A few quick thoughts on the protests in St. Louis

Riot police in St. Louis. ABC/AP.

As you may know there were some major protest in St. Louis tonight over the shooting of a black man by a white officer back in 2011. ABC News has information about the trial and acquittal of the officer involved. People were upset by the verdict and have rioted in response. A few thoughts.

1. I'm no expert on the case but from the little information I have from the above video, the shooting look justified. The man who got shot, Lamar Smith almost hit police officers with a car and came very close to hitting a civilian. It was pretty clearly a good shooting, but the officer was accused of using a "drop piece". That's where an officer drops a gun after a shooting to make claims of self defense more believable. If he did do that, he's an absolute idiot because the shooting looked justified anyways. But even if he did, I don't think that rises to the level of a murder conviction. Losing his job maybe, but only if there was rock solid proof. Not something to go to prison for the rest of his life.

2. The usual suspects were out in force. Groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa were out and about and were up to their old tricks. Unlike the more recent riots, they did not target innocent civilians but attacked the cops instead. Quite a few cops were injured and there was also some property damage. I'm fairly disgusted by the reaction of the violent rioters.

3. Now the problem has nothing to do with the actual case at hand and what groups like BLM and Antifa are going to do next. I am guessing that these groups are sending people to St. Louis to riot tomorrow as well and considering how bad things were tonight, it might not bode well for tomorrow.

4. This event took me completely by surprise. I hadn't heard anything about this case until yesterday when the verdict was announced. Unlike many of the other cases that caused a riot, this one only got local media attention. I generally get the feeling that the national news media doesn't want to cover this kinds of thing anymore because they understand that doing so helps Republicans. There has been a very solid turn away from radical protest groups after the Charlottesvile incident.

5. I'm really getting sick of civil disorder in this country. It seems like every day there is some kind of stupid protest, rally or riot and most of the time it's over something stupid. Sometimes far right groups show up to brawl and that just makes things worse. I just wish we could move on from this and get back to acting like adults. I don't have much hope for that though...