One of the best takes on Obama and Holder I've ever read.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the reaction of President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, to the grand jury verdict in Ferguson is their non-support for the difficult work of the grand jury. That and their support for the mistaken proposition that the administration of justice is unfair, biased, and prejudiced towards “communities of color” undermine our criminal justice system.
On November 25, Obama said that the “grand jury made a decision yesterday that upset a lot of people.” He had no words of praise for members of the grand jury, both black and white, for engaging in their civic duty in the face of mob violence, threats, and media scapegoating -- a media that was pushing an incorrect story about what happened without reviewing the extensive evidence in the case
This would have been the perfect time for the president to reinforce our faith in the legal system, a system that is one of the best and fairest in the world. He could have pointed out that, while a tragedy occurred here in that a young man lost his life, the judgment of these jurors should be respected, not just “accepted.”
As Quin Hillyer has pointed out, the president also should have told the American people that “this jury’s exhaustive weighing of the evidence was admirable.” He could have acknowledged as well “the copious evidence that utterly disproved some of the earliest accounts of the shooting and had proved that there was“ a physical confrontation within the police car itself between Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown shortly after Brown robbed a convenience store. Obama should have recognized the anger on the street in Ferguson was being fueled by false stories that had no real basis in fact.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/obamas-ferguson-misstep-11779
