Do you honestly believe 54% of people have any clue about what's going on with health care let alone support it?

I'm sure they aren't ready to debate the language of the bill, but that wasn't the question. MBBF said that the President needs to put out policies people support and almost every poll(except the one who shan't be named) shows the public does support the outlines of the legislation that's being debated.

Which is a silly poll question because even the people debating the bill don't know 1/2 of what's in the blessed thing. They should have added a follow-up question asking what percentage of those people even know what's in 10 pages of that bill, nonetheless the whole thing. The 'outline' (which is pretty generic and not specific when used in that question) is little more than a fantasy. That usually involves rhetoric saying 'I want a health care system where Grandma Maude and the cripple down the street have the same health care opportunities as Bill Gates'. That's great in theory and everyone agrees with it, but it's not practical. What's actually in the bill is what matters.

So it's equally silly to conclude there's anything substantial behind a supposed drop in support for Obama on healthcare (because people don't understand it).

Like... you... did....

so polls dont matter than since the questions are bunk so you have no way to gauge whether or not there is 'Vast' amounts of support or not sans your microcosm around the lunchroom, eh?

cite a poll when it works for you and slam a poll when it doesnt. awesome. partisan and awesome.

Oh, I totally agree. But you're mistaken regarding me bringing up a poll. My original point had nothing to do with and cited no polls. JPhillips chose that line of argument. I think it's a waste of time, but he wanted to take that path, so I'm more than happy to follow along if that's what interests him. He insinuated that there was universal support in polls outside of Rasmussen, which simply isn't true.

So you had no basis for saying,

unless public and sees doesnt mean 50%+1

I'd guess at least 33% support it simply because it's something Obama wants.

The general concensus that I've seen from MSM coverage and overall polling data is that it's a 50/50 split at best. That's not good support IMO, especially given the electoral mandate behind this president. Do you disagree with that and believe that there is large support for his policies thus far? I disagree with that if you do.

I think your 50/50 at best is off given that even the WaPo poll shows 54% support for the outlines of the current legislation, but regardless, if you get to define "people support" as less than 50% than I guess you're right.

Congress has an approval rating of like 15% and Obama has one of 60%. Why would they not want him to be the guy pushing through the health care policy?

It's always like that though. There are still people who support the Iraq War. There will always be that tight knit part of the base who just believes whatever they are told to. I'd say it's less than 33% though and more like 20%.

I always wonder how any of these people get re-elected with low approval ratings. Although, guess it is more of a 'My guy isn't the problem, it's yours'

Just for the record, Mr. Obama appeared on cue at 12:22 PM today. We laughed as usual. He rarely misses a lunch date. Appearance at a children's hospital today.

I think the low general approval has to do with the partisan hatred towards the leaders on the other side that have been there forever calling the shots. So you're right in that sense.

Don't really think it's partisian. It's a mix of two things. People generally like their representative but don't like the others. It's why we have an issue with spending. Everyone wants it cut back except when it comes to their district.

The other being that gerrymandered districts leaves very few options (if any) come election time.

So it's his fault the media follows him around? Every President does these appearances daily for various things. Obama gets followed around for ratings. Just as after 9/11, everything Bush did got massive media attention.

Oh, I don't think there's any question that the 24/7 news networks are a big part of that. With that said, anyone who thinks that the regularly scheduled lunchtime news conferences aren't a planned part of their PR is fooling themselves. There's a reason he pops on nearly every day during the lunch hour. They know people are watching. The problem, as I iterated in my original post, is that it may be TOO much.

I have little doubt that if I start documenting his lunchtime appearances, I'll be much more accurate than JPhillips would like you to believe.

Let's hope he doesn't try to read them a book.

Ping: Pet Peeve thread

MBBF: If you want to catalogue the next 60 days by all means do so. You stated almost every day, so if he's answering questions or giving a speech at lunch on 50 of those sixty days I will gladly give you credit.

