Free Republic

... In response to a question at his prime-time news conference about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, in his own home over the weekend, Mr. Obama declared that the Cambridge, Mass., police had “acted stupidly.” ... The police were called to Mr. Gates’s house after a report of a robbery in progress. Mr. Gates, saying he was jimmying open a damaged front door, said he told the police he lived in the house. Still, the police report said he was arrested for “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.” He was held in...

PRESIDENT Barack Obama said police had acted "stupidly" in arresting a prominent black Harvard University scholar at his own home, weighing in on escalating debate over the treatment of minorities by US law enforcement officers. Mr Obama acknowledged at a prime-time White House news conference, he did not know all the facts about the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates at his residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But reciting details from news reports, Mr Obama left little doubt he felt Mr Gates had been wronged in the incident, which has created a media furor. Mr Gates, a renowned expert on...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Wednesday that police acted "stupidly" in the arrest of prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and that despite racial progress blacks and Hispanics are still singled out unfairly for arrest. "This still haunts us," Obama said. Obama called Gates a friend, and said he doesn't know all the facts of the case. Nonetheless, Obama said, anyone would have been angry if treated the way Gates claims police in Cambridge, Mass., treated him. Gates, a Harvard University professor, claims he was arrested in his home after showing ID to police who responded to a...