T asers were supposed to substitute for lethal force; guns. Instead they are being used to force compliance with the commands of a cop. As Andrew Sullivan says, “We’re all criminals now”. William Grigg at Pro Libertate has been pointing out for a long while how we are becoming a militarized police state. This must stop. The taser experiment has been a disaster. And the cops don’t serve and protect; they harass and intimidate (and sometimes injure or kill).

The Skip Gates arrest story has an interesting new twist. Apparently, a Boston policeman and member of the Massachusetts National Guard was upset enough about the whole situation that he wrote an email to the editor of the Boston Globe. This is what he had to say about Professor Gates : If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.