I'm not interested in proving you wrong by any means as much as I'm just curious. I really think that if I keep track of my next 60 days at lunch, 50 of them will have Obama on a news network making a small speech of some sort judging from previous experience. I'd also note that competition probably fuels the increased sightings as well. MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are all on various TV's in the lunch area. If one has Obama on, they all have Obama on no matter how trivial the speech. None want to be one-upped by the other.

I think they are a better judge of what's "too much". They most likely have a lot of polling data they go off to and follow regularly.

The lunchtime press conference is par for the course. The Bush Administration had one daily discussing the war (as well as after 9/11). The coverage stopped when his approval ratings sunk so low that it was just best to keep him out of the public eye. I don't think it matters who the President is though, they'll be out all the time and they'll be doing the lunchtime press conferences, especially during such troubling times.

Silly me, I thought the birth certificate thing didn't have any legs. Poor Rep. Castle looks like he's been punched in the balls. The amazing thing is how many there seem to agree with the crazy lady.

Great opinion article in the NYT:
Op-Ed Columnist - Liberal Suicide March - NYTimes.com

Yeah, it's an opinion, but it's a very well-formed opinion. Seems to be an accurate assessment of the current situation.

Brooks is normally more honest than this. The marginal rates mean squat as what's important is the effective rates. Effective Federal tax rates for the top one percent were around 31% in 2006. Being against the health surtax is a valid position, but saying taxes will be worse than France is hackery.

Details aside, his point about the Democrats blowing their post-Bush political capital seems spot-on.

That was friggin hilarious.

Maybe that will be grounds for the Freeper Revolution that's coming.

I normally like Brooks (and recommend NPR's Brooks vs. E.J. Dionne every Friday afternoon on All Things Considered - with the segment being available on the website each week), but he's taking some sharp angles to get to those conclusions.


Yes and no. As I've stated previously, I don't believe the current (2006-present) GOP malaise will last indefinitely. It hasn't in the past, and it won't happen in the future. The only open question is whether the GOP will rise from the ashes to grab the imaginations of the public or if the Democrats will self-destruct down to a level that makes the GOP electorally relevant again.

While it's true that most of the Democrats on Capitol Hill (and Republicans, for that matter) live within their own cocoon of polling and echo chambers, it's hyperbole to say the party is a) completely led by them and b) that those who are leading are generally just from the coasts and the big cities. In fact, I expected more from Brooks than perpetuating this "liberal coasts" meme. The last couple of elections have shown that the Democrats are a bigger tent than that, and it's a bit rich of Brooks to overlook that.


Other polls don't show anywhere near as much of a slide (including WSJ polls out today). For someone who paragraphs before took the Democrats to task for living in their own polling world, it's interesting that he cherry picks his polls as opposed to even just aggregating them.


The rest of the piece is interesting, but I think he's overstating things. As I said in my "Hopes & Predictions" post (probably on page 2 or 3 of this thread), I kind of assumed that the House & Senate leadership would end up at loggerheads with Obama at some point and it looks like my prediction (not my hope, alas) is coming to fruition.

It would have been more interesting had Brooks delved deeper into this development, instead of just concluding that Obama's been content to follow the lead of House & Senate leadership, which just isn't the case if you look behind the scenes. Clearly you can sense the frustration in the Executive Branch with Pelosi, Reid, et. al., especially when you consider it was Obama who brought the landslide in November, not the much-maligned leadership of Congress.


As a Democrat, my frustration lies with the House & Senate leadership, who seem to be still playing political games instead of getting real work done. They're trying to craft legislation that gives goodies to all of their allies and spin it as good & fiscally responsible, all the while ignoring the much better proposals coming out of the White House. And in so doing they're further alienating the fiscal conservative Democrats (who have been a big part of the new Democratic blood on Capitol Hill the past few elections) and potential moderate allies on the GOP side.

All of which is crazy, given their majorities. Why continue to play spinning games when you've just come off an election where you trounced the competition? Are they really worried they don't have the votes for this kind of thing? I didn't see Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich or Tip O'Neill ever worry about that BS. "You vote against the party, son, and I'll take so much away from you that all you'll do each day is sit in your office and answer letters from constituents."

