term limits. He just didn't want to answer it.

With that, the mayor concluded the news conference, thanked the audience, stepped away from a microphone and looked directly at Mr. Paybarah. “You’re a disgrace,” he snarled, nearly under his breath, but just loud enough to be captured by reporters’ tape recorders.

Later a spokesperson apologized. The fact remains Bloomberg is techy, short-tempered, and a bully.


Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times - Michael Mineo’s lawyers say his civil rights were violated, and are seeking $220 million.


A 24-year-old man who prosecutors say was brutalized by a group of uniformed police officers inside a Brooklyn subway station last October filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Thursday against the city, the Police Department and four officers.

The midday attack on the man, Michael Mineo, led to indictments in December against three of the four officers named in the suit, including one who prosecutors said shoved his retractable baton repeatedly between Mr. Mineo’s buttocks, ripping his skin and causing him to bleed.

A spokesman for Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said the criminal trial for the three officers — Richard Kern, Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales — was scheduled to begin in September, with the next court date Sept. 15.

Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, Kevin L. Mosley and Stephen C. Jackson, filed the suit in United States District Court in Brooklyn. It seeks a total of $220 million in damages from the defendants

PINK WAR Un manifestante disfrazado de soldado imperial de la Guerra de las Galaxias se encara con policías durante una manifestación en el exterior del Banco de Inglaterra, un día antes de la cumbre del G20

A demonstrator disguised as an imperial soldier of the War of the Galaxies faces police during a demonstration outside the Bank of England, one day before the G20 summit.

Can the police believe what they are seeing?

You can't make this up

Boy’s Impersonation of Chicago Officer to Bring Discipline for 7 on Force

Seven police officers here will be disciplined for failing to detect a 14-year-old boy’s impersonation of a police officer for five hours, including driving a patrol car and pulling a suspect’s arm behind his back so officers could handcuff him.

These cops must be real putzes, if they worked with a 14-year-old and didn't realize he was a teenager.

The Chicago police superintendent, Jody P. Weis ... said the teenager slipped past officers at the Grand Crossing police station on the South Side on Jan. 24, arriving in a store-bought uniform with neither a badge nor identification. The impersonation ended at 7:40 p.m. when the teenager’s identity was questioned and he was arrested.

Good thing someone was awake.

The department has posted the photographs of the accused police impersonators on its Web site, www.chicagopolice.org, with the exception of the 14-year-old.

4 police killed outside Zihuatanejo

Mata comando a 4 policías en Zihuatanejo
Rafael Rivera Millán / Corresponsal - El Universal
Zihuatanejo, Gro.
Miércoles 25 de febrero de 2009

Ataca un grupo armado con rifles AK-47 y AR-15 a una patrulla municipal, durante una persecución en la comunidad de San Miguelito

Un ataque sorpresivo a policías municipales abordo de la patrulla PX53, por parte de unos 10 sujetos armados con rifles AK-47 y AR-15, dejó como saldo cuatro uniformados muertos y calcinados, pues la unidad en que viajaban se incendió al recibir más de 200 disparos de ese tipo de armas.

De acuerdo a los primeros datos proporcionados por la Dirección de Seguridad Pública Municipal, los hechos ocurrieron alrededor de las seis de la tarde de este miércoles, sobre la carretera federal 200 Zihuatanejo-Acapulco, en el entronque a San Miguelito, a unos 20 kilómetros de Zihuatanejo.

Los uniformados venían de un recorrido de rutina, cuando al llegar al entronque carretero citado fueron sorprendidos por más de 10 sujetos, quienes los comenzaron a rafaguear con sus rifles "cuerno de chivo" y AR-15 matando de varios balazos policías, cuyos cuerpos quedaron calcinados porque la unidad se incendió al recibir los disparos, en tanto los sicarios se daban a la fuga.

Media hora más tarde, no se sabe si los mismos sujetos u otros, rafaguearon el módulo 05 ubicado a la entrada de Zihuatanejo, frente a Agua de Correa, a unos 15 kilómetros del entronque de San Miguelito, pero solo hicieron daño al inmueble, sin que ningún elemento policial resultara herido.

En estos momentos todo es confusión en este puerto turístico, por el ulular de las sirenas de patrullas de diversas corporaciones y de ambulancias de los distintos cuerpos de socorro.

Al lugar también han hecho presencia militares y marinos, quienes desarrollan un fuerte operativo para tratar de dar con los ataques de los uniformados.

Hasta el momento solo se sabe que uno de los 4 policías muertos y calcinados es el comandante Mateo Bejar, quien estaba al mando de la patrulla PX53.

The crew of the narco sub

El Universal reports that the presumed narcotrafficers detained in Oaxaca while a minisub filled with drugs was detained/caught in natioinal waters were transferred/moved in a forceful operation to the installations of SIEDO in the Federal District.

SIEDO stands for Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada, which is something along the lines of the Assistant Attorney of Investigation Specialized in Organized Crime (Deliquency).

Los presuntos narcotraficantes detenidos en Oaxaca, durante el aseguramiento de un minisubmarino cargado con droga en aguas nacionales fueron trasladados en medio de un fuerte operativo a las instalaciones de la SIEDO en el DF