Zimmerman Getting Gun Back, Wants to Go to Law School (+video)

Photo Credit: APGeorge Zimmerman to Get His Gun Back

By Matt Gutman. George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon “even more” than before.

Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara also practically dared the family of Trayvon Martin to file a widely expected civil suit against him, but said that Zimmerman might be filing lawsuits of his own.

O’Mara, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, suggested that Zimmerman has no regrets about carrying a gun on Feb. 26, 2012, the night he killed Martin, a teenager.

Prosecutors in their closing argument had said that Zimmerman getting out of his car with a loaded gun to follow the teenager led to Martin’s shooting. He was acquitted Saturday night of murder in Martin’s death in a case that has sparked widespread outrage among supporters of the Martin family.

The lawyer said Zimmerman, 29, will be entitled to get his Kel Tec 9 pistol back. Read more from this story HERE.

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Zimmerman wants to go to law school to help others like him – friends

By Chris Francescani. After his acquittal on murder charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday.

The 29-year old was found not guilty late Saturday for shooting the unarmed black teenager in a case that sparked a national debate on race and gun laws. One of his first calls was to defense witness John Donnelly and his wife Leanne Benjamin.

They got to know Zimmerman in 2004 when he and a black friend opened up an insurance office in a Florida building where Benjamin worked. They grew close and the couple spent time with him during the trial.

Over dinner with Zimmerman recently, Benjamin said he told them he would like to go to law school.

“I’d like to help other people like me,” she quoted him as telling them. Read more from this story HERE.

Unbelievable: Fed’s Now Considering Prosecution of Zimmerman for Civil Rights Violations (+video)

Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Fox News. The Justice Department said Sunday that it will review the George Zimmerman case for possible civil rights violations, after a jury acquitted the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

As Zimmerman’s attorney cautioned that his client’s safety is at risk, the Justice Department responded to appeals from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and several lawmakers to keep investigating the defendant.

The department may find itself in a vulnerable spot. Last week, a conservative watchdog accused an obscure agency within the DOJ of helping support the “pressure campaign” against Zimmerman in the wake of the shooting last year. Judicial Watch claimed documents and public accounts showed “extraordinary intervention” by the department in the campaign that eventually led to Zimmerman’s prosecution.

The department, however, claims that it dispatched agency representatives to reduce tensions in the community – not to take sides.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Zimmerman Verdict

By The Wall Street Journal. An American criminal defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that’s the standard to keep in mind when considering the jury’s not guilty verdict Saturday for George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The case has been fraught with racial politics from the start, but inside the Sanford, Florida courtroom, the jurors had to wrestle with the standard that is a hallmark of American justice. No one but Mr. Zimmerman knows what happened that early evening in 2012 when he followed Martin, an unfamiliar young, African-American male visiting the neighborhood. A scuffle ensued, Zimmerman shot Martin in what he says was self-defense, and prosecutors never produced an eyewitness or even much evidence to disprove Mr. Zimmerman.

The verdict compounds the tragedy for the Martin family, but no one can claim that their son was not represented in court. The state threw everything it had at Mr. Zimmerman. Gov. Rick Scott replaced local prosecutors with a special team from Jacksonville, the judge often ruled favorably for the prosecution, including the addition of the lesser manslaughter charge (in addition to second-degree murder) at the end of the trial…

[But] Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP is already lobbying Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Mr. Zimmerman on federal civil-rights charges. To do so and win a conviction would require proof that Mr. Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus when the record shows little more than a reference by Mr. Zimmerman to “punks” in a comment to a police dispatcher.

Millions of Americans would see such federal charges as an example of double jeopardy, and a politicized prosecution to boot. In this context, it was good to see Mr. Obama’s statement Sunday that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.” Read more from this story HERE.

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FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist

By Frances Robles and Scott Hiaason. After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday show.

Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.

Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”

The Duval County State Attorney released another collection of evidence in the Zimmerman murder case Thursday, including reports from FBI agents who investigated whether any racial bias was involved in Trayvon’s Feb. 26 killing…

Federal agents interviewed Zimmerman’s neighbors and co-workers, but none said Zimmerman had expressed racial animus at any time prior to the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, a black teen, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing complex. As Sanford police investigated the circumstances of Martin’s death, the FBI opened a parallel probe to determine if Martin’s civil rights had been violated. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APDershowitz Calls for Federal Civil Rights Case Over “Prosecutorial Tyrant”

By David A. Patten. Famed defense lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz is calling for a federal investigation into civil rights violations stemming from the George Zimmerman case — but he says the probe should focus on prosecutorial misconduct rather than on allegations of racial profiling and bias.

Speaking Sunday in an exclusive Newsmax interview, Dershowitz said the jury’s finding that Zimmerman was not guilty of either second-degree murder or manslaughter was “the right verdict.”

He added, “There was reasonable doubt all over the place.”

Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.

Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman. Read more from this story HERE.

NPR Radio Host Shamelessly Associates Chick-fil-A With Hitler (+video)

Photo Credit: Mark TurnauckasA publicly funded radio host [Peter Sagal] likened Chick-fil-A to Adolf Hitler Saturday in a warped attempt at humor…

He asked guest Amy Dickinson: “KFC is considering suing a restaurant in Thailand for using its logo and replacing Col. Sanders with blank?” The advice columnist guessed the Buddha, but the correct answer was Hitler.

Dickinson gasped when she heard about the true story. However Sagal, who is Jewish, continued. “Yum Brands which owns KFC was pretty ticked off when it noticed the Hitler restaurant in Bangkok was using the Col. Sanders logo with Hitler’s head Photoshopped in.

“Yum Brands is planning legal action,” continued Sagal. “But the owners of the Hitler restaurant say they are very sorry for insulting a chicken restaurant by associating it with a symbol of intolerance — and next time they will just go with Chick-fil-A.”

Listen to the NPR segment here:

Read more from this story HERE.

“Zimmerman Verdict Means War” and Other Fallout from the Not Guilty Verdict

Photo Credit: WNDNew Black Panthers: Zimmerman Verdict Means ‘War’

By Aaron Klein. The George Zimmerman verdict is a declaration of war that only the devil can applaud, according to the Twitter feed for the New Black Panther Party.

The Twitter account, managed by the group’s national chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, further urged followers to “take to the streets [and] stay there.”

“Were at war,” Shabbazz Tweeted. “Its (sic) silly and immoral to call for peace when war has been declared.”

The NBPP slammed what it called the “white mans (sic) justice system,” claiming the courts base their law on “the white is right theory.”

“Only a devil would applaud that verdict. Only natural born devil. By applauding that verdict you in fact admit that you are a devil,” wrote Shabbazz. Read more from this story HERE.

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$10,000 Offered for Zimmerman’s Head

By Drew Zahn. Now that George Zimmerman has been found not guilty in the murder trial of black teenager Trayvon Martin, threats that some may take “justice” – or vengeance as the case may be – into their own hands become cause for concern.

New York Giants footballer Victor Cruz, for example, tweeted after the verdict was announced, “Zimmerman doesn’t last a year before the hood catches up to him.”

Atlanta Falcons footballer Roddy White followed up with a similar tweet, “All them jurors should go home tonight and kill themselves for letting a grown man get away with killing a kid.”

Though both players later apologized, the tweets reflect upon the words of black activist Mikhail Muhammad, who claimed last year he had professional athletes’ and celebrities’ financial backing in putting a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman’s head.

While distributing “wanted dead or alive” posters at a press conference in Jacksonville, Fla., Muhammad, the southern regional director of the New Black Panther Party, stated, “The heat is on [Zimmerman]. He’s never going to be able to sleep peacefully. The family of George Zimmerman must understand, a life for a life, a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. If you kill my damn baby, we’re going to kill your damn baby.” Read more from this story HERE.