The fact is that there's probably a lot less distance between Obama's technocrats and the Blue Dogs and moderate GOPers than there is between those three groups and the Congressional leadership. At the core of a lot of Obama's proposals is the requirement to measure the outcomes of programs, and to ensure accountability, ideas that I think a lot of fiscal moderates & conservatives can (and should) get behind as they come directly from the private sector where you do, in fact, have to balance your books.

Such a concept is simply beyond most Congresscritters (of either party), especially those who have been there far too long. So anyway, it would have been interesting for Brooks to focus on that some more, but mostly his ends up being too much of a partisan piece this time around.

Obama daily lunch appearance at 11:52 AM today in front of the White House. 2/2.

Any talk on Obama's Gitmo policy being postponed another 6 months? After all the hatred of Bush over this, you figure they would have worked out how to deal with it by now...

From a hatred standpoint, bear in mind that there's a different between a President that's working towards the solution you want, even if it is taking more time than expected, and a President that was actively resisting the solution you want.

It's a lot easier to blame the guy who made the fuckup then the guy who is having a hard time untangling the fuckup.

My point is more along the lines that maybe this wasn't as easy or as cut-and-dried as everyone wanted to make it out to be when attacking Bush over it.

We primarily attacked Bush over it when Gitmo was still full of a) innocent cab drivers and b) people who could be successfully cycled through the civilian court system. Once that stuff got taken care of, perhaps the urgency dried up, but how could you expect people in 2008 to believe Bush's claim that "it isn't that simple" when he said that when Gitmo was full of innocent cab drivers (I'm using hyperbole here, of course)?

Plus, Obama's made a goal of resolving it, regardless of how not cut-and-dried it is, while Bush never had a goal of resolving it, which makes it completely different.

Context matters here, a lot.

I think that could be applied as a general statement to most of Obama's campaign promises at this point. Gitmo, stimulus, health coverage, cap and trade to name a few. None appear to be as cut and dried as he made them out to be during the campaign.

That's an opinion stated as fact. Why resolve what is already resolved? It was far from unanamous that something was necesarily broken.

I don't think that surprises anyone even vaguely familiar with the concept of "campaign promises".

That's rich, coming from you.


When there's a spate of Supreme Court cases that indicate you've done something wrong, and when you happen to be a Republican and even Antonin Scalia agrees you've done something wrong, then it's probably not resolved.

I think I've been more cautious in my comments of late to avoid that.


Sure, there are exceptions within the ranks at Gitmo, but as Mr. Obama has already found out and readily admitted, there are going to be a number of prisoners that we will keep in jail indefinitely without trial, which is a direct contradiction to his campaign promise. He made a promise that simply could not be delivered.

Considering it appears Congress is leading Obama around by the nose rather than the other way around, I don't think so. Though I do realize why some Democrats may think Brooks' article unfair. He is a conservative though, even though he may be the left's favorite conservative. So every once in a while he may tell the facts the left doesn't want to hear. ;)

SHOCKED, I SAY!

Why is this EVEN Scalia comment included? After all, Scalia has gone much further than SCOTUS justices like Breyer on detainee rights (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld). Are we going to start calling Breyer a right winger now?

His promise was to close Gitmo. If a remedy can be found to keep them indefinitely (or, better, try and convict them using a modified system) in, say, a U.S. jail that already houses terrorists, he'll have kept his promise, in letter and in spirit.


I guess I just don't see it that way, yet. In fact, I expect Obama's influence over Congress to grow, not weaken. And a mere 6 months of legislative battles doesn't seem like a lot of evidence upon which to base these sweeping generalizations.

Because Scalia has shown a predilection to support the exercise of Executive power. When even he suggests limits upon it, I would think it's notable.

Plenty of left bloggers also have noted that Obama hasn't really flexed any muscles on big issues and has let Congress dictate things. If you can't use the bully pulpit to force your vision on Congress in the first 100-200 days, you are not going to be able to successfully use it later.

After all, there is a reason why people look to the beginning of a term when the President has the most power. The President's power wanes, not grows, as time goes on from the First 100 days, unless some sort of crisis happens.

