Photo Credit: TownhallBy Thomas Sowell. There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.
Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.
More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.
But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence — which became painfully more obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial — will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.
The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Read more from this story HERE.
By Aaron Klein. Racism won in the Trayvon Martin shooting case, declared Van Jones, President Obama’s former “green jobs” adviser.
“The verdict: Racism won. #TrayvonMartin,” Jones tweeted.
The former White House staffer made the comments even as it was reported that an extensive FBI investigation found no evidence indicating George Zimmerman racially profiled Martin. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 01:08:302016-04-11 11:19:13Is This Still America? (+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.
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.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 23:15:152016-04-11 11:19:14Zimmerman Getting Gun Back, Wants to Go to Law School (+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.
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.
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.
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.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:59:432016-04-11 11:19:14Unbelievable: Fed’s Now Considering Prosecution of Zimmerman for Civil Rights Violations (+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.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:51:302016-04-11 11:19:14NPR Radio Host Shamelessly Associates Chick-fil-A With Hitler (+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.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:41:522016-04-11 11:19:15Repealing the First Amendment: Just Way Too Easy (+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.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:35:592016-04-11 11:19:15Zimmerman’s Defense Attorney: Before I Knew Him, I Thought George Was Racist (+video)
Photo Credit: CNNResidents of a Corpus Christi, Texas, neighborhood had the kind of wake-up call no homeowner wants to get.
An early morning explosion Friday shook the area, sparking a fire that rushed through the neighborhood. In the end, three homes were flattened and about 70 others were damaged, the Red Cross told CNN affiliate KIII.
Two people injured were in critical condition Saturday night. They were first taken to a local hospital and then flown to the burn unit at San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center, according to the Corpus Christi Fire Department.
KIII news anchors, in the studio nearly two miles away from the blast site, were in the middle of their live morning newscast Friday when they — and their viewers — heard a loud boom. The room appeared to shake slightly.
Photo Credit: ABC 27Two teenagers are being hailed as heroes for hopping on their bicycles last week, chasing down a kidnapper and rescuing an abducted, five-year-old girl.
Young Jocelyn Rojas of Lancaster Township, Pa., had been playing in her front yard, when an unknown assailant snatched her and threw her in his car. Her mother reported the girl’s disappearance within minutes.
“It’s something you don’t wish on anybody,” Roja’s grandmother, Tracey Clay, told WHTM-TV in Harrisburg. “Horrible, horrible thoughts flashed through my mind.”
But nearby, 15-year-old Temar Boggs, who didn’t know the girl but who had seen television reports on the kidnapping and police patrolling his neighborhood, determined to do something. He gathered together six of his friends.
“We got all of our friends to go look for her,” Boggs told Lancaster Online. “We made our own little search party.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:25:062016-04-11 11:19:17Heroes! Teens on Bike Rescue Girl From Kidnap (+video)
ATP Synthase is a molecular machine found in many living organisms. It serves as a miniature power-generator, producing an energy-carrying molecule, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
The ATP synthase machine has many parts we recognize from human-designed technology, including a rotor, a stator, a camshaft or driveshaft, and other basic components of a rotary engine.
This machine is just the final step in a long and complex metabolic pathway involving numerous enzymes and other molecules—all so the cell can produce ATP to power biochemical reactions, and provide energy for other molecular machines in the cell.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:22:052016-04-11 11:19:18Proof Positive: You Are a Bio-Mechanical Machine Created by Intelligent Design (+video)
Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Nick Gass. The NTSB said late Friday that an intern had confirmed to a California news station the fake names of the pilots aboard the crashed Asiana flight in San Francisco, sparking an outcry in the national media and prompting an on-air apology from the station.
“The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6,” the NTSB said in a statement released Friday night.
“Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft,” the agency said.
KTVU, San Francisco’s Fox affiliate, broadcast the incorrect names of the pilots during its noon newscast on Friday, despite the fact that the names of the pilot and co-pilot, Lee Gang-guk and Lee Jeong-min, had already been released. The fake names were racially charged and phonetically offensive.
Asiana Airlines considering legal action against TV station, NTSB
By Ben Brumfield and Khushbu Shah. Asiana Airlines is considering legal action against Oakland’s KTVU television and the National Transportation Safety Board.
This, after a summer intern at the NTSB mistakenly confirmed “inaccurate and offensive” names as those of the four pilots of Flight 214 that crashed last week in San Francisco.
The bogus names that phonetically spelled out phrases such as “Something Wrong” and “We Too Low” were read during KTVU’s noon broadcast Friday.
“Regarding the KTVU-TV’s demeaning report of the pilots on July 12, ASIANA Airlines is reviewing possible legal action against KTVU-TV and the NTSB,” the airline said in a statement. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-14 01:55:042016-04-11 11:19:19NTSB Fed Fake, Offensive Pilot Names to Media After Asiana Air Accident at SFO (+video)
