I think spinning itself is not enough to determine whether it is black hat or not. It will largely depends on from where the source of the article and what you will use the article for. For example: If you take the source from copyrighted article without permission than it will be black hat. While doing it for your own article should be alright.
Well Google don't viewed it positively. But if you can create an unique article through spinning the real one then why would it be Black hat? But think naturally that your own written content is someone using in his personal site after spinning and without taking your permission. Then what would be your reaction? Will you tolerate this?
I don't think that article spinning is black hat, but I would recommend that you at least ensure that your spun articles are somewhat good and not borderline jibberish.
Ha...I tend to agree. I try to take time to be a little meticulous when setting up my spun articles so they aren't jibberish. They tend to get approved more often, especially with many places implementing stricter approval criteria on content submissions since the Google Panda update. Of course, there are still areas in which jibberish is acceptable.
With regard to being BH, I don't think so. When I think of BH I think of cloaking and really obvious manipulation to fool the search engines. But it definitely ain't WH either, you are pushing the boundaries with spun articles, even more so if using spun content on your own website.