Scalia is not Thomas.

And it's definitely easier to criticize the guy in power when you don't have a full understanding of the roadblocks to your candyland solutions.

I wonder what Obama would have done (vs. what he thinks he would have done, and what his supporters think he would have done) if he was the president after 9/11. What would he do with the terror suspects that were captured? Try them all in civilian courts? He's even conceded now that that's not practical. Obama would have had some version of Guantanamo Bay. We'll never know if it would have been "better" than the one we have.

Why do you think they haven't been moved yet? I've heard the arguments for years about how nobody has ever escaped from supermax, etc. So why hasn't Obama moved them yet? Seems like it should be an easy decision, based on the arguments put forth for it.

I know it's only been six months, but how long should such a thing take if it's such a slam-dunk decision that Bush should have made years ago? A year? 4 years?

Scalia's the guy who, as the War on Terror got going, said publicly that the public may have to expect somewhat less on the order of personal freedoms. Further, until Hamdi he often sided with the Administration on these issues. And unlike Thomas, Roberts and later Alito, Scalia gave much more explanation for his viewpoint.

Which is why it's especially notable that even Scalia started to tell the Bush Administration that enough was enough. So if we're determining the "factual basis" of whether or not the issue on detainees was "resolved", I'd say that if someone like Scalia, who might be otherwise to say "it's war, the Executive Branch should do what's necessary," says it's not resolved, it's not resolved.

It's my understanding that one of the key roadblocks to convictions in civilian courts or even modified military tribunals is the way in which confessions and other evidence was gathered (i.e. torture, illegal wiretapping, etc...). If we make the assumption that another President (without the "aid" of Cheney, Yoo, Addington, et. al.) would not have authorized these activities, then surely the path to convictions would be that much easier.

Again, to take an example, Khalid Sheik Mohammad and his 3 co-conspirators have been in custody for what, 7 years now? They admit guilt. They are not interested in a plea bargain. They're asking for the death penalty. Why, exactly, were they not tried, convicted and sent to join Terry Nichols, Jose Padilla, and the rest in Colorado years ago?

Scalia is also someone who is not all that keen on administrative law and does not like that ursupation of legislative power. I know the left likes to portray Scalia in a certain way, but they appear to miss the point quite a bit with him.

And considering that Scalia was far more anti-administration on detainees than, say, Justice Bryer, I think that doesn't bode well for your argument.

That's what I'm asking you. If it wasn't done under Bush because (insert liberal theory), then why hasn't Obama done it yet, and how long will it be before we all believe that maybe, there's something more complicated about it that Obama has learned only after he made his campaign promises? How long is it until Obama is equally as "guilty" as Bush for not doing these things?

I don't have a great understanding of the reasons either, but assumed it wasn't as simple as the Bush critics contended over the last 8 years. And let's remember, all of the releases from GITMO took place under Bush. It took time. Critics have decided, I guess, that those things took too long, but what do we have to compare it to? Who knows the procedures involved? Is Obama taking too long to sort things out as well? Why is it that between the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the general public, it's the third one (the one that has the least actual information) that seems to claim the best understanding of how these things should progress?

You're right. Antonin Scalia was a constant and effective check on Bush Administration abuses throughout despite the efforts of Breyer et. al. to come up with ad hoc justifications for these abuses. Furthermore, almost everyone agreed that by 2008 the Bush Administration had done everything it could to resolve the legal issue of the Gitmo detainees and had not, through previous actions, introduced any difficulties into the remaining legal actions against them.

I can't believe I overlooked so much. Mea culpa.

*yawn*

Your strawmen are cute, but I hope you haven't fooled yourself into believing them.

Would housing these criminals and trying them in the US be as politically infeasible if it had been done as soon as they were captured and could reasonably be tried?

In some ways, I think it would be harder at the start. You're in the middle of a war, do you really want to send military personnel back and forth to the US to serve as witnesses? After all, in a domestic trial, you have the right to confront your accusers. That might impact your decisions on who to utilize when you're capturing prisoners - you don't want to lose your best people to civilian witness commitments. Not the kind of decisions you want to make in a war.

