[WEEKLYSTANDARD] "In this age of instant reporting and tweets and blogs, there's a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions," said President Obama, in the late evening of April 19, after Dzokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive in Watertown, Mass. "But when a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it's important that we do this right. That's why we have investigations. That's why we relentlessly gather the facts. That's why we have courts. And that's why we take care not to rush to judgment -- not about the motivations of these individuals; certainly not about entire groups of people."

Fair words of caution. We might all do well, after a week like this one, to take a deep breath and reconsider what we think we know with clear eyes and an open mind.

But it's equally important not to avoid conclusions about the motivations of these individuals because such conclusions are discomfiting. And it's especially important not to explain away facts because they contradict assumptions about the threats we face.

Mark Steyn

[NATIONALREVIEW] In America, all atrocities are not equal: Minutes after the Senate declined to support so-called gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the president rushed ill-advisedly on air to give a whiny, petulant performance predicated on the proposition that one man’s mass infanticide should call into question the constitutional right to bear arms. Simultaneously, the media remain terrified that another man’s mass infanticide might lead you gullible rubes to question the constitutional right to abortion, so the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia has barely made the papers — even though it involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars. Which would normally be enough to guarantee a perpetrator front-page coverage for weeks on end. In the most recent testimony, one of the “clinic”’s “nurses” testified that she saw a baby delivered into the toilet, where his little arms and feet flapped around as if trying to swim to safety. Then another “women’s health worker” reached in and, in the procedure’s preferred euphemism, “snipped” the baby’s neck — i.e., severed his spinal column. “Doctor” Gosnell seems likely to prove America’s all-time champion mass murderer. But his victims are ideologically problematic for the media, and so the poor blood-soaked monster will never get his moment in the spotlight.