Trevon Martin, Zimmerman, Civilization

Geraldo's Point - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1

First off, the death of ANY 17 year old for any reason is a TRAGEDY -- guilty, innocent, unlucky, self-inflicted, illness, etc.

Second, unless Obama is White, Zimmerman is Hispanic. He looks Hispanic. One of his parents being White doesn't make him "White" any more than Obama's mom being White has the same effect on him.

Jesse and Al are the US chiefs of the Dept of Race Shakedown. They make their living shaking down people, industries, etc for kickbacks because of their alleged umbrage -- and make a tidy living doing so.

Other than those minor points and maybe being a little too subdued, Sowell says it all and very well. We have law enforcement, prosecutors and courts to deal with incidents like this. Being 17 and unarmed doesn't mean you can't be a threat -- people are physically beaten to death or knifed by youths 17 and less with way too much frequency in this country and others.

Was that the properly perceived threat here? I have no idea -- apparently Zimmerman has a broken nose and a head injury, and it sounds like at least one witness saw "the hoodie person" on top of "the other person" wailing on him and went in to call the cops. If true, and if you were Zimmerman, perhaps you would have defended yourself as well? Independent of the sense or non-sense of how you managed to get in the predicament?

Even the lifetime smoker often fights when they get cancer -- and most humans have an innate understanding of why.

What does that mean? It means that the officers, prosecutors and maybe the courts need to be involved. OJ was declared innocent and the officers involved in the Rodney King incident were found not guilty.  What I think about those verdicts ought to be as immaterial as what anyone else thinks about them. There really isn't much point in having a legal system if we don't make use of it.

W was wrong about WMD, BO was wrong about $800B keeping unemployment below 8%, and I was wrong about selling Apple at $140. Humans are fallible and our wrong decisions are often expensive in suffering, treasure and even loss of life. Just look at the highway death stats.

Common sense, reason, proportion, etc. Those are the most expensive casualties of our time.