The big problem to me, at the end of the day (as I've explained here in previous threads), is that the civilian criminal justice system and any system to deal with POWs have completely different purposes.

We're totally OK with releasing domestic criminals, because we decided, hundreds of years ago, that we'd rather have thousands of criminals go free rather than have one innnocent person punished. With prisoners of foreign war, that has never been the ideal. Why do we take prisoners? It's not to hold them accountable for their "crimes", it's not for "justice", it's to take them off the battlefield so we don't have to fight them anymore. The domestic criminal justice system just isn't setup to achieve that purpose. The question we should ask when dealing with a POW is not "guilty or innocent?" but "Is this person dangerous to the United States?". It's a round peg in a square hole to try to answer that question in a US civilian court.

There are terrorists that we can NEVER release, even if, for whatever reason, they could never be found guilty in a civilian court. I'm not just talking about admissions by torture, there's plenty of other reason guilty people walk free every day - prosecutorial error, a wacky juror or two, dead or otherwise unavailable witnesses, accidently tainted evidence. It happens, and we accept it even for domestic murderers. We shouldn't accept it for terrorists.

And what if there's no domestic crime that a terrorist is even guilty of? If we're fighting the Taliban, and we capture someone with a gun, we should hold onto him, even if we don't know who he is, and we don't know what he's done or where he's been. What do you charge him with? Why should he even be subject to an AMERICAN domestic crime? Is it even fair to apply american crimes to his actions? That's like the Saudi government charging an American citizen with premarital sex that occurred in the U.S. Imagine facing a criminal trial in a foreign country you'd never even been to! You'd be like, "what the hell?"

And there's so many complications with the rules of evidence. If the right to a trial applies, does the 4th amendment apply too? Do army personnel need arrest and search warrants? Do they have to read prisoners Miranda rights? If an 18-year-old private screws up the arrest somehow, is the whole case thrown out (such as is often the case if a civilian police officer makes a mistake).

The federal government should have a transparent, organized system of how to deal with these people, and how to, as practicality permits, weed out the ones who aren't dangerous to the country. But civilian courts aren't the answer.

And my gut reaction is just always complete disblief that people think that non-citizens, in foreign countries, whose only connection to the U.S. is that they want to kill the people here, should have Constitutional rights. That's so bizzare to me. Ours is apparently the only universal constitution.

Nice to see the Obama Administration actually stuck to its guns in its.. well.. request to cut the F-22 funding (a move fully endorsed by the Department of Defense), that looked to see special interests derail it (areas that built F-22 parts, etcetera).

It was thought that the Obama administration was going to have to climb down (which was going to be a major loss of face for the administration), but Obama managed to rally enough Democrats to defeat the measure.

President Obama's agenda gets a lift with F-22 win - David Rogers and Jen DiMascio - POLITICO.com

LOL

Whatever, look, I clearly haven't articulated my point very well, and that's on me. Let's let the Scalia tangent go and get back to the original point.

On a daily basis people are posting to this thread claiming Obama has broken yet another campaign promise and asking why Democrats aren't marching on the White House in response. The latest is this Gitmo campaign promise, which I feel I have to remind people isn't "due" for another 6 months.

As an Obama supporter, I offer the following responses (and I'm - hopefully - just going to do this once, since I'm a little tired of this meme):

1. Believing in campaign promises is for the naive. The only people who get wound up about broken campaign promises are the extremists on each end of the spectrum. Just as Bush not turning American into a theocratic state pissed off the fundies, Obama not undoing every single act by the Bush Administration in his first 100 days put the panties of the DailyKos/MoveOn crowd in a bunch. The rest of us could give a crap. We elected the guy because a) we thought he'd do a good job, b) he wasn't the other guy and/or c) it would make JiMGA despair (OK, the third one is just me).

