redblueamerica.com

There's a right way to challenge and rebut, and there's a wrong way. "Shut up" is, generally speaking, the wrong way. Actually, Justible, there wasn't a whole lot objectionable with the comment. The header was an unfortunate choice of words.

I need to respond to your second point, however, in case anyone else is confused. The purpose of the site isn't to find consensus. If we can, great. Believe me, though, I don't wake up every morning wondering how can I reach consensus today? Mostly, we want to have intelligent and civil discussions and debates on the most vital questions of the day. I'd like to be able to persuade readers that my position is the correct one.

And disagreement doesn't have to be personal. How about: "You're wrong, here's why..." Or: "You're mistaken, here's why..." But if it's all "shut up," or even "please shut up," we don't have much of a website, do we?

In Juan Williams' book "Enough" he reveals that Sharpton will provide a demonstration to order for $10,000.00.
If Sharpton can't round up activists, he will hire homeless people from the nearest homeless shelter to order.

Williams is an African American, senior commentator on NPR, author of nearly a dozen serious books, and has a gig on Fox News. He is as disgusted with Sharpton, Jackson, Marion Berry, and all the other African American con men as I am, and he knows them better. Great book, but from 2006, so a little dated.

I wasn't at the shooting that took Sean Bell's life.

Neither was Assistant Professor of Urban Education, Marc Hill, Sean Bell's widow or the "Rev." Al Sharpton.

The only people at the shooting were Bell, twice arrested for drug dealing and illegally possesing firearms. His two friends, both also arrested for illegally possesing firearms. Also at the shooting were felony free police officers.

I cannot attest to what transpiried at the scene. Nor can anyone else, including those crying for justice and demanding that the Officers killed out of racial motivation.

Attornies present evidence and a Judge must determine if a crime has been commited and base a conviction on proof beyond a resonable doubt. In this particular case, the charges against 3 of the 5 Officers who shot, were Manslaughter, Reckless Endangerment and Assault.

It can be construed that these charges are brought upon the fact that 50 shots were fired. As an officer, 50 shots does not seem excessive, between 5 officers. A typical 9mm handgun carried by law enforcement holds 16 rounds. That said, one officer shooting 31 times, does indeed sound like a lot. But is it excessive? I don't know, I wasn't there.

Rev. Sharpton is not privee to the evidence, but I'm sure without the evidence and without being there on that fatefull night can prove beyond a reasonable doubt these officers are guilty.

But was is this really about? It's about RACE. It's about Sharpton and his followers trying to convince the world blacks are targeted and brought down by the, as Hill calls it: "white supremicist proto-fascist state."

In Oct 2007 two Chicago South Side gangs fought, one side shot at the other and an innoncent 10 year old boy was killed in the cross fire. Now 4 members are being charged with the murder. Where is the Righteous Rev. now? Where is Hill? Why aren't they he taking to the streets calling for blacks to stop killing blacks.

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/child.shoot...

What about when a black woman kills her black boyfriend outside of his other girlfriends house, stating it was seld defense, because she "thought" he was reaching for a gun in his car, yet there was no gun. She was found not guilty.

http://www.wxia11.com/news/news_article....

Where are Sharpton and Hill then? Where is the injustice? Obviously this was just out of jealosy and a cold blooded murder because he didn't have a gun, therefore she is guilty. Why aren't men all over the country just enraged to the point that we should feeling like rioting and beating our women to prove a point.

To Sharpton it is about RACE not justice. Maybe the officers or just the one officer did act unreasonably, by firing 31 rounds out of the 50. I don't know I wasn't there and nobidy else was. To the justice system it is about what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What would a reasonable person in a similar situation do. No one can say until they know all the facts.

What if each officer shot just 3 times for a total of 15 shots and only of those shots hits Bell in the head, killing him. Is it still unreasonable? Is it still excessive? Is it still manslaughter and can charges still be brought against the officers?

Bell was shot 4 times out of the 50, according to the autopsy. His felonious partner was shot 19 times and lived. Bell was over the legal limit when he was driving. Had he not been highly intoxicated, would he have survived the shooting? Alcohol thins the blood and the body easily prone to bleeding out. These may have been arguements brought before the court which may or may have not contributed to the not guilty verdict. Again I don't know, but it makes for an interesting tale.

