You may remember Officer Justin Barrett, a Boston police officer who inserted himself into the Henry Gates controversy by sending out an inflammatory, racist e-mail to friends and media outlets in which he referred to Professor Gates as a "banana eating jungle monkey." Now, he's claiming that his first amendment right to free speech is being infringed upon and that the Boston PD violated his civil rights by suspending him:

Justin Barrett, the Boston police officer suspended from the force for his e-mail likening Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., to a “banana-eating jungle monkey,’’ has filed a lawsuit against the Police Department, police commissioner, and mayor, saying the city violated his civil and due process rights.

The 18-page lawsuit accuses the three parties of “conspiring to intentionally inflict emotional distress and conspiring to intentionally interfere with the property rights, due process rights, and civil rights of the plaintiff.’’

According to the lawsuit, the mayor and commissioner’s actions caused Barrett pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional distress, posttraumatic stress, sleeplessness, indignities and embarrassment, degradation, injury to reputation, and restrictions on personal freedom. Read on...

Barrett and his Lawyer are trying to conflate criticism of speech and free speech itself just like Sarah Palin has in the past -- criticizing my free speech is taking away my free speech.

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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.

As the story of the arrest of Professor Henry Gates has unfolded, this was bound to happen. Apparently, the Boston Police Department now has their own Mark Fuhrman:

A Boston police officer allegedly sent a mass e-mail using a disgraceful racial slur in referring to Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., prompting the commissioner to move immediately to fire the cop, the Herald has learned.

Officer Justin Barrett, 36, a two-year veteran assigned to District B-3, was placed on administrative leave pending a termination hearing yesterday afternoon. When a supervisor confronted Barrett about the e-mail - in which he called Gates a “jungle monkey” - he admitted to being the author, according to officials.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis immediately stripped the cop of his gun and badge, according to officials. Barrett, who could not immediately be reached, has no prior disciplinary history. Read on...

I've tried to understand the minds of scum like this, but it only ends in excruciating pain -- every time. With all the racist hate being spewed on right wing radio and television, it's no wonder guys like Barrett are worked up to the point where they can no longer control their hatred. I guess this would be another one of those "teachable moments?"