2. These endless "gotcha" posts about Obama are nothing more than cheap partisan politics, and/or concern trolls. I'd like to note that people in this very thread (or maybe the election one, I can't remember) have been making posts about how Obama wasn't doing enough even before he was actually President. And I find it wonderfully ironic that many of the same posters who openly mocked Obama's campaign promises as bullshit flights of fancy now think he's doing a shitty job because he hasn't delivered on them. Really, guys? But honestly, I don't mind. Those of you on the right side of the fence have lived with 8 years of us on the left side of the fence lambasting your guy so I think you've earned the right to some payback.

3. So what if Obama sets goals that may be too aggressive to be realized (Iraq, Gitmo, health care reform)? To me, it's a sign of strong leadership: challenge the people who work for you to achieve and attain more. You don't think Apple's board sits around and tells Steve Jobs "dude, no one needs a new cellphone, why don't you just take it easy and work half time or something" do you? In fact, I seem to recall it being said of a certain President that at least you knew he believed in something and that he was willing to fight for it, nevermind the wailing of his detractors. Now, which President was that again?

Let me slip into Bucc-mode for this next part....

None of you should fool yourself that this is anything new. Reagan's first couple of years sucked and people were all over him. Bush I broke his taxes pledge. Clinton's presidency was touted as DOA 1 week after inauguration because of his botching of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (and really dead by the summer when HillaryCare failed).

Coming out of Bucc-mode now....

So anyway, that's where I'm coming from. Hope that helps.

For those that missed it Culture of Truth ha a transcript of the press conference:

I can't believe I read that whole, awful thing.

Dola.

Most overused word in threads like these???

Strawman.

It's the "paradigm" of political debate.




(no offense to those that use it :) )

Well, since the strawman argument is, by far, the most popular form of argument in threads like these....

True, but maybe we can create a new term. I'd come up with something clever, but I'm about to fall asleep at my keyboard. My wife's watching a girl movie (Sydney White), and I can't focus on any kind of game. So someone people come up with something. I beg of you.

Someone want to tell me why the hell the President felt the need to comment on the local case involving the arrest of a Harvard professor at his home? While I'm not interested in arguing who was right and wrong in the situation, I REALLY don't think we need a president who feels the need to pull a Jesse Jackson and interjects himself into every small flare-up that allows him to gain more attention. Leave that to Jesse Jackson and his 'Rainbow Coalition' podium that follows him everywhere he goes.

By the way, the president didn't have a lunchtime conference yesterday, likely because he had an hour of primetime TV that night. 2/3.

I 100% agree with you on this by the way. Just saw this in the paper on the way to work and was like "ummm...wtf is Obama doing making a statement about this?"

I mean I suppose I can see it if he was asked a question about it by a reporter, but i think even then the best answer would be something like: "that's a local matter and it's not my place to comment."

dola

guess he should have stopped after he said this in response to the question: "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played," Obama said Wednesday night while taking questions after a White House news conference.

and he certainly should have stopped after this:

"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home;"

and not gone on to: "and, No. 3 ... that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

I agree. He should have stopped at "don't have all the facts". It was certainly premature and beneath the office.

Really? This is offensive?

I don't think I find it offensive. Just think it's somewhat...beneath him.

Can I assume this is simply a rhetorical question, since it's pretty obvious to anyone with even one eye why he stuck his nose in the middle of it.

He was asked a specific question about it by a reporter at his press conference. Did you miss this?

I think it's poor form for him to call out the CPD from his position and the amount of information he has. The rest of it I'm fine with, it's not like racial profiling has never been a national issue before. I'm not sure why the President's opinion on something like that is either irrelevant or beneath the office.

Also it appears to me that the CPD didn't do anything wrong. I mean a guy is attempting to break into a house and refuses to show identification (which would have proven it was his address). WTF do you want them to do?

I'm confused about what part is "racial profiling". Is it the woman who called it in when she saw two black men breaking into a house? Is it the fact the police came and demanded identication? Or is it the part where he was arrested at the end for yelling and everyone and calling everyone racist?

The officers should have walked away, even though the guy was clearly guilty of the crime he was being arrested for (or they should have cited him). But this guy sounds obnoxious. The police report indicates a, "Can we see some identification?" "WHY, BECAUSE I'M BLACK!!!" kind of scene. Hopefully there's an audio out there. If I'm a black guy in Boston, I might try to break into this house soon, everyone will be afraid to respond or call it in.

