Posts

George Zimmerman and Barack Obama Share Same Disapproval Rating

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller Former neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman is viewed favorably by 32 percent of the American public, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

32 percent of American adults view Zimmerman favorably, while 48 percent view him unfavorably, according to the poll.

Zimmerman was acquitted this month in the shooting death of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, but his case remains a lightning rod in the public discourse. Though just 34 percent of the public actually disagreed with Zimmerman’s not-guilty verdict, according to a previous Rasmussen poll, the 29-year old watchman remains a polarizing national figure…

NBA legend Charles Barkley has been one of the few public figures anywhere near Zimmerman’s side during the frenzy, saying, “I agree with the verdict.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Ted Cruz: Obama has a “Consistent Disregard for the Bill of Rights”

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNNPresident Barack Obama’s suggestion that state “Stand your Ground” laws should be examined after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin could amount to an assault on the right of Americans to own guns, Sen. Ted Cruz said in Iowa Friday.

Speaking after addressing a Republican group, Cruz told reporters he hadn’t yet watched Obama’s remarks. But when asked to respond to Obama’s call for a review of laws in individual states, Cruz responded by saying the president was trampling on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

“It is not surprising that the president uses, it seems, every opportunity that he can to go after our Second Amendment right to bear arms,” the Texas Republican said. “This president and this administration has a consistent disregard for the Bill of Rights.”

For example, Cruz said the Obama administration was violating free speech guarantees by “restricting the rights of our servicemen and women to share their faith and not be gagged,” and that the use of drones raised other constitutional questions.

Obama on Friday made his first public comments about the acquittal of George Zimmerman last week in Martin’s shooting death in 2012.

Read more from this story HERE.

Guess Who Reportedly Accompanied Al Sharpton to NYC Rally – Then Got Jeered by Crowd?

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesWhen the Rev. Al Sharpton and Trayvon Martin’s mother arrived at the Harlem rally for Martin today, they were accompanied by Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera, according to National Review Online.

NRO adds that Rivera had “no cameraman and seemed to be observing the proceedings as a guest.”

Some protesters apparently spot Rivera and began to complain and shout, “Get Fox out!” and “What are you doing here?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Takes Over White House Press Briefing to School the Nation On Trayvon Martin and Racism (+video)

/22 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: globalgrind.comObama Takes Over White House Press Briefing To Speak On Trayvon Martin

By Jennifer Bendery. President Barack Obama made an unexpected appearance at Friday’s White House press briefing to talk about the outcome of the Trayvon Martin case and, more broadly, how the United States continues to grapple with racial bias.

“When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” Obama said.

Obama said he understands why people are so upset that George Zimmerman was found not guilty for shooting and killing Martin, an unarmed teen who was walking down the street in Sanford, Fla., in February 2012. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, pursued Martin for no clear reason and ultimately shot him in what he said was self-defense. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a full video of Obama’s remarks:

_______________________________________________________________________

Obama Says that the Disproportionate Criminal Conduct of Black Young Men is an “Excuse” for Treating Them Differently

By Neil Munro. President Barack Obama took the White House podium Friday [and] acknowledged that African-American males have a higher-than-average crime rate, shortly before he dismissed the data as an “excuse” for treating black youths differently.

“Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence,” he said.

He immediately suggested that Americans should ignore the data. ”The fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain,” he said.

A November 2011 report by the Justice Department said that young African-American men comprise only 1 percent of the population, but commit 27 percent of the murders. Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________

Obama Calls For Review Of ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws After Trayvon Martin Verdict

By Amanda Terkel. President Barack Obama is calling for a review of the controversial Stand Your Ground laws that were at the heart of the killing of Trayvon Martin.

“I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than defuse potential altercations,” Obama told reporters in a surprise press conference at the White House on Friday.

Florida was the first state in the nation to pass a law that allows an individual who feels threatened to “stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” There are now about 30 states with such statutes. Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin: Obama has been FDR, Lincoln, Reagan and now Trayvon Martin (+video)

/9 Comments/in , /by

On his Friday night radio program, conservative talk show host Mark Levin had some harsh criticism for President Barack Obama and his remarks on the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin…

“We have a president who is balkanizing the nation, as is his cabinet,” he continued. “This wasn’t about Barack Obama. This was a trial in a courtroom in Florida. And now all weekend long the question is going to be, ‘What did you think about what Obama said? It was good. It was bad.’ So suddenly it’s about Obama.

Obama had been Franklin Roosevelt. He’s been Abraham Lincoln. He’s been Ronald Reagan. And now he’s been Trayvon Martin. But he’s none of them. He didn’t live like Trayvon Martin, nor is he any of those three presidents. This president could have been a great president — policies aside — by his temperament, by what he said, by his respect for the American people. This president could have been a man that could have been admired. Instead, he is what he is.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Iran’s Mullahs Demand Justice for Trayvon – Really

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APIran’s foreign ministry on Friday criticized the acquittal of George Zimmerman and chastised the United States for widespread “racial discrimination.”

“The acquittal of the murderer of the teenage African American once again clearly demonstrated the unwritten, but systematic racial discrimination against racial, religious, and ethnic minorities in the US society,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state run Fars News Agency.

“The court ruling has also seriously put under question the fairness of the judicial process in the United States,” Fars reported Araqchi as saying.

Iranian officials said that Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin should have been conducted in a more “accurate and fair” manner.

