“The first Ferguson indictment”

There was a very nice article published on The Washington Times' website by John Solomon, dated November 24, 2014, and entitled “Analysis: The first Ferguson indictment goes to … the news media.” I would like to quote it, because I think it is spot on:

In the end, the first and perhaps only indictment to emerge out of the Ferguson tragedy went to the news media and its culture of frenzied coverage.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch explained Monday night in excruciating detail why 12 grand jurors chose not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, Officer Darren Wilson in a case that reopened long-simmering racial wounds in America, describing how some of the eyewitnesses quoted by news media and circulated via social media later recanted or were disproven by the physical evidence.

Some of the witnesses “pretty much acknowledged they saw parts and made up other parts of it,” Mr. McCulloch said in disputing some of the early media reports in the case.

To make his point, the prosecutor agreed to release all of the evidence gathered by authorities and presented to the grand jury.

“The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact from fiction,” Mr. McCullough said after excoriating news media coverage of the case.

“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about, following closely behind with the non-stop rumors on social media,” he said.

The prosecutor said the exhaustive review of the evidence identified a “lack of accurate detail” in some of the initial reports that fanned the flames of the local community, including erroneous reports that Mr. Wilson shot the unarmed victim Michael Brown in the back.

The prosecutor said the grand jury sorted through inconsistent and conflicting eyewitness accounts and “interviews on social media” that proved wrong, and it deserved credit for sticking with the evidence.

“They are the only people who have heard and examined all of the evidence of all of the witnesses,” he said.

The media’s performance was put on trial anew at the news conference where the results were announced, when Mr. McCulloch scolded a reporter for suggesting that police could kill with “impunity.”

The announcement proved a cathartic moment for career law enforcement officials, some of whom seethed for months over what they saw as one-sided media coverage and lopsided political sentiments.

“While the legal system has exonerated Officer Darren Wilson for his split-second decision on that August afternoon, he very much remains a victim of a politicized agenda that deemed him ‘guilty until proven innocent,’” said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director who serves currently as the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. “Although he will walk free, his life has been forever changed, as he has been exploited in a cynical effort to turn civilians against cops in fulfillment of an anti-law enforcement agenda.

When all the final details are reviewed and the smoke settles, one question that should be asked is whether the media’s age-old adage to “get it first, but first get it right” has been hijacked by a sentiment of “get it first, and hope it is right.”

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will let John Solomon speak for me.

Impeachment? Hardly an option

Some people have been talking about impeaching Pres. Obama. But this is totally impractical. And it's not for the reasons that such as Charles Hurt of The Washington Times give. Yes, impeaching Obama is really a scheme that can't be done. And Speaker John Boehner is right to dismiss it out of hand, even if such as Sarah Palin have called for it. (In fact, most of the impeachment talk comes from Democrats these days — trying to use this as a way of rallying their base!) But Hurt's reason — that the GOP is very bad at getting its ideas accepted by the American public — is not the real reason.

The real reason is that our Constitution makes it impossible to impeach a president and win, unless you can get substantially unanimous agreement. To get two thirds of the Senate to agree to convict a president like Obama, who still retains a lot of popularity, is an impossible task. The Senate would not remove Bill Clinton, who lied before a grand jury, and it is very clear that no Democratic Senator (and right now they are a majority, and even the most optimistic polls for the GOP do not expect the Democratic numbers after November's election to be reduced below the middle forties, certainly not below 33, which would be necessary to get an impeachment through!) will vote to convict Pres. Obama.

So even if the House voted to impeach, all that would do is get some Obama supporters to be angry. It would not actually remove the President. So what good would that do?

Cutting off his nose to spite his face?

Yesterday a story appeared in the Washington Times titled “‘Extremists’ chase some Republicans toward Obama.” It began with a discussion with a New Jersey resident named John Martin, who heads a group of Republicans for Obama. Martin said that Mitt Romney is doing nothing to keep his loyalty, that the Republican presidential nominee lacks the will or desire to stand up to "extremists" who have gained a sturdy foothold in the party, and President Obama is far from the socialist demon portrayed by GOP leaders. Therefore he will vote for Mr. Obama.

Like Mr. Martin, I consider myself a moderate within the Republican Party and I am unhappy with the extremism that has gained such a foothold. But I am incredulous that Mr. Martin does not see that the Democratic Party is equally riddled by extremists of the left, and that he can, with a straight face, say that “President Obama is far from the socialist demon portrayed by GOP leaders.” My wife is a moderate Democrat, and she feels that, as far as Mitt Romney is to her right, she sees Pres. Obama as further to her left.

The article does mention that Mr. Martin voted for Obama four years ago, so he's been thinking this way for a long time; I don't have any way of getting into his head, so I don't understand exactly what is in it, but I gather from the article that he actually likes Obamacare — which puts him to the left of the majority of the public, not just Republicans.

The article ends:

Whether he stays with the Republican Party depends on what happens in November. An Obama win, he hopes, would foster discussion and self-examination within the GOP to return to its “big tent” roots.

He said he fears that a Romney win would serve as justification for conservatives to continue remaking the party in their likeness.

I doubt it. An Obama win, as was the case four years ago, might drive the party further into the kind of extremism he deplores. Mitt Romney, after all, has been considered insufficiently conservative by that group. While a Romney win, I think, would lead to his governing moderately, as he did in Massachusetts. An Obama win, in fact, would lead to the kind of socialist government that, as Marco Rubio said at the convention in Tampa, people came to this country to get away from. Remember, Obama has tried to gain some semblance of the appearance of moderation in his first term — apparently enough to attract the likes of Mr. Martin, even though I think he's been the most radical President in over a century! This, to make his re-election likely. In a second term, all wraps are off. And this is the President who told Dmitry Medvedev (standing in for Vladimir Putin) that he will have more “flexibility” after he is re-elected!

If Mr. Martin thinks an Obama presidency is closer to what he, as a moderate Republican, wants than a Romney presidency would be, I wonder how he could have been attracted to the GOP in the first place.

Anyone who, in the interest of reducing the extremist influence in the Republican Party, supports a radical extremist like Barack Obama, is cutting off his nose to spite his face. We need moderates to stay in the party and try to influence its direction, rather than to leave the party exclusively in the hands of those extremists we deplore. And we certainly do not want to leave the country in the hands of extremists of the opposite persuasion, such as Barack Obama.