The majority revolution.

I thought that the republican party was the party of Lincoln.  If it is, why were they carrying the confederate flag at that wingnut gathering in Washington, today?

Of course Sarah Palin was there, and so was the de facto leader of the republican party, Ted Cruz.

Sarah and Ted had some Harsh words for this administration. And Sarah, still the genius, wanted to know why there were barricades around the veteran's memorial in Washington. Pssst, Sarah, it's called a shutdown. The park is supposed to be closed. You can't pick and choose what you want to remain open when there is a government shutdown that you and your party initiated.

Larry Klayman, of a group laughably named Freedom Watch, was even tougher on the government than Sarah and Ted were:

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up,”

There is a lot of talk of revolution these days. Mostly from poor uneducated white folks. These are the people who were told their entire lives that just being white was good enough. Now, though, they look around and see that the most powerful man in their country doesn't look like they do. Maybe, just maybe, the privileges that they thought they were afforded throughout their lives might not be there after all. Heck that would scare me too. (I see you "Joe the Plumber".)

Finally, I was at a legal conference recently, and while there I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who happens to be an African American Judge in our fine city.

We got to talking about crime and things such as stop and frisk, and he let me know in no uncertain terms that he was not immune from racial profiling.

"Hey man, when those cops pull me over they don't know that I am a sitting Judge. All they see is another black man in a nice car."

And it's not just a black man sitting in a car that has to worry about overly aggressive police officers, sadly, profiling can take many forms.

Anyway, I thought about that conversation when I read two stories from my local paper last week.

"NO ONE GOT PUNCHED in the face - this time - but YouTube has given the Philadelphia Police Department another black eye, proving once again that smartphones are a bully cop's worst nightmare.

Let's just hope that Officer Philip Nace doesn't land in the city's tourism department when the dust settles.

"Don't come to f---ing Philadelphia. Stay in Jersey."

That's one of Nace's rage-induced zingers that were recorded in a disturbing 16-minute YouTube video of a recent stop and frisk.
 

The video, dated Sept. 27, shows Nace, 46, and another police officer from North Philly's 25th District stopping two unidentified men, apparently after they said hello to a third man on the street.

"You don't say 'Hi' to strangers," Nace said as he confronts the two pedestrians. "Not in this neighborhood," his partner added.

The cops then push one of the men against their cruiser. The second man, who is videotaping the incident and starts to walk away, is ordered to put his phone in his pocket and get against the car for a frisk. The phone, however, continues recording, apparently on the hood of the car.

"Don't f---ing fight . . . we'll kick your ass, too," Nace said. He threatened the other man, saying he would "split your wig open."

Nace called one of the men a "f---ing dirty ass." When they protest that they haven't done anything wrong, he shouted: "Why don't you shut the f--- up! Everyone thinks they're a f---ing lawyer, and they don't know jack s---."
"You're jaywalking, by the way," the second officer later added, apparently in an attempt to justify the stop.

At one point, Nace told one of the men: "We don't want you here, anyway. All you do is weaken the f---ing country."

"How do I weaken the country? By working?" the man asked.
"No, freeloading," Nace said.

When the man said he's a server at a country club, Nace responded, "Server. Serving weed?"

The video is titled "Police unlawful harassment and racial profiling," but the race of the two pedestrians is unclear. Nace and his partner are white." [Source]

And then there was this poor guy:

"HERBERT Spellman gave nearly 20 years of his life to the Philadelphia Police Department, retiring in 2008 after a driver rear-ended his police cruiser, knocking him unconscious and sending him to the emergency room.

His body still hurts as a result of the injuries sustained in the crash. But Spellman's pride took a beating more recently.

On Sept. 10, walking to a bus stop in West Oak Lane, Spellman found himself on the other side of the police department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, he said.

"Demeaning," "nasty," "ridiculous" and "illegal" are the words that come to his mind when he recounts the incident. They weren't police tactics he recognized from his time on the force.
 

"I'm walking, and the cops come up on an angle. Two officers jump out of the car and grab me by my shirt and pants," Spellman said. "I asked them why they stopped me, and the driver said, 'Why did you look at us and turn and walk away?' "

Spellman, 50, a married father of four, said the officers went through his wallet without his permission, forcefully frisked him and put him in the back of the police cruiser. He said they asked why he was "so far from home," accused him of being on drugs and told him to "shut the f--- up" when he asked why he was being stopped. His cellphone screen was shattered in the process.

"It demeans you. It made me feel like I was a piece of meat," Spellman said. "This is new to me: someone on you, manhandling you. Don't tell me to 'shut the f--- up.' The whole thing shouldn't have happened. I'm a grown man trying to catch the bus."

Spellman was not charged with a crime. He said he had left the ACT Academy Cyber Charter School, where his son was taking a computer class, so he could let his wife into their home in Olney. She had forgotten her key. He said he showed the officers his retired police ID, but it didn't help.

"I don't know what's going on with this police department, but it's terrible," he said.

Lt. Thomas Fournier of Internal Affairs confirmed that Spellman had filed a complaint with his office, but said he couldn't comment on the case.
The experience made Spellman realize what can happen to innocent civilians when they become suspects in the eyes of cops. Spellman, who is black, still doesn't know why he was targeted, but he couldn't help but notice that the two cops who stopped him and the four or five backup officers who arrived were white.

"I don't want to turn it into a racial issue, but that's what it felt like," Spellman said of racial profiling. "When my son leaves the house, I'm going to tell him to be more careful of cops than crooks. Me, being an injured officer with ID, and they're giving me that much trouble? I can't imagine someone without credentials." [Source]

Just keep those confederate flags off of our police cars.