The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case has put racism back on the front page again, at least in the minds of some. One can argue, however, that it has never left the front page with the current administration. The Eric Holder Justice Department is setting a record of sorts by challenging a number of commonsense laws, from photo IDs for voting to Arizona’s attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Yet it dropped a case of voter intimidation by the Black Panthers. Sources within the department say race is the determining factor for much of what goes on there.

I thought the election of a black president was supposed to lead us into a paradise of racial harmony. Well, not if you bring an aggrieved attitude with you into the office. All you do is fan those racial flames. I think we’re actually in worse shape with respect to race relations now than we were before Obama entered the scene. Charges of racism fill the air:

It’s not just a black/white thing, either. In what passes for higher education in our country, we see a strange sort of discrimination at work:

And if you’re a conservative who wants to be a professor at one of our institutions of higher learning, you may be in for a rough ride, as shown by an incident that has made the news lately. Discrimination comes in all forms when progressives are in control:

I write about double standards quite often. They are one of my pet peeves. Of course, they go far beyond peevishness; they are pernicious to the spiritual health of a nation. As long as sin abounds, they will exist; but we can temper their influence by insisting on judging people righteously, according to their character. I seem to remember someone who once said he had hope for a day when character, not the color of one’s skin, would be the determining factor for one’s worth. We’re going backwards.

Yesterday the special prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin case, Angela Corey, came to the podium with her team and revealed the result of their initial investigation into the shooting. They concluded there was enough evidence to officially charge George Zimmerman with second-degree murder. Corey, before she got to the bottom line, did a fine job of first schooling the media and anyone else listening with respect to the rule of law and how it works. She explained clearly the rights of both victims and those accused of a crime, and injected a bit of sanity into the circus that has erupted around this case.

She said Zimmerman had voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities and is now under arrest. The justice system can now move forward to evaluate the evidence and ultimately determine the extent of his guilt or whether he should be exonerated, given the circumstances of the incident. Zimmerman will have his day in court rather than being lynched by irate race-baiters.

And there have been a multitude of those.

We’ve seen Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on the scene—two individuals who live by inflaming racial disharmony. The New Black Panthers also have taken center stage, publicly placing a bounty on Zimmerman’s head, with some calling outright for a race war in the U.S. Yet what about race? Who is Zimmerman? His parents are mixed—one white, one Hispanic. Yet he is continually referred to as white. Is this purposeful to make it a racial issue? By the same logic, one could call Barack Obama white. Has anyone ever done that? No, because that won’t fit the narrative.

By the way, Mr. Attorney General Holder, why the silence when the Panthers called for a bounty and that Zimmerman should be killed without regard to the rule of law? Aren’t you the chief law enforcement officer in the country? But then again, Holder was the one who intentionally dropped the investigation into Panthers who stood outside a polling station in Philadelphia back in 2008, intimidating voters. So why should we expect anything else? He’s also the one who is suing states for having laws requiring photo ID’s for voting. For him, everything is race.

There’s also the question of why this event has been nationalized. It was a local incident, but the media have run with it and turned it into the civil rights case of the new century. Yet the media conveniently ignore certain statistics. According to a 2007 report from the Department of Justice, 8000 to 9000 blacks in America are murdered each year. On first glance, that might seem to point to widespread racial hatred. Hold on, though. The report goes on to say that 93% of those murders are committed by other blacks. So where is the real problem?

Perception is not always the same as reality.

The media, as I mentioned above, are complicit in this. One glaring example is what happened with the “selective editing” of an audio tape of Zimmerman describing the incident to a 911 dispatcher. It was edited by NBC to make it sound like Zimmerman was a racist, when in fact the entire recording shows that he only mentioned Martin’s race when asked by the dispatcher. Journalistic integrity is becoming all too rare nowadays.

The employee who did the so-called selective editing has been dismissed, but that person was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Expect more of the same in the future.

Will sanity now prevail? Will the courts of justice now be allowed to take over and execute the law? Will the circus subside? We’ll see.

Did you see White House press secretary Jay Carney a few days ago telling the assembled press that President Obama hasn’t been campaigning all that much? I wish I could have witnessed the looks on the faces of the reporters as that gem tumbled out of his mouth. Even those in the tank for Obama’s reelection surely had to stifle a laugh or two. All this president has ever done since taking office has been a continual campaign. He’s practically doubled the number of fundraisers that Bush held during the same time for his reelection bid in 2004. I believe it was either the day Carney made this comment, or the next one, that Obama had five fundraisers within 24 hours.

He’s in his element. Part of that element is to distort the public’s image of Republicans. Two examples readily come to mind, the first dealing with the GOP view of women:

Then there’s this factually challenged statement:

Last week also saw the premiere of a “documentary” highlighting the achievements of the Obama administration:

And of course, if none of these tactics bring the desired result, he can always count on Attorney General Holder for help. The Justice Department is attempting to invalidate voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas. Why? Well, it’s discrimination to require a voter to prove who he or she is. We should just let anyone vote without checking an ID, right? Surely there’s no fraud involved anywhere. I mean, it’s not like you have to show an ID when you do anything else, is it?

The Obama motto: if I can’t win by distortions, I can at least win by stuffing the ballot boxes.

Time to summarize the week, starting with the Obama administration’s directive to force Catholic hospitals to provide birth control [and by extension possible abortions]. Where does he think he gets that authority?

