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.

I’ve been hesitant to wade into the Trayvon Martin story. Some of my hesitancy is due to the potential for misunderstanding my comments, but most of it is simply because I want to be careful not to prejudge either side. After a while, though, some things do become more clear.

The most important ingredient for the resolution of this case is for the rule of law to prevail. A special prosecutor has been appointed to look into the charges and countercharges. No arrest has been made at this time because the investigation is ongoing. There is a real danger, however, that mob rule will take over. Already some of the protesters have broken into businesses and damaged property. None of that has anything to do with justice.

Martin’s parents are understandably distraught, but welcoming the likes of Al Sharpton to the protests does nothing but add another layer of incendiary, inflammatory language. He is well known for that technique. What’s more, he’s using this as a forum to promote his television program on MSNBC. Wherever Sharpton goes, he causes disruption. I won’t go into his whole history, but he is infamous for making accusations that turn out to be false, but that lead to destruction regardless. In one case, his oratory led to the death of a young Jewish man. The fact that he even has a television program is a testament to the moral bankruptcy of his network.

But he’s not alone. Whenever there is an incident that can be turned into a racial divide, you can be sure to find the usual suspects hovering nearby.

Even President Obama had to insert himself into what should have been a local issue. When he did, the most memorable thing he said was that if he’d had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.” Please, Mr. President, for once can you back off and not make yourself the focus?

If the investigation reveals that George Zimmerman has lied and should be indicted for his actions, I will accept that gladly. He should face the consequences. If it shows he is telling the truth, will the Martin family and the mass of protesters that have come to their side accept that verdict? Or will they, in the words of one commentator, continue to act like we’re still in Mississippi in 1962? The Trayvon Martin tragedy is not a replay of the early civil rights struggles. As a nation, we’ve come a long way from the dominance of racist attitudes. It’s time for some people to realize that.

Justice will prevail only if the rule of law prevails first.

A few days ago, President Obama met with the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. At one point, when he apparently thought the microphone was off, he leaned toward the Russian president and pled with him to tell Vladimir Putin that after the election, he would have more “flexibility.” The context was a discussion about missile defense. From the beginning of his term, Obama has been no fan of developing our missile defense, and he seems to lean toward the Russian position on that. The issue also involves our protection of European allies like Poland. Obama’s not too keen on that either.

Since the outcry over his comments, he has tried to distance himself from himself, claiming that people are reading too much into what he said. It seems pretty obvious to me, though, what he really meant.

Of course, he will have the same approach when it comes to domestic policy. He will campaign as a reasonable, middle-of-the-road uniter, while planning to veer leftward again if he should happen to prevail and win a second term.

Some may wonder how he can get away with the charade. Remember, he has a ubiquitous ally:

Unfortunately, more of those allies are being churned out of journalism schools throughout the nation:

The real question at hand is whether “we the people” will allow Obama to get away with it again. Will we do more to expose the charade? A nation’s future is at stake.

As I noted earlier this week, progressives have a way of framing a debate to favor their views. They’re really quite adept at changing the entire focus of the debate, shifting it away from the real issues to something phony. In the process, the Constitution, and the religious liberty it protects, are forgotten:

They are aided in their attempt to redirect the discussion by a more-than-willing media. Sometimes, it’s difficult to distinguish any difference between the leftist ideologues and the media itself:

Those who stand for the Constitution and for traditional Judeo-Christian morality, meanwhile, are characterized as extremists. How dare they introduce their religious beliefs into the debate!

The hypocrisy is pervasive.

Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls is bringing renewed scrutiny into his past. I have no problem with a candidate being fully vetted. It would have been nice if the mainstream media had done that to Barack Obama. Maybe we could have avoided the last three years.

Gingrich does have issues in his past, both personal and political. He has dallied with the idea of the individual mandate for health care. His concern for the environment led him to make a disastrous public service announcement with Nancy Pelosi, a move he now calls one of the dumbest of his life. Give him a check mark for acknowledging that one.

For those like me, whose concerns are grounded in the spiritual/moral climate of the nation more than the possibility of global warming, Gingrich’s marriages need special scrutiny. He’s now on marriage number three, and with each one he was seeing the next Mrs. Gingrich while still married to the current Mrs. Gingrich. That is, as we like to call it, baggage.

For some Christians, there’s no desire to look any further; he is to be dismissed for that part of his life alone. Yet we need to investigate more thoroughly. The story going around that he went to the hospital bedside of his first wife who was dying of cancer and presented her with divorce papers turns out to be an internet legend with no factual basis. How do we know? The daughter of that first wife has explicitly stated that it never happened. In fact, that former wife is still very much alive. That doesn’t relieve him of the divorce, but it seems she was the one who initiated it.

Christians are also people who should understand redemption. After all, isn’t that what we say has happened in our lives? We all were lost, and God’s grace found us. Has this occurred in Gingrich’s life? There’s some evidence to indicate it might have.

In 2007, he went on James Dobson’s radio program and confessed he had acted wrongly in his personal life. He then became a committed Catholic. He wrote a book about getting God back in our nation. Last week, when questioned about his past indiscretions, he commented that at age 68, and as a grandfather, he has a new perspective on life. He has matured.

Is all of this true? Our task is to watch carefully, point out any inconsistencies, yet not be overly critical. After all, we once were lost, but now we’ve been found by a God who continually offers his love and forgiveness.

