The Los Angeles Times has an op-ed today that discusses “police shootings of young men of color” in terms of “confirmation bias.” Now, I’m prepared to believe that people tend to perceive ambiguous situations in ways that confirm their existing views, but that seems quite inapposite to, for example, the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. While one can criticize the police response in Mr. Garner’s case, no one misperceived what he was doing or about to do (and there were nonwhites among the police involved there as well as whites), and of course there is no doubt that Michael Brown was a criminal and that there is strong evidence that his being perceived as a threat was, to put it mildly, quite reasonable.

No, the best example of “confirmation bias” in the headlines today is, instead, the willingness of the Left to swallow hook, line, and sinker the Rolling Stone campus-rape story, as Linda Chavez explains in her column this week.

Oh, and as long as I have the floor, let me link here to a piece I did for NRO in March 2008, right after then-presidential candidate Barack Obama gave his widely-praised speech in Philadelphia on race relations (prompted by criticism of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an unpaid campaign adviser and pastor at Obama’s Chicago church). My piece was entitled, “Want to Hear a REALLY Honest Speech about Race in America?,” and with all due modesty I think what it says on race relations in the United States remains true and is quite relevant in light of the ongoing Ferguson protests.