<p>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Good one simba! I give it a 7.25. That’s only about 2 thirds of the way up the snarkometer, though. I’m sure you can do better…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>just give me some more time.</p>
<p>Let’s just say you were trying to get into your house, say the door was jammed, and some neighbor called the police on you. The police arrive and you produce identification and proof that you live in the house that you are allegedly breaking into. Yet, the police take you into custody anyways. That would upset you. I know it would upset me.</p>
<p>poetsheart:</p>
<p>I apologize if you think I am ignoring your questions. I am not. The problem is that I have a real life with real commitments that must be attended to, and it has become very clear to me that this is just a subject on which we will never agree. On the list of things which carry importance to me, either condemning or defending Gates is way down on the list.</p>
<p>I do respect your opinion and was not trying to dismiss it. What I was trying to say, but obviously not very effectively, was that you have “baggage” (and probably very understandably and rightfully) about the issues surrounding this event, more so than many others here. I do think that you have tried to be relatively objective in your interpretation of the incident as a whole. </p>
<p>Now, Dross is another matter entirely. The bottom line is that I do not interact with racists, so his charges and questions will remain unaddressed by me for more deliberate reasons.</p>
<p>harvardlawviolin:</p>
<p>The problem with your scenario is that you left out a big chunk of the story.</p>
<p>It is important for everyone to understand the rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution, and how deeply these rights are cherished, and the price that has been paid to secure them.</p>
<p>The First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution are among the most important guarantors of our freedom. It is tragic for all of us when the right to free speech and the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure (or any other rights) are violated.</p>
<p>I am sorry that Drosselmeier sees the Constitution as a “sham” document, based on his experience. I have a more hopeful view. Certainly there are shameful Supreme Court decisions in the historical record (Justice Taney, anyone?) and certainly progress has been too slow. However, the right to equal protection guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of that right do make me hopeful that eventually everyone will enjoy the rights that the Constitution guarantees. If any person in the U.S. does not have those rights, then none of us is truly free. It is painful to me that anyone should have to keep insisting on Constitutional rights that are self-evidently contained in the document.</p>
<p>Americans do not have to show “deference” to police officers, when they are in their own homes (absent a warrant). This idea is completely alien to us. A man’s home is his castle—I would guess that this is a principle that we inherited from the British common law.</p>
<p>I’m not a “real American” in the sense that it is being used on this thread—but I am very much a real American!</p>
<p>And speaking for the PBS-watching subset of us, I would be happy to watch a program on racial profiling hosted by Henry Louis Gates, on PBS.</p>
<p>Crowley certainly has the support of his peers.</p>
<p>[James</a> Crowley Gets Ovation at Police Convention](<a href=“News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com”>News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com)</p>
<p>Thick as thieves.</p>
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<p>That saddens me, too. Fortunately, I do not agree with Dross’s assessment. I don’t believe The U.S. Constitution is “a sham of a document”. I believe it’s a brilliant piece of work, an unparalleled example of transcendent humanity whose future import its framers could scarcely have grasped—for had they known the ways in which it would eventually be used to force America to make room at the well of freedom for all its citizens, they never would have let its wording stand unmolested in all its naked and nearly perfect glory. </p>
<p>Surely (and shamefully), it took nearly two centuries before it even began to be acknowledged that certain segments of the population were as fully entitled to its protections as the white males the framers had in mind during its drafting. But for the most part this has indeed come about, in no small part because of the blood sacrifices of countless dark skinned patriots, who, along with many of their white skinned brethren, believed fiercely in this document’s sanctity.</p>
<p>That is why the cavalier dismissal of key Constitutional rights, rights which have only relatively recently been secured for blacks and other minorities in this country, angers me so. The fact that certain people can’t even be bothered to engage in intellectually honest discussion about the Constitution as it applies to the Gates case, but instead feel perfectly justified in stonewalling the discussion with trivial and obfuscating rhetoric about the man’s “attitude”, speaks loudly of the need to be ever vigilant in safeguarding the rights guaranteed therein—especially for those of us who weren’t born with the ability to take such rights for granted the way so many here obviously and arrogantly do.</p>
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<p>Yes, and as we all know, “Might Makes Right”…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>I think in your hands, QuantMech, the Constitution is a most worthy document, and that you are a real American in the kindest sense of the term, since you appear to understand that we, unlike traditional nations, comprise a nation knit together not by racial similarities or bloodlines, but by the ideals enshrined in the Declaration and codified in the Constitution. If this is your vision of America, then I honor your America as my own. But it is not the America of the Real Americans.</p>
<p>Real Americans are so debauched that they cannot bring themselves to defend the rights of a man like Gates’s because, to put it plainly, they hate Gates as indeed they do all blacks. They actually believe Gates deserves his treatment, that a cop’s often corrupt report is the Gospel of Sweet Baby Jesus, and that it is most proper for an American to cower and defer on cue to a lying cop like James Crowley, even if the American is in his own home. Truly, Real Americans are even willing to set the example themselves, so little is their respect for genuine American ideals.</p>