See the NBPP tweet stream for yourself below:

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Photo Credit: Getty Images‘No justice, no peace’: pro-Trayvon MArtin protesters clash with police in NYC, LA.

By Jason Howerton. Demonstrations erupted across the United States ranging from dozens to hundreds – in support of the family of Trayvon Martin. Protesters marched against the not guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of the unarmed black teenager. Zimmerman claims he shot Martin in self-defense after being physically attacked.

At New York City’s Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan, congregants wore hooded sweatshirts – as the 17-year-old Martin did the night he was shot.

And in Manhattan’s Union Square, hundreds of people gathered to voice their passions over the verdict, hoisting placards with images of Martin. Protesters shouted a number of chants demanding “justice” for Trayvon Martin.

The chants in NYC included, “No justice, no peace,” “What do you want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and “Trayvon! Trayvon! Trayvon!” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Occupy Oakland/TwitterProtesters in Oakland burn flag, smash windows over Zimmerman verdict

By Joe Newby. Protesters in Oakland angry over the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman case went on a rampage, smashing windows, starting small fires and burned a U.S. flag at a local area McDonald’s, The Blaze reported Sunday.

The protests attracted anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred people, Madeleine Morgenstern said. Police said protests continued into the early hours on Sunday.

Some in the crowd broke windows on businesses and started small fires in the streets.

The Oakland Tribune said some of the windows in its downtown office were smashed and video from a helicopter show people attempting to start fires in the street. Others can be seen spray painting anti-police graffiti.

Vandals smashed windows at Dogwood Restaurant located at Telegraph and 17th St. in Oakland, ABC7 reporter John Alston said in a tweet. He later said windows were smashed in an Oakland Sears store. Read more from this story HERE.

Snowden Emerges from Hiding in Moscow’s Airport, Says He Wants to Move on to Latin America

By Dave Urbanski. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has very sensitive “blueprints” detailing how the National Security Agency operates that would give its readers the ability to duplicate—or evade—NSA surveillance.

That’s the latest from Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who closely communicates with Snowden and first reported on his intelligence leaks.

Greenwald told the Associated Press that Snowden, a former NSA systems analyst, has “literally thousands of documents” that constitute “basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.”

“In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,” Greenwald said in the interview in Brazil, where he lives. He said the interview took place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden, with whom he said he’s in almost daily contact.

Snowden emerged from weeks of hiding in a Moscow airport Friday, and said he was willing to stop leaking secrets about U.S. surveillance programs if Russia would give him asylum until he can move on to Latin America. Read more from this story HERE.

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Senior Republican says U.S. must step up efforts to get Snowden

By Reuters. A key congressional Republican said on Sunday that the Obama administration must step up efforts and exert “any and all pressure” on Russia to get it to hand over Edward Snowden, the former U.S. spy agency contractor turned fugitive leaker.

“I’m sure Russia loves this,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said of the Snowden drama that has opened the United States to international criticism.

McCaul told “Fox News Sunday” that the Russians are “making a mockery” of U.S. foreign policy, and, “I’m sure every day, they’re extracting more and more information from this man.” Read more from this story HERE.

Repealing the First Amendment: Just Way Too Easy (+video)

Photo Credit: euthmanActivist and author Mark Dice in the past has convinced people to sign a petition to increase the rate of inflation and tried to sell a $1,000 gold coin for $5 to America’s unsuspecting, and apparently sometimes unthinking, public.

