From the Upshot, Neil Irwin, Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz on America’s racial divide, charted. Todd Purdum on why Obama can’t go there: The first African-American to run the country is constrained from addressing the nation’s original sin in anything but the loftiest, most dispassionate terms. Riots, confrontations, violence and disorder don’t always, or even usually, make things better— they sometimes makes things worse; but police violence, racism and radical social inequality are not going to be ended just by voting for the US Democratic Party, or even by a black president. Paul Waldman on what libertarians and conservatives get wrong about Ferguson: The next time you hear someone say that power should be devolved as far as possible to the state and local level, remember that those lower levels of government are often where the worst problems are. If you're a libertarian, you have a problem: You can have your guns, or you can have your minimal state, but you can't have both — it would be interesting to debate which is worse, the Nanny State, or the Military State. Whenever an unarmed young black man is shot dead by the police, white conservatives determined not to feel guilty flock to one news source for their absolution: National Review. On the far right, folks like the always predictably horrible David Horowitz say we need to look at Michael Brown's rap lyrics to decide whether he deserved to be shot. Josh Kovensky on the craziest conspiracy theories about Ferguson. Officer Darren Wilson’s online support group is as classy as you’d expect. This is what happens when we turn professional check-writers into pundits.
