Obama Was Close, Cop Arresting Gates IgnorantAbusing His Power (UPDATE 2)

UPDATE 1: Added final paragraph.
UPDATE 2: Please ignore this post, it has been superseded by this one.

     Here's a case from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Commonwealth v Joseph Mulvey, which says that disorderly conduct must occur in public to be an offense.  From the synopsis:

At the trial of a criminal complaint charging disorderly conduct in violation of G. L. c. 272, s. 53, there was insufficient evidence to prove the public element of the offense, and the judge therefore erred in denying the defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty, where the defendant's conduct took place on purely private property, and the Commonwealth failed to establish that the disturbance had or was likely to have had an impact upon persons in an area accessible to the public. [582-585]

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     Thanks to Adam Winkler for cluing me into Commonwealth v Lopiano which cites Mulvey.  Thanks to Time magazine for publishing the same thing.

     The WSJ has a poll which shows fully 27% of Americans think Professor Gates was at fault.  Therefore we should recognize the media's role in this, muddling the issue.  In addition, the Chief of Police in Cambridge, in a public press conference, says that they shouldn't have dropped the charges, showing that he, too, is ignorant.