Free Republic

Iowa Rep. Steve King took President Obama to task Saturday, blaming him for the conditions that caused civil unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson. “President Obama has consistently driven wedges between people. And he perceives a difference on race, maybe on ethnicity, well yes on ethnicity, sexual orientation—wedge after wedge after wedge. I didn’t really imagine they were going to drive a wedge between the law and law-breakers,” King told reporters at the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville. King cited the example of Obama’s “Beer Summit” early in his first term with Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard...

Clearly, the White House hoped Obama’s beery bonhomie would induce all of us to put on beer goggles and continue to view him as post-racial. For Crowley and Gates, however, it was an invitation they could not refuse. While Obama and Biden – in shirt sleeves, dressed down to come off as a regular guys – offered their guests a beer, they apparently did not invite the two men to take off the jackets and loosen ties they wore out of deference to the office of the presidency. Just another phony photo op.

(Wolf Blitzer is at the CNN Situation Room Mission Control with a countdown clock.) WOLF BLITZER: Good evening. In just a few seconds the White House Beer Summit between President Obama, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, and Cambridge police officer James Crowley is about to commence. And now the final countdown begins: 5...4...3...1… The Beer Summit has now been launched! President Obama has stated that this summit will be restricted to only the three of them. Our cameras are tracking the summit so let us now zoom in on the action. (We see a closeup of the outdoor picnic table...

As Dem pundits go, I normally find Kirsten Powers among the more reasonable. But on this afternoon's Fox News Watch, Powers propounded perhaps the most despicable theory yet of the Gates/Crowley incident: that the sergeant "lured" and "tricked" Gates into coming outside so he could arrest him. Panelist Jim Pinkerton had just made the point that it was only the conservative media, by focusing attention on the matter, that saved Sgt. Crowley from a "miserable life in Cambridge" at the hands of Prof. Gates, Harvard, the NAACP et. al, when Powers jumped in . . . View video here.

Race Relations: Two people acted responsibly in Gatesgate and did what they were supposed to do. Only one of them got invited to the White House to have a beer with the president and the professor.We don't know whether Lucia Whalen is a connoisseur of fine brews. We do know she wasn't invited to have one with President Obama, professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department. She should have been. The rabid left would say Whalen "acted stupidly" in reporting a possible crime in progress. Some are in fact saying it. The facts...

Call it damning with fat praise . . . After James Crowley did a good job at his post-beer press conference, a condescending Chris Matthews—apparently surprised that a policeman could handle himself well in such a situation—said "I think we've got our Susan Boyle here."

Were you, like me, surprised to see that Biden turned up at the beer fest? I hadn't picked up any prior indication he was going to be there. To the contrary, check out what Pres. Obama said just before the event: A short time earlier from the Oval Office, Obama had done what his aides had been doing for days: lowering expectations. "I noticed this has been called the 'Beer Summit.' It's a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys," Obama told reporters. "This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day."

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama was arrested for DUI this afternoon after taking a Harvard professor and a Cambridge police officer on a harrowing barhopping tour and subsequent high-speed police chase through the city. What started as a beer picnic outside the Oval Office to clear the air over the president’s embarrassing comments last week after the arrest of Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates turned ugly, when the president, having quaffed one Bud Light and four plastic bottles of water in 15 minutes, stole a Secret Service SUV and demanded Gates and Sgt. James Crowley continue their party throughout the District...

The ethically-challenged "ethicist" of the New York Times Magazine, Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column has inserted himself into the Henry Louis Gates situation by urging the Harvard professor to sue in order to "pursue social justice." To see where Mr. Ethicist is coming from, let us start off with his laughable money quote in his current column on the subject of lawsuits: Gates should enjoy a cool one and then file suit, assuming he has legal grounds to do so. We Americans are often mocked for being overly litigious, but we are not nearly litigious enough. In the...

Now that’s it been announced that Pres. Obama will get together Thursday with Sgt. James Crowley and Prof. H.L. Gates for the proverbial beer, PBO’s spin doctors are surely feverishly at work. The White House must be looking at the event as the last best chance to salvage something from the president’s gaffe. Not only did PBO’s assertion that the police acted “stupidly” kill whatever momentum health care reform might have had, it tarnished Obama’s image as a post-racial healer. So surely the likes of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are busily orchestrating the theatrics and optics of...

"I don't know all the facts," that is where President Obama should have begun and ended his statement about the skirmish between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and a local Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant. But, he couldn't stop himself from saying the police "acted stupidly" and "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." Or the next day still defending his statement, saying "I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because...

When President Obama took a verbal swipe at a police officer who had arrested a friend of his for disorderly conduct, many law enforcement officers took the president's statements as evidence of his disdain for local cops.

On Thursday July 16, 2009, Henery Gates Jr (____, of __ Ware Street, Cambridge, MA) was placed under arrest at __ Ware Street, after being observed exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, at a uniformed police officer who was present investigating a report of a crime in progress.

The white police sergeant who arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Thursday President Barack Obama was "way off base" claiming Cambridge officers acted "stupidly" during the incident. Read: White House Clarifies Obama's Remark Sgt. James Crowley, who is a police academy expert on racial profiling, responded to Gates' home near Harvard University last week to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded Gates show him identification. Police say Gates at first refused and accused the officer of racism. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped Tuesday, and Gates has since demanded an apology...