This time he’s convincing them, most quite easily, to sign a petition to repeal the First Amendment…

“If you’re disagreeing President Obama, you’re obviously a racist of some kind,” he spouts. “So we’re going to repeal their First Amendment”…

“This will repeal the First Amendment so that those rightwingers can’t say hateful things about Obama”…

When he tells one signer, “Thank you for helping to support repealing the First Amendment,” the signer says, “No worries man. Have a good one.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Zimmerman’s Defense Attorney: Before I Knew Him, I Thought George Was Racist (+video)

Thanks to the media’s habit of showing beatific, outdated photos of Trayvon Martin, many Americans who only casually followed the trial of George Zimmerman incorrectly believed Martin to have been younger than he actually was at the time of his death. In a Friday interview, Zimmerman’s lead defense attorney, Mark O’Mara admitted that he was one of them.

Speaking with CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, O’Mara denounced what he called a “wonderfully created and crafted public relations campaign” by the attorney for Martin’s family, Benjamin Crump and his allies. According to O’Mara, had they not injected a racial element into the story, Zimmerman would never have been tried.

Such was the power of the narrative of a bruising white man deliberately gunning down a small boy out of racial malice that even O’Mara, a seasoned defense attorney very familiar with media sensationalism, bought into it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul: Hillary Probably Perjured Herself

Photo Credit: WNDSen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told a radio interviewer today he doubts former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claims about not having knowledge of weapons transfers when asked about the matter during sworn testimony in a Senate hearing on Benghazi.

During the hearing in March, in response to a question from Paul, Clinton stated she did not know whether the U.S. mission in Libya was procuring or transferring weapons to Turkey and other Arab countries.

Those weapons transfers were allegedly intended to arm the rebels fighting in Syria.

Yet a New York Times report claimed that since early 2012, the CIA has been helping Arab governments and Turkey obtain and ship weapons to the Syrian rebels.

“I’m concerned about the veracity of how she responded,” Paul told “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Military Ignorance in Full Display: Unlawful Command Influence Taints Numerous DoD Trials

Photo Credit: Doug MillsWhen President Obama proclaimed that those who commit sexual assault in the military should be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,” it had an effect he did not intend: muddying legal cases across the country.

In at least a dozen sexual assault cases since the president’s remarks at the White House in May, judges and defense lawyers have said that Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to “unlawful command influence,” tainting trials as a result. Military law experts said that those cases were only the beginning and that the president’s remarks were certain to complicate almost all prosecutions for sexual assault.

“Unlawful command influence” refers to actions of commanders that could be interpreted by jurors as an attempt to influence a court-martial, in effect ordering a specific outcome. Mr. Obama, as commander in chief of the armed forces, is considered the most powerful person to wield such influence.

The president’s remarks might have seemed innocuous to civilians, but military law experts say defense lawyers will seize on the president’s call for an automatic dishonorable discharge, the most severe discharge available in a court-martial, arguing that his words will affect their cases.

“His remarks were more specific than I’ve ever heard a commander in chief get,” said Thomas J. Romig, a former judge advocate general of the Army and the dean of the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. “When the commander in chief says they will be dishonorably discharged, that’s a pretty specific message. Every military defense counsel will make a motion about this.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Populism is the Answer, Not Amnesty

Photo Credit: APSean Trende, RealClearPolitics.com’s senior elections analyst, rattled Washington this month when he challenged the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party must give citizenship to current illegal immigrants if it ever hopes to win a national election again.

Trende argued that instead of pandering to every demographic group, Republicans should instead adjust their agenda to better appeal to Reagan Democrat/Perot Independent voters who stayed home last November.

“Ultimately, the basic prescription for the GOP is a healthy dose of economic populism,” Trende writes. “This includes a lot of changes Democrats would presumably enjoy, such as jettisoning the pro-big business, Wall Street-style conservatism that characterized the Romney campaign.”

Here is what such an agenda might look like:

– Rollback the surveillance state: The government is collecting too much information on law-abiding citizens. The National Security Agency must be reined in…

– Break up the banks: Big banks are not a product of the free market. They are a product of over-regulation and regulatory capture. Dodd-Frank has only made the banks bigger. It’s time to cut them down to size.

Read more from this story HERE.