This is a slap in the face, of course, to all those Catholics who voted for him, thinking he was some kind of paragon of virtue. But they should have known; his record was quite clear before running for the presidency. He was the only state senator in Illinois who fought to disallow babies born alive “accidentally” during an abortion to receive medical care. He has been consistent.

Hopefully, they’ll make a more informed choice this November.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder testified [sort of] to a House committee again over his accountability in the Fast and Furious scandal. Congress has been requesting the pertinent records for quite some time. There seems to be a speed bump somewhere in the process of receiving them. Perhaps a better name can be given to this scandal:

Let’s just say Mr. Holder has been less than forthcoming:

The Occupy Movement has also been trying to get back into the news. One wonders if they need a public relations firm, considering their outrageous actions. Their mantra of the 1% vs. the 99% could easily be turned back on them:

Then there’s always the budget/national debt issue. Remarkably, the unemployment rate fell temporarily to 8.3% [don't expect that to last too long], but the overall financial mess we find ourselves in as a nation only gets worse:

Don’t be fooled by superficial good news; the overall picture is still pretty bleak.

Today I speak at the Lakeland Republican Club. I’ve been asked to evaluate the Republican contenders for the presidency, discussing their strengths and weaknesses. The results of last night’s Iowa caucuses will figure prominently in that evaluation. However, I’m going to wait until tomorrow’s posting to discuss those results more thoroughly here—it’s good to allow a day to think it through rather than just attempt a quickie analysis.

In the meantime, let’s catch up on some of those key moments during my hiatus that haven’t received appropriate attention. I’ve commented a few times on Eric Holder, who, incredibly, remains in his post as attorney general. He seems to have found a theme: when caught in lies during the Fast and Furious investigation, and in his decision to challenge South Carolina’s voter ID law, he has aided the Obama administration’s drive to create unity in the nation:

Of course, dividing people into groups and claiming bias is a strange way to create unity, but who are we to criticize the approach? To do so would probably be racist, right?

Then there was the death of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, who will now be succeeded by his twenty-something son. What can we expect from this transition?

I do remember someone who did say that, though. He also had a moment in a 60 Minutes interview where he placed himself in fourth place in the Hall of Fame for Presidents. Cartoonists have been having a good time with that:

What a remarkable record of achievement. Who could ever equal it? All we need is four more years of this and we can challenge Greece for top spot in the nation-wrecking race.

Attorney General Eric Holder is at it again. While already under fire for passing misinformation [a.k.a., lying] to Congress over the Fast and Furious operation, he now has jumped into the fray to challenge voter ID laws in several states. Let’s review what they are.

Understanding the need for a voter ID law does not require a doctorate. Simply stated, the laws in question merely require would-be voters to provide a state-issued photo ID of some kind to prove that the person wanting to vote is, well, actually that person. My, how unreasonable.

Yet Holder, and the Democrat Party in general, is up in arms over these laws. They claim they will suppress minority voting, that somehow these laws will intimidate such voters. Wait a minute, don’t we have to show photo IDs for various things already? Quite often, when buying with a credit card, I’m required to show a photo ID. Not a bad idea; I don’t want anyone stealing my identity.

Why would this not also be a good idea for voting? Yet somehow this is held to be discriminatory. In fact, it’s only an attempt to stop voter fraud. Surely the Democrat Party can’t be in favor of fraudulent voting, can it? Well, yes, I know about the history of Tammany Hall in New York, Mayor Richard Daley and his descendants—both in the family and out—in Chicago, where the more voters, the merrier, even if you have to allow dead people to cast their ballots from the grave, and various other locales too numerous to mention. But surely they have reformed, right? Right?

Ironically, when Georgia passed a new voter ID law, minority voting increased, both in 2008 and 2010. What’s that about discrimination again?

No one should be opposed to safeguards on the ballot box. Only genuine, legal voters should be allowed to have a say in elections. That used to be called common sense, but in the Holder Justice Department, and in the Obama administration as a whole, common sense takes a back seat to the perception of political advantage.

So what else has been happening this week besides presidential politics? Well, there were some other elections. In Ohio, Big Labor outspent the opposition and demagogued so successfully that the voters overturned the legislature’s law that attempted to control the collective bargaining power of government unions. They hail it as a victory. That’s because they think short-term and don’t stop to consider that this vote only worsens the financial situation. The result?

Those same Ohio voters, apparently confused by the concept of having a consistent philosophy of government, then rejected the individual mandate of Obamacare. Well, at least common sense prevailed on that one.

Back in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder had to testify before a congressional committee about the Fast and Furious debacle. He refused to acknowledge that the plan to allow guns to migrate to the drug cartels led to the murder of a Border Patrol agent. He continues to act as if he’s not really responsible for those who operate under his authority. Does anyone see a pattern here?

Why bother?

Also hard at work was the so-called Super Committee trying to come up with a proposal for deficit reduction that both sides can agree on. Democrats walked out at one point. I can see the media spin on this one now:

Let’s not omit the president from this overview. In Europe for a G-20 summit, he and the French president found something to agree on—they both can’t stand Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The only problem is that the microphones picked up their comments; they didn’t know they could be overheard trashing the Israeli leader. Well, you know, he’s just such a pest!

Of course, he might have some legitimate concerns.