Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was asked about the the arrest by a white Cambridge Police officer of Harvard University Professor and black man Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct as he tried to break into his own house. The Governor said it was "every black man's nightmare and a reality for many black men".

The Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of Police, Jimmy Machado, responded that "it's shameful to play into the hate and the racial tensions that are out there in America."

Speaking of those racial tensions, what a wacky coincidence that a Harvard student named Seth Bannon just happened to take a picture of another Cambridge cop getting into his SUV - the one with the license plates reading "WHY TEE". And what a wacky coincidence that WHY TEE rhymes with WHITEY! Hahahahaha!

I suppose the officer's plate could be an existential question about golf.

But really, a cop playing golf? Why, that's even less likely than a black man living in a nice house in the Boston suburbs, isn't it?

There's video floating around on the internet of a California Highway Patrol officer kicking a man in the head while the man is lying face-down on the grass waiting to be arrested. He'd jumped out of a car at the end of a high speed chase and made a run for it, then gave up without any further resistance. The video (I've linked to it after the cut) clearly shows the CHiP punting the guy in the noggin. It's just another fine example of the old mantra, "There's never a cop around when you need one, and when there is, odds are good the guy's a real piece of work."

But, as Arlo Guthrie once sang, this isn't a song about Alice.

The Huffington Post's piece about the incident includes a section for reader comments that, for me, is a perfect distillation of what the worst of the right-wing-nutbar community embodies (not conservatives or Republicans generally, I hope, but that specific subset that has done so much to make Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter and Savage so rich in the last few years).

Look at what our friend "ProudlyConservative42" had to say about the CHiP's George Blanda impression:



I'm especially grateful to see "ProudlyConservative42" suggesting that if only America were MORE LIKE North Korea or Iran things would be better, at least as far as crime goes. Is this why my father died in World War 2 defending the American Way Of Life*? So that guys like "ProudlyConservative42" could just throw away the Constitution and the Rule of Law, and instead emulate the Communists or the ayatollahs? This guy is so upset about All The Things That Are Wrong With America that he can't even see straight.

Which makes it very hard for him to aim his bile effectively.

*Certain dramatic details were changed to better illustrate my point. In real life, my father did not die in World War 2 defending the American Way Of Life. He was too young to serve, and also not an American, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened like I described it.


( Jon & Ponch never did this, but I'll bet Sgt. Getraer wasn't above administering a little Size 10 justice. )

When Chief Steve Studenc of the Bridgeport, Ohio police said, "This put a lot of panic into people just because of the area they put it in," to which of the following items was he referring?

(a) This,
(b) This, or
(c) This?

( Answer after the cut )

This is the post-9/11 America: the bomb squad gets called out to respond to a potential threat against a guardrail on the back road into Martins Ferry, Ohio (population 6,804).

The terrorists have won, it would seem.

( The 'suspicious container' story )

If every other policeman featured on the show Cops says the thing he loves most about his job is that every day is different, then why is it that every episode seems to be the same?

There's the woman who's 40 years old but looks 80. She has a cigarette dangling from the spot on her lip that it's stuck to, is lacking both a set of false teeth and a bra, and complains that her husband's a drunk and she just wants him out of the house. Hubby needs a shirt, a shower, a shave, and the ability to form a coherent sentence once in a while.

There's the guy pulled over for skipping a stop sign who always agrees to a search of his car, presumably so he can try out his acting-surprised face when the officer finds the crack or the meth or the pot.

There's the guy who makes a run for it, and when he finally gets tackled by the cop, only the cop is out of breath. It seems to me that someone's not trying very hard.

And why is it that no matter where the particular episode of Cops is filmed, any time a suspect or a complainant opens his or her mouth, they sound like a character from My Name Is Earl? Does the entire drunken shirtless drug-addicted car-stealing wife-beating population of the United States speak only the dumbass-hillbilly-redneck-hick dialect of English?

A policeman leaving work Saturday morning noticed the smell of burning marijuana wafting across the parking lot of the Lakehurst, New Jersey police department. He and his fellow officers traced the smell to a home next door, where they say "they heard a conversation centered on the irony of smoking pot next to the station from a home separated from the parking lot by a chain-link fence," knocked on the door and arrested a man inside.

( A little less 'I', a little more 'Mo' )