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On the roundtable discussion via ABC's THIS WEEK, the last few minutes were dedicated to the Gates/Crowley Beer Summit story. If you watched most of the news shows on this issue, they told us that that President Obama was the big loser because more people sided with the police officer. However, Gerald Seib from the Wall Street Journal made the most honest statement about the incident and used the WSJ poll to do so. Seib said what the poll really revealed was the people who are predisposed to have racist tendencies voted against President Obama.

Seib: I don't know whether this opened up any new racial rifts or just showed that they're pretty much the same way they've always been. To go back to our poll again, George, if you look at the question we asked about who's more at fault, the professor or the cop. The people who thought the professor was more at fault tended to be older people, not younger people -- they tended to be people from the South, they tended to be more Republicans than Democrats. A lot of the same divides that you would expect to find ten years ago.

Conservatives had hoped that the Gates/Crowley story would open new wounds for Democrats on the race issue, but all it did was tell us that nothing has changed.

The same people who voted against Obama are the same ones who backed the cop. Wow, what a shocker. You can draw your own, unbiased conclusions on that one. It does help to look at the demographic breakdown of a question that has racial overtones, wouldn't you think? Well, it's the media, so that wasn't the case.



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While watching this week's State of the Union with John King, I've got to tell you, I wondered what planet CNN's Bill Bennett and Alex Castellanos are living on. Bennett thinks arresting someone "cool(s) down" a situation. And Castellanos says if the police don't have our respect, all they have left is their gun. So Alex, deadly force is now alright if someone isn't respectful to a police officer, and in their own home to boot?

It's always amazing to hear these people who believe that the public should be heavily armed and able to shoot anyone who comes near their property now staunchly defend the right of the police to arrest you for having the nerve to smart off to them, in your own home. Sorry guys, but being stupid still isn't a crime in this country. It wasn't smart for Gates to mouth off to the officer, but it wasn't illegal either.

KING: Bill, you have been waiting patiently. Go ahead.

BENNETT: Yes, John, look, there was no racial profiling here, OK? They were called to this house. They went into the house because of a reported break in. But if you want to talk about the relationship between police and community, then I hope Professor Gates has -- examines his conscience, because the abusive and bigoted things that were said in this case, were said by Professor Gates to this police officer.

When you say, do you know who you're messing with, this is not the cry of a victim. When you say, go outside and see your mama, if the police officer had said something like that to Gates, the police officer would be hanging by his toes.

That kind of arrogant, class-based superiority is what needs to be examined here as well.

(CROSSTALK)

BENNETT: And they backed off -- the White House backed off completely on this because they were getting shelled. The opinion polls were coming in and they knew that they were on the wrong side of this.

CASTELLANOS: And wouldn't it have been better, John, if the president said first what he said second, which is, let's all have a beer together? Wouldn't it have been better if the president of the United States had said, you know, maybe there's a silver lining in this and that is that we may have come to the great day where someone can be arrested for being a jerk regardless of your race.

Maybe that's where we are. Now, maybe whether he should have or shouldn't have been...

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Police have dropped charges against a famed Harvard professor. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested for disorderly conduct after he was seen breaking into his own house.

Gates' attorney doesn't believe that the professor was guilty of disorderly conduct. Professor Charles Ogletree told CNN's Kiran Chetry and John Roberts that the professor suspected race was an issue in his arrest.

According to Ogletree, Gates' told police, "I live here, why are you doing this to me? I told you this is my house, I gave you my I.D. and I'm the owner of the home." Gates charged that the police would not have treated a white man in the same way. "You're doing this because I'm an African-American and you're a white police officer? This makes no sense for you to question me like this in my home."

But when Gates stepped out of the house to talk to police they arrested him.

"He was very frustrated, there's no question about that, but belligerent is not the case. He never touched the officer, never pointed at the officer and in fact, he was trying to stay in his house having produced identification saying what more do I need to do," said Ogletree.