VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Our Modern Lynch Mob. “We went from the beer summit to Trayvon Martin’s resemblance to the boy the president never had. In each case, facts did not matter. . . . The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it. The latter is what community organizers do; the former is what makes statesmen. Yet on issue after issue — anti-terrorism, global warming, government ethics, and racial relations — a frenzied mob, egged on by the media and demagogues like Barack Obama, have almost stormed the jail, only to dissipate when met by either evidence, or the knowledge that the incarcerated was one of their own — as if they had never screamed and threatened in the first place.”

I wonder if Tom Friedman will write another column praising this brutally clear-eyed analysis. . . .