Schumer Cracks the Lindbergh Kidnapping

CHUCK SCHUMER MUST BE running out of potential hazards he'd like to ban. What, apart from a desperate panic about not being in front of the cameras, could explain making such a big deal about re-opening a nearly 50-year-old murder case?

Yet there he was last week, side by side with Rep. Charles Rangel, demanding that the Justice Department act "quickly, thoroughly and fearlessly" in reopening the case of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago youth who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Granted, the Till murder was a significant one in American history, in that it helped spark the civil rights movement. And granted, the trial of the two men arrested for the murder was a travesty of justice, ending in their acquittal. But still, we're living in awfully busy times right now—this is the only urgent business our elected officials can come up with?

The thing that bugs us most about Schumer's hyperventilation over Emmett Till is the fact that he and Rangel called their press conference after seeing a new documentary: Brooklyn filmmaker Keith Beachamp's The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which claims to reveal "new evidence" in the case. Now, as we all know, documentaries are fair and even-handed—at least those licensed by the Accuracy in Documentary Board, the latest regulatory panel established by Mayor Bloomberg, reached easily enough by dialing 311—and are always careful to present all evidence from all sides of any subject.

If we'd known Chuck was this easy to con, we'd have sent him a copy of Tribulation 99 long ago, in the hopes that some action might finally be taken on that whole "underground alien lizard people" problem.

It also leaves us wondering what Schumer would do if someone earnestly suggested re-opening the books on a few other cases. The Branch Davidians, say.