Slugger McKinney

Ed Morrissey parses Cynthia McKinney’s Durbin-esque “apology” for slugging a Capital Hill police officer, and isn’t very impressed:

If that’s the complete statement, it falls a little short. She says that the incident should not have resulted in “physical contact,” but that became necessary on the part of the police when she refused to stop after blowing through the checkpoint. She should have apologized for striking the officer outright and not hiding behind this weasel-word construction. Nor, do I note, does she apologize for accusing Capitol Hill police of racism and racial profiling. She gave the minimal apology possible to try to get the story off the front pages.

Once again, we have an egotistical blowhard demanding that everyone cater to her whims and smearing people who refuse to submit to her bullying. I suspect that the deafening public silence from the Congressional Black Caucus disguised some pointed advice from them to McKinney to shut the hell up before she undid years of work highlighting real racism in law enforcement.

It shouldn’t work, but it probably will; the story will quickly fade unless the grand jury decides to press charges anyway, and at some point we’ll hear her colleagues demand that we “move on”. I give it three hours.

Meanwhile, appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show today, Mark Steyn agrees that McKinney’s apology is a “kind of weasel phrasing of words”:

This is another thing I joked about, actually, with the border guy yesterday, that basically, she gets asked for I.D., and she slugs the official. And then she accuses him of being a racist. The reality of the situation is that if this is a republic of citizen legislators, then they do not have the right to demand the kind of privileges that ordinary citizens do not have. So if we have to produce cards and I.D., and stand in line, and have the right documentation, then so should Congressmen and Senators, and secretaries of this, and secretaries of that, and ambassadors, and all the fancy pants people. You know, one of the most loathsome and unlikeable things about John Kerry was when he was running for president, was his whole ‘don’t you know who I am’ attitude whenever he met a little person. And I don’t think that…unfortunately, there’s too many Senators and Congressmen for them all to pull the ‘don’t you know who I am’ routine?

HH: Okay, so we’re not expecting her to really get down and apologize. Do you expect her to be prosecuted?

MS: Well, I would hope she’s prosecuted. You know, I don’t think you have a real legislature unless they are bound by the same rules as us.

HH: Well put.

MS: I remember during the 2000 campaign, standing at the toll booth on I-93 in New Hampshire, as Al Gore’s motorcade came roaring through without stopping, and you know, little old ladies jumping out of the way and scattering, because he didn’t want to pay the 75 cent toll. Sorry, I don’t care if he’s the Vice President. You don’t legislate laws for us that you’re not bound by. And if it’s the law that you have to produce I.D. to get into the United States Congress, and to its grounds, and to its buildings, then she has to do it with everybody else.

One would hope.