In essence, Gates was arrested for saying that he felt violated and oppressed on his own property. And President Barack Obama was right: The Cambridge police did "act stupidly." The arresting officer, Sergeant Jim Crowley, claims “there was a lot of yelling, there was references to my mother,” and yet neither charge would hold up even as a ticketable offense.

But for the record, finding yourself in handcuffs after arguing with a police officer isn't something that just happens to blacks and Latinos. Cops everywhere are always on the lookout for opportunities to assert their authority, and, as in Gates' case, they'll gladly misinterpret public safety laws in order to show a civilian who's the boss.

Need another example of the universality of angry cops asserting their authority for no good reason? Last night, libertarian activistis J.D. Talley and Pete Eyre were turned away at the Canadian border after being detained for over four hours. The two are touring the U.S. and Canada as part of the Motorhome Diaries; basically, happy hours, talks, and meet-ups with other libertarians. Pretty harmless, right?

"[The mobile home was] searched by both state agents and the K-9 patrol. The MHD Guys were filming as the neared the check point, but the video was deleted and they were informed if they continued to film, record, or take pictures they would be arrested. A box of literature from the Alliance of the Libertarian Left was taken, and a copy of Crispin Sartwell’s “Against the State” was left out on the counter....

Their laptops are now in the possession of the state agents...

One agent has accused them of ’spreading misinformation.’

The guys have been told that the state agents are looking for “Pornography or Heinous Propaganda.” When asked for a definition of “Heinous Propaganda” or the applicable statute they were told it was available online, but they don’t have computers or Internet access.

Update 3: Computers returned, State Agents still in possession of box of ALL Literature.

The Canadian border patrol cited an incident in Jones County, Mississippi as the reason for denying Eyre and Talley entrance. We wrote about the same incident many Freedom Fridays back. To refresh your memory: Talley, Eyre, and an additional friend–all of them white–were pulled over by a Mississippi law enforcement officer. When the Motorhome Diaries crew asked why they had been pulled over and then refused to identify themselves until the officer answered them, the officer placed all three men under arrest, charged them with violating bogus public safety laws, and impounded their vehicle. They were held overnight and lost a lot of money in incarceration fees to the Jones County Sheriff's Office.

In short, the color problem–which is real–is subsumed by the much, much larger cop problem, which affects everyone, even if it affects minorities disproportionately more so. We shouldn't turn a blind eye to the petty cases and we shouldn't lose sight of this once Gates has won his lawsuit.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a teensy bit more about Maureen Dowd, after the jump.

• The MSM would rather praise Barack Obama for what he says than hold him accountable for what he doesn't do, hence the flowery recaps of yesterday's speech with little mention of the broken promises. Great example: On Wednesday, Rachel Maddow reported that Robert Gibbs, in response to a question about what Barack Obama was doing to overturn/abolish Don't Ask Don't Tell, said that the president "is working with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs on making that happen." Yet according to Maddow, "a Pentagon spokesman said just yesterday that that‘s not actually happening, that there is no planning underway. There‘s no work underway inside the Pentagon toward changing the policy, despite the fact that the White House keeps saying that there is." As Greg Pollowitz at the NRO's Media blog points out, Maddow failed to mention that Gibbs lied. (Lefties, like righties, need that kind of shit spelled out for them.) In summary, the Obama Administration said its working to change Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and yet it's not actually doing that. At least his speeches are uplifting! My thoughts on DADT.

• In case you missed it, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd plagiarized. The NYT didn't care, Josh Marshall (the victim) didn't care, and Maureen Dowd didn't care enough to formally punctuate her apology letter to HuffPo or address the fuck-up in her most recent column. Then one of my heroes, Jack Shafer, went and threw her a fucking bone, NSA. Every time I see that woman's wizened yet beautiful visage, my blood boils. How the fuck does she get away with it? Would William Kristol have gotten away with plagiarism? Newser's Michael Wolff thinks we should all just let it go: "Dowd is like some much-vaunted high school type whose success and popularity drive everybody else mad with either envy and spite or inspire a perverse (evidence of great-self-loathing) desire to be her way-too-loyal friend and supporter....Indeed, she is famously surrounded by an inside circle of friends and supporters—other famous-type columnists and New York Times reporters—who famously help her write her column. She regularly lifts their thoughts and sentences, which, since they are unpublished (supposedly), is not plagiarism—though it certainly is insiderism....Such insiderism is why so many people, especially the outsider-type bloggers, despise her. Her evident self-satisfaction and the obvious echo chamber in which she resides, not to mention her apparent ability to get by without doing too much work, rankles." I am TOTALLY BLUSHING RIGHT NOW!

