CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL ON INCENDIARY CORRECTNESS:

People who have so far been patient with Merkel are beginning to worry that the crazy scenes in front of the Cologne cathedral will soon be repeated countrywide. Ten percent now tell pollsters that they would vote for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party if elections were held today.

It is dangerous to constrict the range of things voters can say about government policies, especially when those policies are — like Merkel’s migration policy — irregular, and likely to change the country at its core.

No doubt there is a danger of incendiary reactions when people hear of mobs of Muslim foreigners groping young women in front of the country’s most recognizable Christian landmark. But any government attempt to minimize or ignore such events would be a terrible mistake. It would be more likely to whip tempers up than to calm them down.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking of minimizing the Islamic immigrant assault on Cologne’s women, “Germany’s largest TV station is apologizing for not reporting the mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve,” Betsy Newmark writes. “It is not enough to apologize. They should have to answer why they didn’t run the story and if anyone from either the local or national government tried to keep them from reporting on the story. More than 100 women reported that they had been sexually assaulted and two said they had been raped.”

Later her in post, Betsy adds, “The authorities don’t seem to have much confidence that they can successfully prosecute anyone” involved in the assault.

If anything can make this disaster even worse, that would do it.