Reading the Homer News online the other week from my hotel room in Scottsdale, Ariz., I came across an opinion piece of a supporter of the 9/12 movement, who in the name of wanting the country back, took the president to task for describing a Cambridge policeman, Sgt. Jim Crowley, last summer as having acted stupidly for having arrested Harvard Professor Louis Gates in his own home after Professor Gates had provided proof he was not a burglar, but, indeed, the home's owner.

So, arrested for what?

As best I can determine, believing his home his castle, for venting on the officer his frustration as a black man over the black experience of being profiled in his dealings with the police.

But apparently Gates, at least for that moment, had no First or Fourth Amendment rights for right smack dab in the midst of his own castle, the esteemed professor, having done nothing but express his exasperation was put in handcuffs and hauled off. All charges, subsequently, were dropped

I wonder why? What words, to be intellectually honest, would you had picked to describe such an arrest?

Stupid, perhaps, may have been a bit impolitic, but in terms of intellectually honesty it sounded to me, as a patriot, just about the right characterization.

Yet Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, at the time, to make political hay, introduced a resolution in Congress asking the president to apologize to the Cambridge police. Again, as a patriot, I believe that resolution was pointed 180 degrees the wrong direction. Rather, if it were to really reflect our principles and not our prejudices, should have been calling on the Cambridge Police Department to apologize to the good professor.

Meanwhile, the president tried to provide a teachable moment by getting beyond that cross-wise Cambridge scene by bringing Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley together over a cold beer at the White House. Yet that pseudo patriot, Glenn Beck, the inspiration behind the 9/12 "Whisky Rebellion"-like movement, tried to really stir things up by declaring the president hates white people.

By gosh, imagine that. I believe the president's mother was white. But nine-twelvers, take heart, that doesn't mean he was born in America.

Anyway, speaking of the Fourth Amendment, in the overall context of things, I believe it's noteworthy to recall just a few days prior to the Cambridge police incident it was revealed that if former Vice President Dick Cheney had had his power-sick druthers, back in 2002, the Army, not the FBI, would have been sent to Buffalo, N.Y., to arrest the so called Lackawanna Six for plotting with al Qaeda.

Cheney specifically wanted the Army and not the FBI to make the arrest to highlight to the American people that just by some mumbo-jumbo legalese drawn up, not by the Supreme Court, but by the Bush Justice Department's Constitutional contortionist, John Hue, the Fourth Amendment and the bedrock Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, restricting the federal government from using the military for law enforcement, could just like that be all blithered away.

To be sure, for the sake of the Constitution, for the sake of the rule of law, thank God, Barrack Obama and not a Dick Cheney-type is president, especially in light of that beyond horrific, murderous incident at Fort Hood. Just imagine how a Dick Cheney-type would have tried to leverage the fear and anger it's produced in order to re-energize our going even further rogue on the Constitution than where the Bush administration left us.

Alas, let me be clear. Myself, I believe the 9/12 movement has gone rogue on nationalism at the forfeit of patriotism.

Longtime Homer resident Tim O'Leary is an observer of the political scene.