“Several months on since a probe was launched [into the murder], the public opinion in the U.S. and across the world expect transparency, an accurate and fair judicial investigation into the case, with due regard to human rights principles for American citizens and a ban on discrimination against minorities in the country,” Araqchi said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Conservative Black Pastor Weighs in on Zimmerman, Calls Jackson and Sharpton ‘Race Hustlers, Poverty Pimps’ and Says Trayvon Martin was a Thug (+video)

/12 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNNThe Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, president of the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), a conservative nonprofit, made some contentious statements on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Thursday. In addition to lambasting Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for inserting race into Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s subsequent trial, he called the 17-year-old shooting victim a “thug.”

The exchange began with Peterson claiming that race played no role in the highly-publicized tragedy.

“This case was not about race at all and what happened – you have the race-hustlers and poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and others who turned it into a race issue in order to gain power and wealth,” he charged.

Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Barkley: I Agree with the Zimmerman Verdict (+video)

/5 Comments/in , /by

During an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley made a few surprising comments about the Zimmerman verdict and racism:

Well, I agreed with the verdict. I feel sorry that young kid got killed. But they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. Something clearly went wrong that night. Clearly something went wrong and I feel bad for anybody who loses a kid, but if you looked at the case and you don’t make it — there was some racial profiling, no question about it. But something happened that changed the dynamic of that night, and I know that’s probably not a popular opinion among most people but just looking at the evidence I agreed with the verdict.

I just feel bad because I don’t like when race gets out in the media because I don’t think the media has a pure heart, as I call it. There are very few people who have a pure heart when it comes to race. Racism is wrong in any, shape, form. There are a lot of black people are racist too. I think sometimes when people talk about racism, they say only white people are racist. There are a lot of black people who are racist. I don’t like when it gets out there in the media because I don’t think the media has clean hands.

American Sovereignty and Its Enemies

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Ken FallinThe George Zimmerman saga came to an end last weekend when a jury of six Florida women found the neighborhood-watch captain not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. But even before the 15-month legal process had begun last year, the United Nations’ top human-rights official had rendered a guilty verdict—against Mr. Zimmerman and the entire U.S. judicial system.

“Justice must be done for the victim,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay at an April 2012 press conference. “It’s not just this individual case. It calls into question the delivery of justice in all situations like this. . . . I will be awaiting an investigation and prosecution and trial and of course reparations for the victims concerned.”

Americans who ran across her statement may have dismissed Ms. Pillay as another U.N. busybody pestering the world’s leading democracy. But former Sen. Jon Kyl thinks there is something more pernicious at work: Such comments express the desire, and growing power, of a global progressive elite to pierce the shield of U.S. sovereignty and influence the outcomes of the country’s domestic debates.

Proponents call this movement “legal transnationalism,” and as Mr. Kyl writes in a recent Foreign Affairs magazine article (co-authored with Douglas Feith and John Fonte of the Hudson Institute), “the idea that a U.N. official can sit in judgment of the U.S.” is one of its main innovations. Transnationalists want to rewrite the laws of war, do away with the death penalty, restrict gun rights and much more—all without having to win popular majorities or heed American constitutional limits. And these advocates are making major strides under an Obama administration that is itself a hotbed of transnational legal thinking.

“Transnationalists are a group of people who are convinced they are right about important issues,” Mr. Kyl says as we sit down for a chat at the plush Washington office of the law firm Covington & Burling, where the 71-year-old Arizona Republican has served as an adviser since leaving the Senate in January. “But they are in too much of a hurry to mess with the difficulties of representative government to get their agenda adopted into law—or they know they can’t win democratically. So they look for a way around representative government.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Moving Toward Prosecution, Order State of Florida to ‘Hold’ Zimmerman’s Gun

/16 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APBy DAVID MARTOSKO. The U.S. Department of Justice, overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder, has ordered the Sanford, Florida police department to keep possession of all the evidence from George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial – including the exonerated neighborhood watch volunteer’s gun.

Sanford police confirmed on Thursday that the DOJ asked the agency not to return any pieces of evidence to their owners. Zimmerman was expected to get his firearm back by month’s end.

The development is a sign that the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is seriously investigating Zimmerman to determine if federal civil rights charges should be filed.

Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter on Sunday in a Florida courtroom, but civil rights violations provide an exception to the U.S. Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy after a defendant has been found ‘not guilty’ in a state or local jurisdiction.

That’s because if Zimmerman were tried in federal court, he would be charged with violating Trayvon Martin’s civil rights, not causing his death.

Read more from this story HERE.

____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Fox NewsFed’s Expand Fishing Expedition to Find Any History of Racism in Zimmerman’s Past

By FOX NEWS. Amid pressure from the NAACP and several Democratic lawmakers to pursue Zimmerman, the department expanded its probe Wednesday by setting up a public email address asking for any tips or information regarding the case.

The department also held a conference call with civil rights leaders on Monday.

The conference call included DOJ officials, along with representatives from the FBI and federal prosecutors. They spoke to civil rights leaders from Sanford, Fla., as well as others from around the country.

The call was convened by Tom Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.

A Justice official told Fox News that both the conference call and the email address asking for tips and information are fairly standard procedure when dealing with a high-profile investigation such as this one. The department has used such tip lines in the past, including in a probe last year of the Albuquerque, N.M., police department. Read more from this story HERE.