Sharpton is threatening to break several laws in order to illegally overthrow a legal court decision. You cannot appeal an acquittal, so his only recourse is to threaten insurrection, a felony in itself.

I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that a police officer has the right to stop and investigate any person at any time. It is that person's duty to cooperate with a lawful order. Failure to obey is a crime, and can lead to serious consequences.

I wonder what authority has given Sharpton the right to break any law he finds inconvienient in his quest of maximum publicity for himself. God? The KKK prayed to God too.

Semi-automatic pistols pistols, Glocks or something similar are standard issue these days, i understand they carry 14 rounds in their magazines. I would have been a job for three cops to fire 50 rounds from old style .38 revolvers. Yes?

People have been calling semi-automatic pistols "Automatics" for a century now, don't you know.

You are being rude, obtuse and strident. The purpose of this website is to seek a left right consensus, is it not? And i am usually on the blue side,but i can see the city's side on this, as well as the Bell party's.

The police should have called in the license plate and stopped Bell's car in some other place. Bell's party should have stopped and not tried to run down a cop. Two or more wrongs making a tragedy, happens every day, usually to a lesser extent.

But, making political hay out of this tragedy is just wrong. I haven't looked at the trial transcript, but the Black cop must have emptied his magazine too. So how is that a racial problem?

This is a stupidity problem. Both the cops and the Bells were stupid. Excess firepower aggravated the stupidity.

I'm not sure if it's the "best thinking." But after much back-and-forth, I decided to use this as the "blue take" for a reason.

Namely this: The author of those words, Marc Lamont Hill, hardly exists on the fringe or outside the mainstream. He's a professor (I'm working from memory) at Temple University. In 2005, Ebony Magazine named him one of America's top 30 Black leaders under 30 years old. And -- this is important for the purposes of this discussion -- he's black.

And what I saw in his words is this: A guy who is doing pretty well under the status quo system nonetheless filled with rage at what he sees in the Sean Bell case.

Now, would I describe America as a "white supremicist proto-fascist state?" No.

Then again, I'm not black. And it's possible I'd see things differently if I were. I know there's a tendency among conservatives to chalk this kind of talk up to "race hustling" on the part of blacks and a kind of misguided namby-pamby multiculturalism among liberal whites -- but, given that race is at the very heart of this case, I though it was valuable to understand what's going on here.

Check out the New York Daily News column above. The columnist is also advocating protests against the Bell decision. Understand: The Daily News is a tabloid, but it's also a pretty mainstream paper in New York. It's not a socialist flyer passed along by the anarchists.

It *is* unfortunate that Al Sharpton is involved in all of this, because he has a track record of demogoguery and activism divorced from truth. I hold no brief for him.

But allowing ourselves to focus exclusively on Sharpton and his easy-to-condemn showboatery lets us take our eyes off the more uncomfortable issues at play. Anger about the Sean Bell case is not confined to the "race hustlers." It's widespread in the black community in New York. Rather than chalking it up to mass craziness, I think it's useful to examine, consider -- and maybe even do something about.

If you can only make up facts, you're adding to the problem.

SWAT teams can be issued automatic weapons . . . when someone above them makes the call. But these were not SWAT police.

I guess we've also decided that the police were obviously lying, and not the many-times convicted dealer and other felons involved. Because if the police who say there was a gun are telling the truth, then the macho guns wielded by the police made the difference between headlines of dead police and dead criminals. Yeah. If only they'd tried to talk it out.

Sharpton is a disgrace. Bell apparently tried to run over some of the cops, perhaps thinking they were robbers. The cops were, you might see from pictures, one black, one white and one brown skinned man.

I suspect that everybody involved was drunk, surely the Bell party and perhaps the cops.

Those automatics the police use throw an ungodly amount of lead, and surely the cops were overly excited.

But then, police almost never get convicted in cases like this, so no surprises there either.

Another stupid tragedy with the usual causes; alcohol, macho attitudes and reliance on firearms instead of thought. Happens every day, it's the American way.

But Sharpton is a rabble rouser, at best, an unprincipled headline grabber. I am reading Juan Williams' "Enough, The Phony leaders, Dead-end Movements...That are undermining Black America..." He is not happy with Sharpton and the whole culture of victimization politics that produces Sharpton and many more like him.

One important facet to the Obama campaign that is never mentioned; Will an Obama Presidency entitle the Al Sharptons of the America to greater excess? Noting could be worse for Black America.