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How to Talk to a Cop
Opinionator —
... and the police-state authoritarianism now cherished by Cheney Republicans has rarely been better explained. You live in a free country. The police are your employees. You pay their salary.” Christopher Hitchens makes a similar constitutional argument in Slate: “ Professor Gates should have taken his stand on the Bill of Rights and not on his epidermis or that of the arresting officer, and, if he didn’t have the presence of mind to do so, that needn’t inhibit the rest of us.” Whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that ...
"I was now almost intoxicated by my mere possession of constitutional rights."
Stubborn Facts —
Hitch, on how Professor Gates ought to have handled his situation:
I can easily see how a black neighbor could have called the police when seeing professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. trying to push open the front door of his own house. And I can equally easily visualize a thuggish or oversensitive black cop answering the call. And I can also see how long it might take the misunderstanding to dawn on both parties. But 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 ...
Maybe Gates should have stood on civil liberties rather than race
Hot Air » Top Picks —
... Henry Gates erred, says Christopher Hitchens in a must-read Slate piece , by assuming to know the motivations in a police officer’s heart when Gates found himself under arrest for screaming at Sergeant James Crowley from his own property. Instead, Gates should have avoided motivation altogether and stuck to the strange notion that venting one’s frustration on one’s own property could result in an arrest for disorderly conduct. Civil liberty and free speech are the issue, Hitchens insists, and not race: I can easily see how a black neighbor could have called the police when ...
Disorderly Conduct: Conversation About Gates Arrest Precedes Arrest
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... sue if he's not satisfied after a meeting with the complaint office on Thursday.
"I have an actionable claim," he said.
The Huffington Post obtained a copy of the collateral/bond receipt that lists the charge, but the D.C. Police Department declined to comment and the arresting officer did not answer or return calls to the station.
While the Gates incident has largely been treated as a story about race, many have noted, from the Los Angeles Times to Christopher Hitchens to Maureen Dowd, that the incident said as much about police use of ...
Since I Have Raised the Gates Incident…
PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts —
... likely to obey the officer’s request or engage the police in a loud and drunken late-night debate. The man may protest loudly that the officer has no reason to lock him up. If a crowd gathers or lights in neighboring buildings turn on, he may be arrested for disorderly conduct.
As Henry notes, perhaps the similarity between the events at Gates’ home and the method described about is mere coincidence, but I have my doubts.
Along those lines I agree with Christopher Hitchens
whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own ...
Who can wave the Bible? &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Articles on National Review Online —
... Care for some language? The other day, I was reading a Christopher Hitchens column, about the Henry Louis Gates affair, and raised my eyebrows at this sentence: “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.” Hitchens is very careful with language, in addition to being notably good with it: but “monstrous in the extreme”? If that handcuffing, etc., was monstrous in the extreme -- what is left over for that which is ...
