Happy beer hour at the White House.

President Obama's invitation for happy hour at the White House has been accepted by both Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley. Beer and bygones. And it is about time. Let's hope this is put to rest.

Mark Kleiman, a chairman of BOTEC Analysis Corporation, a Cambridge, Massachusetts firm that conducts policy analysis and contract research on illicit drugs, crime, and health care analyze the Crowley-Gates saga.

From Kleiman's blog:

The crime of disorderly conduct, beloved by cops who get into arguments with citizens, requires that the public be involved. Here's the relevant law from the Massachusetts Appeals Court, with citations and quotations omitted:
The statute authorizing prosecutions for disorderly conduct, G.L. c. 272, § 53, has been saved from constitutional infirmity by incorporating the definition of "disorderly" contained in § 250.2(1)(a) and (c) of the Model Penal Code. The resulting definition of "disorderly" includes only those individuals who, "with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof ... (a) engage in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or ... (c) create a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.' "Public" is defined as affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access.

The lesson most cops understand (apart from the importance of using the word "tumultuous," which features prominently in Crowley's report) is that a person cannot violate 272/53 by yelling in his own home.

In Crowley's report,on page two, Crowley admitted seeing Gates' Harvard photo ID. Click here. Clearly there was misunderstanding between Gates and Crowley as racial tension in this country needs to be discussed openly. From this report, this was clearly more of a citizen's right rather than racial. But, this is Crowley's account of the incident. And we heard Gates' side of his story where he felt the incident is racial. An audio tape between these two would conclude what took place between the two. Hopefully, these two can come together to a common ground, move on, and end the media frenzy and the wingnuts' fixation on racism.

Later update:

Statement from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:

"It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.

And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative. I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.

After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."