Politics

So the Cambridge police union wants an apology from President Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for calling out the Cambridge Police Department for mishandling Skip Gates’ arrest? That’s some priceless gall considering that the Cambridge Police Department called the event “regrettable and unfortunate” and recommended that disorderly conduct charges against Gates be dropped. It’s…

Statement from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “It was very kind of the President to phone me today.  Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and…

There is no greater bully pulpit in the world than that of the presidency of the United States. At 2:30 p.m. on Friday, President Obama, before a stunned White House Press Corps, used the reach of his megaphone to try to tame a wildfire started two days earlier when he waded into the Henry Louis…

THE PRESIDENT: Hey, it’s a cameo appearance. Sit down, sit down. I need to help Gibbs out a little bit here. Q Are you the new press secretary? THE PRESIDENT: If you got to do a job, do it yourself. (Laughter.) I wanted to address you guys directly because over the last day and a…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Knocked off stride by a racial uproar he helped stoke, President Barack Obama hastened Friday to tamp down the controversy. Obama, who had said Cambridge, Mass., police “acted stupidly” in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., declared the white arresting officer was a good man and invited him and the professor…

In an interview with The Root after the ordeal of his arrest in his home in Cambridge, this week Harvard professor (and The Root’s editor-in-chief) Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. announced his intention to make a PBS special about race and the criminal justice system. It would bring welcome attention to an important and still…

From Al Jazeera: Barack Obama, the US president, has said his country is not seeking any claim on Iraqi territory, after holding talks with Iraq’s prime minister in Washington. Obama said after the meeting with Nuri al-Maliki at the White House on Wednesday that the US will abide by previous pledges to pull its forces out of Iraq by…

NATICK, Mass. (AP) — A white police sergeant who arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Thursday he’s disappointed President Barack Obama said officers acted “stupidly,” despite acknowledging he didn’t know all the facts. Sgt. James Crowley responded to Gates’ home near Harvard University last week to investigate a report of a burglary…

From the Washington Independent: The last time I wrote about the case of Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, the government had just conceded that its primary evidence — his “confessions” — were the product of torture and inadmissible in court. But the government still wasn’t letting Jawad go. Last night I received a copy of the…

Maybe it was just dumb luck, but CNN’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. But, of course, the deep thinkers at CNN didn’t predict the future by airing its “Black in America 2” documentary just when the nation’s attention is focused on big national news involving black story lines: No. 1—President Obama, the first U.S.…