You can’t disagree with his on tax and spend policies, because that’s racist.

You can’t disagree with him on health care, because that’s racist.

You can’t disagree with him when he opens his mouth about things he knows nothing about, because that’s racist.

And when he blames Bush for all of his problems, you must sit there and let him do it, otherwise you’re a racist.

To be fair to the left, though, they would have done virtually the same thing had Hillary won the election, only instead of calling you a racist, they would have called you sexist. See how that works?

“The actions of the Cambridge Police Department, and in particular, Sgt. Joseph Crowley, were 100 percent correct,” said Hugh Cameron, president of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police. “He was responding to a report of two men breaking into a home. The police cannot just drive by the house and say, ‘Looks like everything is OK.’

“Sgt. Crowley was carrying out his duty as a law enforcement officer protecting the property of Professor Gates, and he was accused of being a racist,” Cameron added. “The situation would have been over in five minutes if Professor Gates cooperated with the officer. Unfortunately, the situation we are in now is the environment police work in now.”

Jim Carnell, a union representative for the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said cops are “furious at the way Crowley is being vilified.”

“The officer’s mindset when going in there is, ‘Why was he breaking down the door?’ Maybe there is a restraining order in place. Maybe Harvard University, who owns the house, changed the locks for some reason. The officer’s job is to make sure everything is on the up-and-up,” Carnell said.

“Mr. Gates should be grateful that the police responded and explained himself with some civil discourse,” Carnell added. “It would have ended there. Instead, his arrogant, combative behavior gave the cops cause to wonder that something else was going on.”

That’s precisely what I thought when I first read about the story. Why was he breaking into his own home? Was there something or someone there that he wasn’t supposed to be around, or was he evicted or something? It just didn’t add up. And it didn’t have anything to do with race.

Now, we’ve all locked ourselves out of our homes at one time or another. Without fail, some neighbor will call the police or, at the very least, come over to see what you’re doing and who you are. While some people hate having neighbors like that, I don’t mind at all. I’d RATHER have neighbors like that, to be honest, who are willing to call the police if they think something is going on, rather than just sitting back and saying “It’s none of my business.”

As for those who are saying that once Gates produced his i.d., the matter should have ended there, well, that’s true to a certain extent…it SHOULD have. But we’re not even certain that he did produce i.d. at all (I’ve seen articles that say he did, and some that say he didn’t). And even if he did, it didn’t answer the question of why he was breaking into his own home in the first place. Did he just say “I locked myself out of the house, officer” or did he say “It’s none of your damn business”? If it was the first, then that would have answered their questions (or most of them, at least). If it was the second one (and I’ve seen some pieces that say that’s basically the way he reacted), then that doesn’t help matters and, in fact, raises more questions that need to be answered.

Consider this*: say Gates was going through a bitter divorce. He’s been ordered not to have contact with his soon-to-be ex-wife. In a fit of rage or whatever, he decides to go to the house she’s living in (which he owns), break in, and then beat the crap out of her or whatever. The police respond (before he’s had a chance to do anything but break in), are told “it’s my house” and shown proof that it is his home. Leaving it at that, they then depart, leaving him to do what he came to do (beat is estranged wife). Do you think the left would be happy with that scenario? Of course not, they would be screaming bloody murder over it (and justifiably so).

Yet for all intents and purposes, the police would have done exactly what Gates and the left wanted them to do, albeit in a completely different situation. They would have responded to a possible breaking and entering, told that he was the owner, and then left without asking any further questions, leaving any potential victims to their fate. The fact that there was no victim or “other situation” is beside the point. The police had no way of knowing what was going on unless they investigated why he was breaking into his own home.

In addition to that, he was openly and overtly hostile to them asking him a few simple questions. Seems to me the only racism here was by Gates, who assumed that simply because he’s black, he’s being unfairly treated. The police would have done the exact same thing whether he was white, black, gay, or a combination of all three. In other words, he wasn’t arrested because his color was the issue, he was arrested because he chose to make his color the issue. If he would have simply told them that he locked himself out of his house, showed his i.d., and left it at that, that would have been the end of it. Instead, he decided to play the race card. And this was the result.

*I want to make it clear that I’m not suggesting Gates is getting divorced or anything like that, nor am I calling him a “wife beater” or the like. I’m simply pointing out that there could have been something else going and that the police had every right — indeed, it was their duty — to find out what the situation really was before leaving the premises.

And, for the record, I don’t think the officer in question is a racist. The facts prove he is not.

Update: In thinking about this further, I was reminded of Chris Rock’s famous comedy bit “How To Not Get Your A$$ Kicked By The Police”. Comedy and race-baiting issues aside, it does apply here, in that you won’t have a problem with the law unless you give them problems to begin with. In other words, unless you are indeed breaking the law and have something to hide, just use some common sense and you’ll be fine and the situation will be resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.