OK, I'm going to watch this video of Maureen Dowd laughing at her own jokes! See y'all later!

Hate crimes and student media, after the jump.

The Supreme Court nomination odds seem more and more to be in Sonia Sotomayer's favor, but Fordham University's Paul Levinson has an objection:

The decision came from Sotomayor's Second Circuit Court last May, regarding Lewis Mills High School student Avery Doninger. While running for Senior Class Secretary, Ms. Doninger found reason to object to the school's cancellation of a "jamfest" event, and characterized those who scotched the event as "douchebags" on her off-campus LiveJournal blog (she also characterized a school official in that same blog posting as getting "pissed off"). The school officials, in turn, took umbrage, prohibited Avery from running for Class Secretary, and disregarded the plurality of votes she received, anyway, as a write-in candidate. Avery sued the school officials, and the Federal District Court supported the school. Avery appealed to Sotomayor's Second Circuit Court.

After acknowledging the Supreme Court's 1969 Tinker decision, which held that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," Sotomayor's Court proceeded to affirm the District Court's ruling – that is, Sonia Sotomayor and her colleague justices upheld the high school's right to punish Doninger for her off-campus speech. Their reasoning was that schools have an obligation to impart to their students "shared values," which include not only the importance of free expression but a "proper respect for authority".

Chris Moody over at Cato@Liberty posted a video of jazz-man Nat Hentoff's response to recent hate crime legislation barreling its way through Congress. (Short version, via Moody: "laws that punish one time for the crime and another time for the hate violate the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment and protections against Double Jeopardy.")

The Washington Times' evolving credibility, the Motorhome Diaries, the Veterans Administration, and more after the jump.

• Last month I applauded the Washington Times for covering the Chas Freeman story, and argued that thanks to Eli Lake (formerly of the New York Sun), the paper is developing a formidable archive of enterprising foreign policy reporting. Fishbowl DC announced on Wednesday that the Times had snatched up Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Chuck Neubauer, formerly of the Los Angeles Times–no small feat for a paper that runs scripture in its op-ed pages on Christmas day. Perhaps with a little more time, people will learn to ignore the Washington Times' strange founder (just as so many Beltway liberals are capable of cheering The New Republic while bashing Marty Peretz, the magazine's "racist" owner and editor in chief; and just as sophisticates across the country barely looked up from their Kellogg's Cinnamon Toast Crunch when the the New York Times announced it had accepted a cash injection of $250 million from a corrupt Mexican oligarch) and judge the paper by its merits alone.
• Speaking of the shit human beings will tolerate, someone needs to raise a fuss about this: "David Schultz, a reporter for the NPR affiliate WAMU in D.C., had his microphone, headphones, and a digital recorder seized by police and PR reps from the Veterans Administration when he interviewed veteran Tommy [Canady] at a public town hall meeting in D.C. yesterday....[Canady] was attempting to tell Schultz about the poor treatment he says he's been getting from the VA hospital. VA officials claim Schultz didn't identify himself as a reporter, failed to obtain a VA-approved waiver before speaking with [Canady], was both exploiting [Canady] and violating [Canady]'s right to medical privacy." That's from Radley Balko at Reason, who also writes that "the VA still hasn't returned Schultz's equipment." One Reason reader wasn't very sympathetic towards Schultz:

"Back in my college days a friend of mine who was a reporter for the college rag refused to leave an (improperly) closed session of some policy-making body, and then when they demanded he leave, he taunted them to have the cops drag him out of the room, as he wasn't leaving any other way.

If he knows where to take a stand, what the fuck is wrong with "adult" reporters and their news outfits that they capitulate so easily?"

Great question!

• Speaking of Radley Balko: If you give two shits about police raiding the home of a watchdog blogger, a police chief who retaliated against officers for participating in internal affairs investigations, and "police officers facing civil rights lawsuits" who plead ignorance of the law as their defense, then I suggest you add the Agitator to your RSS reader.
• And please, check out the Motorhome Diaries: Searching for Freedom in America.

That's it for me folks, I'm off to find a new front rim.