So someone finally came out with a specific accusation against Herman Cain. It cannot be dismissed out of hand. Cain is going to have to do something to prove his credibility simply because the media will never let up on this. Of course, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Accusers are supposed to have evidence. Even in this case of a specific accusation, no evidence was brought to the table. It’s another “he said, she said” scenario.

Politically, this is going to hurt Cain. As I noted in a previous posting, if he is guilty, he needs to step aside. But if he’s not, he has to take action. Karl Rove had a piece of advice for the Cain team last night. He said they should push for the records of the National Restaurant Association to be released, albeit with the names of the women omitted. Cain has said repeatedly that the investigation into those accusations at the time showed they were baseless. If that’s what the official records confirm, that will go a long way in vindicating Cain and putting the issue to rest. For the sake of finding the truth, I also would like to see that happen.

The new accuser, Sharon Bialek, hired Gloria Allred as her attorney. That’s a cautionary tale right there. Allred is infamous as a radical feminist celebrity hound who takes on controversial cases to advance her own leftist agenda. Shouldn’t that raise some type of red flag immediately? Then there’s Bialek herself. She claims to be a Republican, even having attended Tea Party rallies. Is that true? The media need to find out if that is the truth. Now, here’s the big question of the day: will the media vet the accuser as avidly as they have gone after Herman Cain? Someone needs to plumb the depths of her background and investigate her integrity. It would only be fair, wouldn’t it? And isn’t that what the media are supposed to do—get all the facts?

If they indeed fulfill their obligation to scrutinize Bialek, I will be one of the most surprised people around. For a large portion of the media, the game is over: they’ve made their point; they’ve damaged a candidate they didn’t want to see win.

Have they won?

Do I know for sure that Herman Cain is innocent of all the charges swirling around him at this moment? No, of course not. I wasn’t there to witness what really happened. Do I know that he is guilty of all these charges, or even one of them? No again. But as I ponder the media frenzy over these allegations—anonymous thus far and undocumented publicly—I seek truth. If Herman Cain is guilty, he should step aside; if he is innocent, he deserves our support in this trial by fire.

I do know this: his campaign didn’t handle the initial allegations well. They seemed to be caught off-guard without a solid response. Cain himself then did what I believe was a decent job of explaining the situation. Some have decided he changed his story on the settlement issue, but I can understand the difference in his mind between a legal settlement that required him to sign a confidentiality provision and a simple agreement for severance pay for an employee. Sometimes we make too much out of a minor semantic problem.

The other criticism I have of how the Cain people handled the controversy was the leap they took in blaming the Perry campaign for leaking the story to Politico. Again, as with the allegations against Cain, that could be the truth or it could not. The evidence for Perry’s people being involved is circumstantial; no direct evidence seems to exist. Cain and his team should not have rushed to judgment. By doing so, they put themselves in the same place as Jonathan Martin, the Politico reporter who “broke” this non-story.

I call it a non-story because it is somewhat like the wind—difficult to grasp due to lack of substance.

It sounded worse the other day when a conservative radio personality in Iowa said that Cain’s visit to his station made a couple of his female employees uncomfortable. Yesterday we learned what Cain had done. He had called one of the women “darling” while asking if she could make him a cup of tea. Horrors! Sexual harassment at its worst!

Has it really come to this? Is this what we now call sexual harassment?

Another internet outlet “broke” a story yesterday about a woman whom Cain pressured to come to his apartment and who woke up in his bed. It was all the buzz. Then came the retractions. No one actually saw them get into a taxi. She didn’t wake up in his bed. Etc., etc.

I think Andrew McCarthy at National Review has the right perspective on all of this. He starts off his commentary by stating he is not a staunch Cain supporter, but he is bristling over the lack of integrity in the media on this matter. He notes,

Politico’s initial story was woven out of insufficient evidence, anonymous sources, and vague allegations that—even if you construed every possible inference against Cain—would amount to an impropriety that outfits like Politico would find too trivial to cover like this if the culprit were a left-leaning Democrat.

McCarthy then researched Martin’s reporting on Obama, and here’s what he found:

I’m looking for any indication anywhere that Martin did any reporting like this to vet candidate Obama—Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Rezko . . . ? I’ve found a couple of pieces in which he suggests that raising Ayers and Rezko was unworthy, desperation politics; and I’ve found an item in which he attacked “Joe the Plumber” after he . . . elicited Obama’s damaging “spread the wealth” comment. But nothing so far that suggests Martin thought Obama should be scrutinized over the sorts of things he seems content to see Cain’s candidacy scuttled over.

The networks—CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC—have gone overboard in their coverage. They’re attempting to turn this into a scandal of Watergate proportions. Why? I believe they hate this candidate and fear he actually could defeat their true love—the current president.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, offered Cain some good advice on a news program last night. He said Cain should announce a press conference, make his denials as public and as strenuous as possible, and then fifteen minutes later, put his campaign back into high gear, focusing on the issues. Don’t allow this to drag on. Stop responding to all the bits and pieces that continue to drip, drip, drip out of what may euphemistically be called news organizations and get back to work.

As I write this, here are the facts up to the minute: no evidence has been brought forth other than anonymous accusations that Cain is guilty of anything remotely criminal or even disgusting. No legal action ever was taken against him for anything he did at the National Restaurant Association. We have accusations that are akin to wind, but their effect is to leave Mr. Cain twisting in that media wind.

I understand why some people are fed up with the political arena. And the media.