(Warning: strong language!):

Update #2: Newsbusters managed to save the police report before the Boston Globe scrubbed it from their site. If it’s true (and I have no doubt that it is, as the neighbor evidently backs up the story), then it is Gates who was the problem here, and not the police.

Update #3: This just keeps getting better and better:

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.

So much for that meme, eh?

But wait, it gets better. Gates still won’t back off and admit he went off the deep end, here:

Gates has said he was “outraged” by the arrest. He said the white officer walked into his home without his permission and only arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, repeatedly demanding the sergeant’s name and badge number because he was unhappy over his treatment.

“This isn’t about me; this is about the vulnerability of black men in America,” Gates said.

He said the incident made him realize how vulnerable poor people and minorities are “to capricious forces like a rogue policeman, and this man clearly was a rogue policeman.”

Here’s a little tip, courtesy of my 40 years of living in the real world and dealing with people all the time: when someone says something like “this isn’t about the money”, it sure as hell is. Likewise, when they say “this isn’t about me”, I guarantee you it is (Obama must say that exact phrase twice a week, I think, and we know it’s all about him, always was and always will be). This entire episode is about Mr. Gates and his knee-jerk liberal reaction, and how fellow liberals will support him without question, up to and including the President of the United States.

And yet they have the nerve to call us conservatives “sheep”. Pfft.

Others commenting:

Patterico
Michelle Malkin
Stop The ACLU
Don Surber
Hot Air (here and here)
Gateway Pundit
Jammie Wearing Fool
The Other McCain

It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend’s home in South Akron.

Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ”This is our world” and ”This is a black world” as they confronted Marshall and his family.

The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.

So you have a racially-motivated attack, but will the left call it a hate crime? Probably not, because to liberals, hate crimes can only be attacks against minorities, gays, and Democrats. See, it doesn’t work both ways, as the recent SCOTUS decision made clear. There’s no such thing, to a liberal, as hate crimes or discrimination against whites.

For what it’s worth, I think the term “hate crime” is stupid. It’s either a crime or it isn’t and, if it is, then the full weight of the law should be brought to bear against the perps. The victim is no more or no less victimized because of his skin color or sexual preferences. Justice, as the saying goes, should be blind.

Update: Just so we’re clear on this, I feel that the entire “hate crime” agenda is based on political correctness and thought control. What legislation like this does, basically, is to make it illegal to have a certain type of thought. Until laws like this starting going on the books, it wasn’t against the law to say or believe certain things, regardless of whether they were right or wrong.

Take this latest round of political correctness, for example:

First it was the National Hispanic Media Coalition calling on the FCC to probe what it feels is hate speech by conservative talk radio hosts. The group claims it isolated 334 incidents of hate speech by John & Ken of KFI, Los Angeles, Michael Savage, and Lou Dobbs in eighty minutes of tape.

Then it was minority groups petitioning the FCC to investigate the new radio ratings system called the Portable People Meter because they feel it under represents the ratings on urban radio stations and is unfair. The meter can’t lie and registers in real time what radio stations those who wear the device are hearing. Make sure all groups are fairly represented and all should be fine.

Now, midgets want the FCC to ban the word “midget.” This latest controversy erupted following an April episode of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” in which contestents, including Joan Rivers suggested “bathing midgets in detergent and hanging them out to dry.” Now, the “Little People of America” are asking the FCC to ban the word “midget” from broadcast airwaves because it is demeaning.

Now, I’m not saying for a minute that it’s ok to make fun of midgets or any other group, but what is the problem with using the word? Seriously, I want an answer. It’s like using the word “retarded” to describe a mentally handicapped person. There is nothing at all with that word (as opposed to calling some person a retard), yet it’s forbidden in this day and age, lest we offend someone.

Quite simply, whenever a liberal talks about “hate crimes” what they’re really talking about it thought control. You never, ever hear of a hate crime against a white, heterosexual male because, by definition (liberal definition, anyway), that’s simply not possible. Liberals don’t believe there can be such a thing as reverse discrimination or the like.

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The “Empowerment Experiment” is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

“We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point … but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis,” Maggie Anderson said. “It’s like, my people have been here 400 years and we don’t even have a Walgreens to show for it.”

Now, imagine if you will if this was a couple who had decided to patronize only white-owned businesses. Do you think people would be ok with that, or do you think there’d be some foaming-at-the-mouth outrage from the left? Would it be a hate-crime? The left cries about racism every single day, but they only think that racism is when a white person says something bad about Obama. It doesn’t work that way. Racism can be — and often is — when a person or group of one color purposely chooses to discriminate against those of another color. And that clearly is the case here.

I’m all for supporting small business owners whenever possible, but I’m not going to drive 14 miles just to get a bottle of shampoo, I don’t care who’s selling it or what color they are.