Intersting trivia that this cop performed CPR (unsuccessfully) on Reggie Lewis 15 years ago.

Obama ranting about this, and calling someone stupid without all the facts is definitely beneath the office. A president using that kind of language at all, even with the facts, is kind of beneath the office.

I'm not really interested in getting into all the details, but since this happened like a block away from where I work I've read more about it than I wish to.

The police report and Professor Gates do not agree on the facts of what was said. I guess we can all make our own opinions on who is more credible.

He did show his ID, he didn't refuse to show it. He showed both his Harvard ID and his driver's license.

As someone mentioned previously, his opening sentence was just fine. State that you don't know all the facts in the case and that you are sure that the parties involved will come to a correct conclusion on the matter. Leave the rest for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. No president should have ever commented to the level he did on the matter, especially passing judgment on either party.

They arrested him even after he showed identification. They didn't do anything wrong up to that point, and that's the only thing Obama called them out on.

They didn't arrest him for breaking and entering. One can definitely argue they should have utilized their discretion to not arrest someone in this kind of circumstance, and just take the verbal abuse, but it's not like they figured out that he lived there, and then decided to arrest him for breaking into the house anyway.

Legislatures all over the country should really revise these disorderly conduct statutes, maybe narrow the conduct that falls under them. If you're yelling at police officers (or anyone), in public, that's a crime under these statutes, but it does obviously create drama, depending on what the yelling is about. And when these statutes are too broad, it definitely invites very arbitrary enforcement.

Regardless of race, I'd think most police departments would consider it a failure to arrest a guy after you mistakenly think he's breaking into his own house. I'm sure Gates got heated and escalated the confrontation, but after the ID was shown the officer should have gotten out of there ASAP. His need to show who's boss has made this event a nightmare for the CPD.

Just to be clear, I'll take his word that in his mind race had nothing to do with it, but he still acted unprofessionally.

This is a serious question, though: Is being disrespectful to a police officer an arrestable offense?

edit: In your own home. He was arrested in the foyer of his own home, not in public.

edit2: Actually, he was arrested on the porch. I guess that does make it public, though the process of getting him to come outside in order to arrest him seems to me to be about the same thing.

No, but yelling in public definitely is. And the people that get arrested for that tend to be yelling at police officers, because an officer has to be there to hear it for there to be an arrest.

I really hope we get more info, or an audio. With the threat of lawsuits neither will probably happen though.

I'm sure there was yelling before the ID was shown. I'd be curious about the sequence of events. What exactly were the officers doing after identify was established. If they were just questioning him, then ya, bad form. If they were trying to verify that this identified person actually lives here (maybe some kind of radio call could confirm that), and the yelling continued, I see how an arrest might be warranted. There was something I read about the officers being unable to hear each other, or their radios, because of the yelling. Showing an ID alone isn't the end of the story - you still have to establish that this is a real ID, that this person is the person depicted on the ID, and that that person actually lives at the house. That probably required some time and radio calls, and Gates wasn't going have any patience for that.

Police are going to hear this story and think, "shit, if I come across a black guy breaking into a black house, I'm going to take his word for it and get the hell out of there". These guys really aren't looking for to be in the middle of controveries in the media.

I think anyone who considers either party without blame in this matter is highly naive.

With that said, the primary topic is the president's comments. He should have never made the statement he did outside of saying he didn't have enough information to make any judgment on the situation. I expect better judgment from the leader of our country.

I agree that both sides could have easily defused the situation and neither did. If you believe the police report is completely accurate, then Gates is pretty much at fault. If you believe Gates, then the police are pretty much at fault. I would guess that would raise the more general question of in a situation like this, is the onus on the citizen or the police officer to be the bigger man and not escalate the situation? There was no real need to arrest Gates, he was no danger to himself nor anyone else, and I'm sure people yell in public all the time (I can confirm this is true in Cambridge) and not get arrested for it.