<p>Their America is the America in which we live today, where silly old white men are made into heroes when they scream like savages against a black president for wrongs that do not exist, this, after having remained silent for eight dreadful years as their white president tortured men in prisons, and bombed innocent people in countries that have done nothing to us. I have seen this America persist throughout history, even throughout my lifetime. I have now seen it yet again in this recent Gates affair. Where genuine Americans will always run to the defense of a man’s right to speak his protest, especially when in his home, and especially to government (since protest to government is quintessentially American and is one of the things that sets real America apart from the sham that we so often call “The Land of the Free”), Real Americans here in the cursed land will do precisely what we have so often seen here in these forums. Rather than defend American rights, they will abandon them altogether, and will even condemn the American who dares to use them. Their America is a sham, a most cursed sham, along with their Constitution.</p>
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<p>Earth to Drosselmeier: With negligible change, what went on under Bush is still going on under Obama when it comes to fighting the war on terror. Thank God. The notion of “torture” is garbage, under either administration, and soldiers as well as presidents suffer terribly when the horrors of war include harming civilians. </p>
<p>I’ve heard of black and white thinking before, but the above post really takes the cake.</p>
<p>Hey, in truth, Obama could hardly just end Bush’s policies without causing a worse disaster than Bush caused, if such a thing is even possible. The fact is, Obama has done no wrong, certainly nothing that warrants the sort of savagery we are witnessing here in these screamfests, and certainly nothing at all in the order of the pure immorality of the Bush Administration. Yet, Real Americans are screaming, literally screaming, at Obama, and are dead silent at Bush.</p>
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<p>I agree with you on this poet, but I don’t agree that there are any US Constitutional issues presented by this case. We are dealing with State law only.</p>
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<p>Of course, and so once again it is quite as I have said when I said [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063108782-post1733.html]here[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063108782-post1733.html]here[/url</a>] that “Oh sure, a few Real Americans may on second thought admit that Gates’s rights may have been infringed, but you can be very sure that in every case that admission will be followed by the word “but,” or some substitute for it, then to [be followed by the revelation of] just how much a sham the Constitution really is.”</p>
<p>In this case, we see the word “but” followed by the claim that the Constitution is irrelevant in this instance of Gates’s choice to protest a cop, this, despite that the Constitution claims Americans are free to engage in such speech without fear of arrest. The poster claims here that only state law is relevant, hereby reducing the Constitution to an entirely worthless sham of a document. This is the Real American way, and always has been, especially where blacks have been concerned.</p>
<p>The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 includes: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
In the case of Constitutional rights, there is no such thing as a matter of “state law” only. Otherwise, none of the rights of the Bill of Rights could be ensured. The Constitution is the “Supreme Law of the land” (Supremacy clause of Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 2).</p>
<p>And amen to poetsheart, #1749.</p>
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<p><strong>GASP</strong> Surely you are in error here! There must be such a thing else our noble cop, James Crowley, could not possibly be the hero he is, having therefore broken the American Constitution. He even got a beer and a trip to the White House for what must be deemed his illegal behavior. No. Absolutely not. I will not accept this. There must be some provision in state law that allows us to override the U.S. Constitution, at least in the cases of Gates and people like him. I mean, its not like we haven’t done this sort of thing in the past, and quite a lot. I think there is some sort of an error here. But I really don’t have the time to find it. I just know it’s in there - somewheres.</p>
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<p>You are wrong. Several states have hunting and fishing as a constitutional right. These are not found in the US const. they are found only in State const.</p>
<p>Gates was arrested for violating a State law. He would have been prosecuted in state court. There is no federal question that would justify removal of this case to federal court. Gate’s prosecution is a state law issue only.</p>
<p>LOL. Remarkable! And this is how eager Real Americans are to corrupt their country, simply to deny a black man his rights. In their cursed America, the Constitution is made into a pure sham that literally denies citizens nationally enumerated rights on the basis of the ability of states to enumerate local rights that naturally exist with citizens in any case. This pernicious ignorance of the genuine Constitution only persists because the majority of Americans are Real Americans who would as soon corrupt their country to deny a black guy what is rightfully his, than compel a white police officer and a white police force to agree that they have acted contrary to genuine America.</p>
<p>Gates ought not do Real America the service of taking this matter to court. This cursed land is obviously beneath such generosity, and would only assault Gates more than it does currently. Of course many would be offended at this, though we all know it is quite true. Gates already receives death threats and racist mail because he used his right to protest. Should he seek to educate Real Americans on the true Constitution, and gain remedy because of the government’s abuse, Real Americans everywhere would seek to destroy him indeed. For this reason I think it best to let the Real Americans remain ignorant of the great heritage left them by the Founders. Instead, it seems reasonable that he should let them, like Soviets, increasingly bow humbly before the government, and its tasers, and its guns.</p>