Race Baiting?

Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson deal with the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Hanson notes that President Obama has interjected himself into many issues over the years - Trayvon Martin, Sandra Fluke, Gabrielle Giffords, Professor Henry Louis Gates. His interventions are more in the fashion of a divisive commentator than an above the fray President.

Hanson writes:

In other words, the president waded into an ongoing investigation, in which the facts of the case remain murky and in dispute. And instead of playing down the racial component of the tragedy in polarized times, he seemed instead deliberately to have emphasized it.

The president seizes on a local issue, editorializes, and ends up sowing more division.

Yet in every case, further evidence, more information, and subsequent events suggested that the president had offered either incomplete or misleading commentary to the nation, predicated not on a desire for healing or truth, but on a wish to gain partisan advantage.

There is a rush to judgement that is characteristic of the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world. Where is the tempered, measured, presidential response?

Thomas Sowell concludes:

We do not need Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or the president of the United States spouting off before the trial has even begun.