16-year-old Daily Caller intern Gabe Finger was called upon to ask a question of White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday. The question he asked was, “Because of the death threats being received by George Zimmerman and his parents, is the President going to take any action for their security, or are they on their own?”

This happens to be a question I’ve been asked myself. Not only Zimmerman himself, but also his parents, have gone into hiding due to death threats from the Mostly Peaceful Protesters. Instead of muttering about how everyone should use their voices and show a little restraint, the Administration should be making it clear that these law-abiding American citizens will be protected by their titanic mega-government. If the Leviathan State can send a SWAT team to raid a guitar company whose CEO just happens to donate money to Barack Obama’s opponents, surely they can cut a few guys loose to protect a family menaced by credible death threats. If the government was doing right by George Zimmerman, he’d be able to walk down any street in America with a big smile on his face, and anyone who tried to harm him would be looking at the end of life as they knew it. That’s what separates civilization from barbarian anarchy.

But since the Obama Administration worked so hard to gin up racial animosity and put a target on Zimmerman’s back, it seems they’d have a particular responsibility for his safety in the aftermath of his acquittal on all charges. Attorney General Eric Holder is pretending to mount national effort to scare up enough allegations of impure thinking on Zimmerman’s part to give the mob the civil-rights trial they want. Holder will never actually do it, because he knows he’d lose. But he’s wasting a lot of time and money on the pretense. Shouldn’t he be more concerned with ensuring Zimmerman’s safety, and actively tracking down those who have threatened his family with harm?

Faced with this question, Jay Carney turned into a cross between Foghorn Leghorn and one of Harry Mudd’s robot girlfriends from Star Trek, while the rest of the White House press corps flew to their fainting couches, cooled their fevered brows with a few flaps of their silk fans, and gasped at the unmitigated gall displayed by this upstart youth in the most fashionable salon of the well-bred Beltway journalistic elite:

In all fairness to Carney, this is pretty much the same answer he gave when asked why his boss didn’t do more to protect an American ambassador caught in a terrorist hive on the anniversary of 9/11, so there’s some consistency here. Lesson: God help anyone depending on Barack Obama for anything except a speech. Come to think of it, the Zimmerman family can’t even get that out of him.

A great deal of angry mooing rose from the “journalist” herd, which should have been asking themselves why none of them ever thought to ask this pertinent, straightforward question, but instead attacked the young man who did. You’re supposed to wait for the Administration to write your questions for you, kid, at least until 2017. It’s a particularly great moment when you recite a question you were fed in advance by a regime official, because they’ve decided it’s time to roll out a new initiative, reinforce a narrative, or get in front of a scandal.