Do you know anybody who would stand up and say, “Hey, I’m for mob rule”?
From Shakespeare’s fickle mobs on (and also before), civilized people have deplored what happens when angry mobs seek to subvert the laws.
But that is what is happening in the sad and tragic case of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Investor’s Business Daily notes:
What is more un-American than forgetting that someone is innocent until proven guilty? Yet Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., on Wednesday appointed herself judge, jury and police detective as she stood in the House of Representatives with a placard that read, "Trayvon Martin's Murderer Still At Large."
"I want America to see this sweet young boy who was hunted down like a dog, shot in the street, and his killer is still at large," Wilson said, adding that "we all know who the murderer is. This was a standard case of racial profiling. No more! No more!"
To some Democrats, investigation, indictment and trial of Martin's alleged shooter George Zimmerman is unnecessary. The dead man was an angel and his assailant a racist murderer.
Case closed before it has even been opened.
Another CBC member, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., on Wednesday declared, "He was executed for WWB in a GC — Walking While Black in a Gated Community."
But it took ex-Black Panther Chicago Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush to turn it all into a true circus by donning a hoodie on the House floor and getting hauled out by security for breaking House decorum rules.
President Obama, who lost no time in proclaiming solidarity with Trayvon Martin, now owes it to the country to say something to calm this racially-charged situation. We deserve a president who will tell the mob that we are a nation of laws.
This is a time for what IBD calls “moral leadership” on the part of the president. Indeed, President Obama is the one leader in this country who could stand up and say to the New Black Panthers that putting a bounty on the head of a man is despicable.
No, the Panthers might not respond favorably to a presidential request that they stop trying to get somebody killed, even though we don't yet know what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin that night. But moral leadership requires the president to say a few nice worlds about the rule of law.
It would take courage, but this horrible situation affords President Obama a chance to do the right thing. If he wants to quell the mob and bring us together as a nation, he is being given a chance to do so.
Please, Mr. President, don't blow this opportunity.