In the Right

But thanks to a good friend on the ground in Illinois, who has good friends in Springfield, the citation was found, and the story can be told.

The most dangerous moment of any beat cop's day is the moment he has to serve a warrant on a suspected drug dealer's abode.

All too often, two things happen within moments of him knocking on the door and announcing to those inside that he's a policeman with a search warrant: One guy grabs the drugs and runs to the bathroom to flush them down the toilet, while the other guy loads, locks, and aims at the door.

Not surprisingly, the Illinois General Assembly followed the lead of many other states in the late 1990s and took up legislation to authorize so-called "No Knock Warrants" in special circumstances -- where the cop had a reasonable fear that he or others could be shot if he served the warrant by knocking on the door, or where there was reason to believe that if notice were given, there would be a "danger" that evidence could be destroyed.

On May 16, 1997, HB 172 passed by a vote of 43-9, with three voting "present."

Freshman state Sen. Barack Obama was one of the nine who voted against it.

Now, combine that with the Hale DeMar vote -- a vote that left DeMar and other Illinois homeowners subject to prosecution if they used a hand gun to defend themselves in their own homes -- and you get this:

In Barack Obama's world, suspected criminals should be afforded the courtesy of a knock on the door by policemen serving a warrant, even if there is reason to believe it puts the policemen at risk, while innocent homeowners should be denied the right to protect themselves with a hand gun against criminals who don't afford them the courtesy of a knock.

This, I submit, is a weird way of looking at the world.

Perhaps Obama could, over a beer, explain his thinking to Sgt. Crowley?

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