The Gates Arrest, The Police Report & The U.S. Constitution

by "Potus"

Hopefully, as this issue fades into the news headlines, more will read into the facts before blogging from emotions. Simply, once you have identified yourself as the owner of any property, the case is closed. In this case, after the property owner is clearly established, it wouldn't even be illegal to curse at an officer in YOUR own house. In Dr. Gates case, he asked officer Crowley several times for his name and badge number without any response. The police report alleges that Gates exhibited "loud and tumultuous behavior in a public place." The Gates home is not a "public place" — it is private property, including his porch and the yard around it.
In this case, considering the arrogance of incompetence being displayed by this individual officer, an apology has no value, won't happen and is not necessary. That's just the way it is.
REPEAT AFTER ME: Lawsuit, plus six zeros — and officer Crowley can keep his incompetent arrogance — while Dr. Gates uses the money to produce a groundbreaking prime-time documentary on racial profiling in the so-called post-racial Obama era.
No point in playing the race card when a hefty civil lawsuit can best change behavior. As it was with the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s — to not patronizing businesses that discriminate in the 21st century — money talks. The possibility of going broke in a capitalist society has always focused the bigoted mind.
The renown Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has an opportunity to send a major message, coincidently in the Obama era — a time when the country has changed and progressed, but the nature of certain individuals haven't. No political event or public policies will change the mentality of most individuals in one generation.
It would be easy and wrong to broad-brush any local police precinct or the entire Cambridge police department. What will be most effective for professor Gates to do is to file a civil lawsuit for major monetary damages against the individual police officers (not the department or city) initially engaged in this incident. Gates has the time, legal resources, credibility and overwhelming public integrity to do so.
Strategically and politically, the department and city will be motivated to quietly kick the individual wrongdoers to the curb so as not to be embroiled in the liabilities and bad public relations that will come their way. Unless the individual officers actions are official and condoned policy, the department or city should not be penalized for any rogue or independent actions by an individual officer.
Every step and action the arresting officers took, if all that the news reports and Gates' attorney alleges is true, was a clear violation of Mr. Gates and his property under the Constitution, Bill of Rights and sections of U.S. civil rights law.
As it would be for the rest of us, make the officers understand the real dollar and career price for their personal decisions, and their lack of genuine professional discretion. Expose and sue these individuals as aberrations operating under the guise of a police department and city that does not condone or cover for officers that violate citizen rights.
If the facts are affirmed, clearly the officers acted as individuals rather than public servants.
Six or more zeros behind a major monetary damages civil lawsuit against an individual will send a real message to others so inclined to violate the law and citizen rights.
For those with far less clout than Dr. Gates, please don't let this one go, 'Skip' — do the right thing.
Dennis Moore — Publisher — http://www.POTUSworld.com — ppceo@potusworld.com
Cambridge Police Department Police Report:http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
The United States Constitution - Bill of RightsAmendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/f081.htm
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/583503
VIDEO LINKS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKObGK4tIFg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLkZ8a1V5MQ
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/10221/Lincoln+on+Race+and+Slavery.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates,_Jr.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/lookingforlincoln/

The Conception of the Divine among the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians

From The Library University of Toronto

PREFACE

THE subject of the following Lectures was "The Conception of the Divine among the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians", and in writing them I have kept this aspect of them constantly in view. The time has not yet come for a systematic history of Babylonian religion, whatever may be the case as regards ancient Egypt, and, for reasons stated in the text, we must be content with general principles and fragmentary details. It is on this account that so little advance has been made in grasping the real nature and characteristics of Babylonian religion, and that a sort of natural history description of it has been supposed to be all that is needed by the student of religion. While reading over again my Hibbert Lectures, as well as later \vorks on the subject, I have been gratified at finding how largely they have borrowed from me, even though it be without acknowledgment. But my Hibbert Lectures were neces sarily a pioneering work, and we must now attempt to build on the materials which were there brought together. In the present volume, therefore, the materials are presupposed ; they will be found for the most part either in my Hibbert Lectures or in the cuneiform texts which have since been published. We are better off, fortunately, as regards the re ligion of ancient Egypt. Thanks more especially to Professor Maspero s unrivalled combination of learning and genius, we are beginning to learn what the old Egyptian faith actually was, and what were the founda tions on which it rested. The development of its dogmas can be traced, at all events to a certain extent, and we can even watch the progress of their decay. There are two facts which, I am bound to add, have been forced upon me by a study of the old religions of civilised humanity. On the one hand, they testify to the continuity of religious thought. God s light lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and the religions of Egypt and Babylonia illustrate the words of the evangelist. They form, as it were, the background and preparation for Judaism and Christianity ; Christianity is the fulfilment, not of the Law only, but of all that was truest and best in the religions of the ancient world. In it the beliefs and aspirations of Egypt and Babylonia have found their explanation and fulfilment. But, on the other hand, between Judaism and the coarsely poly theistic religion of Babylonia, as also between Christianity and the old Egyptian faith, in spite of its high morality and spiritual insight, there lies an impassable gulf. And for the existence of this gulf I can find only one explanation, unfashionable and antiquated though it be. In the language of a former generation, it marks the dividing-line between revelation and unrevealed religion. It is like that " something," hard to define, yet impossible to deny, which separates man from the ape, even though on the physiological side the ape may be the ancestor of the man. A. H. SAYCE. October 1902.

CONTENTS

PART I. THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. EGYPTIAN RELIGION. . *21

III THE IMPERISHABLE PART OF MAN AND THE OTHER WORLD 46 -

IV. THE SUN-GOD AND THE ENNEAD . . 71

V. ANIMAL WORSHIP . .100 .

VI. THE GODS OF EGYPT . 127 1

VII. OSIRIS AND THE OSIRIAN FAITH . 153-

VIII. THE SACRED LOOKS .

IX. THE POPULAR RELIGION OF EGYPT . . 204 P

X. THE PLACE OF EGYPTIAN RELIGION IN THE HISTORY OF THEOLOGY .

PART II. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS.

I. INTRODUCTORY

II. PRIMITIVE ANIMISM . 276

III. THE GODS OF BABYLONIA . 2!)7

IV. THE SUN-GOD AND ISTAR . 323

V. SUMERIAN AND SEMITIC CONCEPTIONS OF THE DIVINE: ASSUR AND MONOTHEISM .

VI. COSMOLOGIES . *73

VII. THE SACRED BOOKS .

VIII. THE MYTHS AND EPICS

IX. THE BITUAL OF THE TEMPLE . 448

X. ASTRO-THEOLOGY AND THE MORAL ELEMENT IN BABY LONIAN RELIGION ..... 479