Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the lede paragraph of the year so far:

“If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose,” the comedic philosopher Jack Handey once theorized.

A messy eureka moment like that wasn’t the point for the White House beer drinkers Thursday night.

If you know and run into AP writer Calvin Woodward, please thank him for me.

Richard Frisbie, of Arlington Heights, IL, a writer whom I have known for years, primarily through our membership in Society of Midland Authors, cites a 1979 Florida case, “State vs. Brayman,” as one to keep in mind as we judge the arrest of Prof. Gates in Cambridge.

In it, Frisbie says in a letter to the Sun-Times,

a charge of “resisting a police officer without violence” was dismissed by Judge John J. King in a decision widely quoted in the press at the time.

I will take his word about that, but I would like to know how the decision fared in upper courts if challenged or to what extent it became precedent.

On the other hand, another letter writer, to the Canton, Ohio Repository, apparently no more a lawyer than Frisbie, cites another, later decision that supports the Gates arrest.

Terry v. Ohio is a famous U.S. Supreme Court case that defined “reasonable suspicion” and upholds law enforcement officers’ authority to stop, detain and frisk a suspect without arresting him, based on “reasonable suspicion.” [italics added]

This was in 1968.  The decision, approved with the sole dissent of Justice Douglas, has an enduring history:

Terry set the precedent for Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983). In an opinion citing Terry written by Justice O’Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that car compartments could be constitutionally searched if an officer had reasonable suspicion.

The scope of Terry was extended in the 2004 Supreme Court case Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 542 U.S. 177 (2004), which held that a state law requiring the suspect to identify himself during a Terry stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment prohibitions of unreasonable searches and seizures or the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

All of that goes far beyond the Gates arrest; it’s about stopping and frisking on the street, for one thing, not on one’s front porch.  But it does provide perspective for the case my fellow writer Frisbie brings up and seems on its face to have more substance.

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Here’s a Florida perspective on the 1979 case in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times blog, including that

it’s worth mentioning if only to celebrate the verbosity of late Broward Circuit Court Judge John J. King.

He was verbose, I guess.

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While we’re at it in re perspective, let’s get down to the common-sense level, if we may, with this observation by Michael Barone:

Obama’s acolytes love to say that this case is a “teachable moment.” The one who needs teaching, it is clear, is not Sergeant James Crowley but Professor Henry Louis Gates. Gates proclaimed that he was being questioned because he was black—which was plainly not the case. Crowley was responding to a passerby’s report that a house was being broken into.

Moreover—and this is a point I haven’t seen others make—when Gates was shouting in the hearing of passerbys that Crowley was a racist, Crowley must have regarded this as a threat to his entire career. Allegations of racism could result in losing his job, being publicly disgraced, being unable to get another good job—the end of everything he’d worked for all his adult life. [italics added]

We’ve seen that, have we not?  From baseball exec to talk-show host, the wheels have grinded rapidly and small, until little or nothing is left of the accused.  Hmmm.  Was Gates yelling fire in the old crowded theater?

Gates . . . had the power to destroy Crowley’s career. And he seemed to enjoy wielding that power, or at least to be acting in reckless disregard of his capacity to destroy the professional life of another human being.

Yes, Gates was jet-lagged and presumably irritated that he was locked out of his house. But the possibility that Crowley was a decent professional, not at all a racist, properly investigating a possible crime, doesn’t seem to have occurred to him. Crowley was just one of the little people, a disposable commodity in the career of an academic superstar.

Barone concludes:

In other words, by saying the Cambridge police “acted stupidly,” [Obama] aligned himself with the culture of victimhood that Gates channeled when he faced Sergeant Crowley. And he aligned himself with a member of the academic elite who committed acts which threatened to destroy another person’s professional life. Not a pretty picture. It will be interesting to see who shows contrition after this afternoon’s beer session.

I know stutters and this ain’t it.  It’s the second item I’ve seen in last two days about Bernanke looking bad on this point — the other was being questioned by a Congressman — and each time he doesn’t.

Heat’s on him and Fed because it’s lending (creating) money and not just setting rates, and rightly so,  And bigger q. is what about the Fed in the first place?  But that’s a minority view, to be sure.

As for his argument about letting Congress decide monetary matters — rates — if we need a wizard, those bozos can’t be the one, but more to point, that’s not the law, he argues.

Mad Barney Frank at the monetary helm?  Hollywood Waxman?  God save us.

Bernanke Stutters, Stammers And Shakes His Way Through Questions On Audit The Fed Bill

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These burglaries are on the north end of town, not northeast, where houses are especially nice and residents are generally more affluent.

Oak Park police have issued a neighborhood alert following four residential burglaries within a four hour period early Wednesday morning. The burglaries occurred within a roughly four square block area bounded by Division on the north, Chicago on the south, Oak Park to the west and Ridgeland to the east

Details:

Three of the homes were entered through unlocked rear doors, and one through an open window. Numerous valuables were stolen while homeowners slept inside.

Oh boy.  While they slept. 

Cops are on it.  Indeed, they have been getting results.  But those unlocked back doors bespeak a confidence in one’s safety that is proving unrealistic.