The brilliant Prof. Richard Epstein takes a look at President Obama's handling of possible instances of gross police abuse, and the ambush murders of five policemen in Dallas:

Many have praised President Barack Obama for what they regard as his measured remarks on the killings in Louisiana and Minnesota,..But the President's carefully crafted message may well have prejudged the situation in Minnesota, as it did with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

To be sure, he ends his speeches by saying some version of: "We have extraordinary appreciation and respect for the vast majority of police officers who put their lives on the line every day." But the words ring hollow when they follow his indictment of police for institutional racism. The killings in Louisiana and Minnesota, he said, were not "isolated incidents," but were "symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities in our criminal justice system."  But that linkage has just not been established in these two most recent cases.

No one should be foolish enough to say that the criminal justice system is beyond improvement...But the matter has to be kept in perspective. We are not living in the age of Jim Crow. The first thing that the President should do is acknowledge the enormous progress that has been made. Instead, he lists a dubious set of statistical claims: blacks are pulled over more frequently for traffic stops, and they are subject to higher arrest rates for homicides. Obama has rightly been criticized on this front by the ever-alert John Lott for ignoring the underlying rate of violations, especially in connection with arrest rates for homicide, which are twice as high for blacks even though they are six times as likely than whites to commit homicide. Underenforcement looks like the more serious charge.