The Rev. Al Sharpton's call for federal legislation to change law enforcement procedures in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting is redundant and unnecessary, says Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page director of The Wall Street Journal.
"What he's talking about is essentially the same old thing, more federal legislation. You know, Ferguson is taking place 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Henninger said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"In those 50 years, the amount of federal legislation that has been directed at mitigating the conditions of life in inner-city neighborhoods, the amount of money that has been spent, both public and private, to try to get past those problems is virtually immeasurable.
"How does it come to pass that in 2014 people are still calling for more federal legislation? . . . You would think normal and sensible people would stand back and say, perhaps there has to be a better way than what we have been trying to do in inner-city neighborhoods for the past decades."
Sharpton, a civil rights activist and MSNBC host, traveled to Ferguson, Missouri., after riots were triggered by the shooting of Brown, a young African-American man, by a white police officer.
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