Despite a recent Rasmussen Poll showing Obama’s disapproval rating topping 50% for the first time since his election last year, the president has refused to retract his assertion that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” by arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Associated Press is reporting that Obama still stands by his claim that Gates should not have been arrested and that “cooler heads should have prevailed” during the encounter.

However, Mr. Obama’s over-generalization about “cooler heads” may be headed for trouble. Indeed, in a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Stephen Killion, president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officer’s Association, said that audiotapes of the encounter would vindicate Sgt. Crowley’s version of the events and prove that Gates “turned this non-incident into a racial incident.”
 
In addition, Killion said: