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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (6763)	4/3/2006 6:13:36 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

This is a clear case of prejudice in action. A police officer stopped a black woman who failed to go through the metal detector. It is clear that Ms. McKinney felt that she was entitled to special treatment. She felt so entitled that she assumed she did not have to identify herself. While she had th right to wear identification that would exclude herself from being subjected to possibly humiliating searches, she chose to waive her rights. Then when a police officer working to protect us attempted to enforce the law she treated him rudely. Who is she that she assumes she can treat the lower classes that way? She is just a bigot.

To: sandintoes who wrote (6763)	4/3/2006 6:17:18 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

All Attitude, No Gratitude Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who last week was accused of battering a U.S. Capitol policeman with a cell phone, held a bizarre press conference late Friday afternoon at Washington's Howard University, reports the Hill: Standing against a backdrop of two-dozen Georgia schoolchildren holding signs that read "God Bless Cynthia" and "Is Cynthia a Target?" McKinney told a dozen assembled TV cameras that the officer was at fault, implying that her race, gender and politics had played a role in the incident. "Let me be clear, this whole incident was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me--a female, black, progressive congresswoman," she said. "I am certain that after a full review of the facts, I will be exonerated." A lawyer for McKinney, James Myart, asserted that his client acted in self-defense. "Congresswoman McKinney, in a hurry, was essentially chased and grabbed by the officer; she reacted instinctively in an effort to defend herself," he said. . . . "[McKinney,] like thousands of average Americans across this country, is too a victim of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin. Ms. McKinney is just a victim of being in Congress while black," Myart, her lawyer, said. McKinney seems clearly to have been in the wrong. The officer approached her when she walked around a metal detector. As a member of Congress she is entitled to do so, but she was not wearing the lapel pin that identifies her as a member, and thus she committed a breach of security. (Slate reported in 2002 that "she refuses to wear her member's pin.") McKinney does not claim to have identified herself before the officer approached, so that as far as he knew, he could have been dealing with a terrorist or a dangerous psychotic. Nor has she publicly denied that she struck the officer. Indeed, when her lawyer says "she reacted instinctively in an effort to defend herself," he seems to be justifying the alleged assault rather than denying it. McKinney's answer to all this is, essentially, Do they know who I am? Earlier Friday she published on her Web site, then withdrew, an even more bizarre statement, which Atlanta's WSBT-TV has reproduced. She began by acknowledging that this isn't her first run-in with the Capitol police (quoting verbatim): I have served as a Member of Congress for more than 11 years. Throughout my tenure in Congress, I seem to evoke memory loss, especially from certain police officers who claim not to be able to recognize my face while I go to work everyday, representing the people of Georgia's 4th Congressional District. Washington, DC and local newspapers, as well as authors of books, have carried my "working while black" stories of such encounters on Capitol Hill. In fact, the movie American Blackout candidly captures just such an encounter in one of its more humorous moments when after a two-year hiatus from Congress, a black police officer recognizes me and welcomes me back to Washington, and then just across the street, a few yards away, a white police officer approaches me to ask me what office I am with. In the film I remark, "Some things never change. That's what Tupac said." opinionjournal.com