" 'Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, like thousands of average Americans across this country, is, too, a victim of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin. Ms. McKinney is just a victim of being in Congress while black,' said Meyer (McKinney's lawyer).

Charges against McKinney could range from assault on a police officer, which is a felony carrying a possible five year prison term, to simple assault, which is a misdemeanor.

The six-term congresswoman apparently struck a Capitol Police officer when he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a metal detector. Members of Congress wear identifying lapel pins and routinely are waved into buildings without undergoing security checks. The officer apparently did not recognize McKinney, she said in a statement. She was not wearing her lapel pin.

I have a good memory for faces. That comes in handy when you travel a lot and meet a horde of people at every stop. I meet several hundred new people every year and then see some of them again in entirely different countries and contexts. I may not always remember the name that goes with the face, but I can almost always remember the place we met. It shouldn’t need to be said that the people I meet come in all colors.

So I find it absolutely incredible, verging on the ridiculously incompetent, that any member of the Capitol Hill Police Force has trouble recognizing any single member of Congress. I'm not buying.

I've been doing a fair amount of travelling. Got a funny picture of an elephant in Oslo. It may inspire me to fix the image uploading capabilities fo this blog (but what are the odds, given that my beautiful dog didn't do the trick?).