The racial issues don't exists with the cops. They were just doing their job, and Gates was wrong to yell at them for it. They were wrong for for arresting him for disorderly conduct, which just smells like they reacted emotionally to the situation and found a way to get back at him. I do think there is some prejudice (maybe not overt, but just internal) involved with this situation being reported to the police. If the guy is white, it is definitely less likely that the CPD even gets called.

As for Obama's comments, they were all 100% correct. I can understand thinking he should have refused to comment, but to say he acted like Sharpton or Jackson is ridiculous. He never called the cops racist, and didn't attack them for showing up at the home, only for arresting him after the ID was shown.

I agree with all that. It's a real fine line about what to do when people are relentlessly yelling at officers, calling them racist. Obviously in America, we want some freedom to do that. It doesn't feel right to be arrested after you are verbally criticizing an officer. I can definitely see how one would feel wronged in that scenerio. And officers do need to have patience and let a lot of that stuff go (and believe me, they let 99.9% of it go).

But at the same time, you can't really have it out there, as a "street law", that you can yell and scream and police and call them whatever you want and they just have to take it. They would never be able to do their jobs. There has to be SOME check, some small possibility in people's minds that they could be arrested if they cross some line, otherwise it would just be out of control.

If people decided that they were going to just relentlessly yell at shoe salesmen wherever they went, call them racist, etc, that would eventually become a legal issue, something that people would get arrested for. With police, the threshold is WAY higher, you have to do far more, just because of this possibility of political backlash.

So the job of our president is now to comment on each ethnic community flare-up that results in some form of controversy? Answer: no. It's ludicrous to suggest such a thing. He acted EXACTLY like Sharpton or Jackson, passing judgment on a racially sensitive topic without fully knowing the information behind the incident. Of course, this doesn't even matter because this isn't a topic that the President should be addressing.

It's somewhat insulting that the media feels that because there's a black president that he suddenly needs to pass judgment on any race incident that occurs. He should have said as much and dismissed the question IMO. He should be far above that. They would have never asked this question of a white president in a similar situation. It's a form of bias that this question was even asked of this president.

I largely agree, except I think from very early on the assumption should have been that he was indeed who he said he was. There's nothing about him or the initial situation that should have screamed liar, especially if his initial response was something like, "You're racist, this is my own damn house." Where I think this officer messed up is in presuming, or at least giving the appearance of presuming Gates was guilty throughout the encounter.

The other part that disturbs me, but seems to be a little in dispute, is that the officer entered the house without permission. I think most of us, regardless of race, would have a problem with a policeman without a warrant entering the house uninvited.

awww jeeezus i agree with you again

if the officer didn't know it was gates' house then he was just "pursuing a suspect in the act of committing a crime"

It's alright. We all have our bad days. :D

Except by the time he entered the house he had heard Gates' side of the story, had seen the "suspect", and had no other reason to believe a break in was occurring. In those circumstances I don't think the police have a right to enter your home.

If it appears I'm breaking into my house (crawling through a window, shouldering the door, etc), I hope someone calls the cops.

If that happens, I expect the following to happen - Show up, ask for an explanation, ask for my id, run my id through their computer to see if it comes up with any warrants, give me back my id, leave.

If at any time I start to become a belligerent asshat, I expect a warning. If I continue, I would then expect them to give me another warning with the threat of being hauled in. If I then continue, I would think I'd be hauled in.

Sorry, but I'm tired of hearing 'They are professionals, they should defuse the situation.' At some point, we need to hold society to that standard. I don't see why we somehow think it is ok to berate the police (or anyone) and not expect some type of consequence to our actions.

hmm

I agree.

Although I question the neighbor that was calling the cops also - I'm not familiar with the neighborhood itself, but if they're standalone houses - don't you usually know your neighbors? At least by sight? I dunno, maybe the neighbor was new or something...

I thought I read 2 versions. One where it was the neighbor and the 2nd where it wasn't the neighbor. (and the news story was edited to reflect this)

The person who called police works in a building close to the residence. Her name is in the police report.