Al Sharpton’s ‘open letter’ to Bill O’Reilly

By Morgan Whitaker

After being attacked as everything from a “race hustler” to “dishonest,” Rev. Al Sharpton responded Tuesday to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly recent insults.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Representing what O’Reilly called “the grievance industry” on his Monday program, Sharpton laid out other “grievances” in the history of America, noting that the First Amendment literally gives Americans the right to assemble and petition for the “redress of grievances.”

He pointed to Seneca Falls and to the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that he hoped white clergy would “serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure.”

“Sharpton and others are attacking me because I am a threat to them,” O’Reilly said on Monday’s program, accusing the civil rights leaders of profiting by “promoting racial division.”

“The grievances we face in America have changed over time–just as the country has changed,” Sharpton said in his response. “But today, there are still deep injustices that we must address. Our criminal justice system too often treats millions of Americans differently because of the color of their skin.”

“We’re always striving to form a more perfect union. We’ve long moved past unfair tariffs and three-fifths of a person, beyond denying women the right to vote and beyond the control of Jim Crow,” he said. “Now we fight against criminal injustice and economic equality. We fight for equal rights for all Americans, for gays, for new immigrants, for women to earn equal pay for equal work.”

“Sure, it makes some people uncomfortable, but this country has always evolved because people stood up, addressed the problems of their time and fought to change them.”

Fast food workers strike

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

WAKE THE FUCK UP

By Phillyindy

"Why don't you respect their different perspective on life and try to come to some common ground?"

This was a reply I received on another thread regarding morons who vote against their interests over and over again.

I'm a liberal, and this shit drives me nuts!!!!

You want to know why "liberals lose so God damn always" (to quote Will McAvoy)?

THIS IS WHY.

Liberals constantly make the fatal error of assuming the other side is intelligent and reasonable. That if we are nice and present the data, people will come around.

WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST 30 YEARS???????

President Obama, easily one of the most intelligent, reasoned, articulate, honest, well intentioned presidential candidates in our history took this approach...and Sarah FUCKING PALIN's ticket still got 47% of the vote...and that was AFTER Republicans launched an illegal war on lies, sanctioned torture, and created the biggest financial disaster since the GREAT DEPRESSION!

47% people!!! Know what that means? It means that just about half the country, now devastated by 8 years of republican rule, would take Sarah FUCKING Palin rather then a Democrat...even one as amazing as Obama.

It means in 2008, after 8 years of Bush, half the country thought the problem was that our leader wasn't MORE of a right wing ideological nut.

Many of my liberal friends were patting themselves on their back that day. I was naturally thrilled Obama won, but I was also well aware of the fact that instead of what should have been a landslide...he could have easily lost.

And for me, that brought a horrifying realization that our country was even more insanely misinformed and fucked then I thought.

Obama also took this typical liberal "kill them with kindness" and "compromise" approach with governing...how's that worked out for progressive legislation, for the progressive movement as a whole?

Let's see, Obama's only signature piece of legislation is a right wing Heritage Foundation healthcare plan that is a giant handout to big pharma and insurance agencies.

Meanwhile, we've had draconian cuts to everything from education to life saving social programs for the poor and elderly.

We've bailed out Wall Street and the banks, but told homeowners, the unemployed, students, the needy, and even entire cities like Detroit to go fuck themselves sideways.

We've had a continuation (even an expansion) of Bush national security policies and right wing economic policies.

More free trade policies, more corporate welfare, and the continued assault on the middle class, the poor, and our social contract.

Yet do you see mass protests in the streets? Rioting? Are the Republicans facing backlash? Do most people even know what's causing all of this or who's responsible?

Nope.

In fact, Nate Silver is now saying there is a 50% chance Republicans will take the Senate in 2016...and no chance they will lose the house.

Deny it all you want, but it's perfectly theoretical that Republicans could own the entire government come January 2017.

The fact that this is even plausible right now, let alone a real possibility, should serve as a splash of ice water in the face of liberals.

What you are doing ISN'T working!

It's time to wake the fuck up and realize that this noble, above it all approach of messaging HAS BEEN FAILING MISERABLY FOR 30 FUCKING YEARS...to the point where the oligarchy now has so much power that it may now be irreversible.

By now everyone should know that Americans are largely simple, ignorant, fearful folk. They trust the confident assuredness of a leader above things like facts. Like Bush, "Wrong but strong".

You want to make Americans understand and come around to your side? Then quit acting like fucking pussies sitting in a circle on the grass at your college quad!

Stand up and denounce the other side for the sick twisted fascist pukes that they are.

STOP acting like there are 2 sides to common decency, to moral truths, to policies that serve only the purpose of enslaving the citizens while empowering the ruling elite.

CALL PEOPLE THE FUCK OUT in every setting, in every situation. Minimize them, make them a mockery, paint them as immoral parasites.

I don't care if it's you kids teacher, your priest, or your fucking dying Aunt.

When possible, do so politely, if that's not possible, then FUCK THEM.

Think this is harsh? Well you ever wonder why social issues like gay marriage and discrimination are the ONE area where liberals win CONSISTENTLY?

Because they use this tactic!!!! Because they shame people into doing the right thing. They make it socially UNACCEPTABLE to not agree.

This is why those issues drive conservatives nuts more then anything - because that's THEIR tactic!

To question capitalism means you are a commie pinko. To question a war means you don't support the troops. To question torture means you are a terrorist lover. Conservatives have mastered the tactic of forced conformity.

So sorry for the rant, but I've fucking had it. This isn't 1970, where the other side is made up of at least some intelligent, well meaning people with legitimate alternative views and we all agree on the basic principles of America.

THIS IS A FUCKING WAR against a soulless, immoral, ruthless oligarchy hell bent on permanently enslaving the people of this country...and they are winning, they are kicking our asses into oblivion.

Liberals are the only reason America became the great shining beacon of hope and justice and equality and prosperity for all that it once was.

Well it's time for liberals to get dirty again, or you can kiss this country goodbye.

America isn't the last great hope for the world...liberals are.  

Cumulus Media Will Dump Limbaugh and Hannity

By DYLAN BYERS 

7/28/13 7:59 PM EDT

In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday.

Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.

The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names.

As industry insiders caution, Cumulus and Clear Channel have come to the brink before during contract negotiations only to resume talks. But the source told POLITICO that Clear Channel was unlikely to reduce the cost for distribution rights to a level that would satisfy Cumulus.

Cumulus declined to comment for this story: "Cumulus is not in a position to comment about negotiations with talent under contract, no matter what the rumor of the day might be," a spokesperson told POLITICO.

But in recent weeks, Cumulus has been quietly reaching out to radio talent agents and political insiders about new local and regional station hosts to fill some of the airtime that will be left vacant by Limbaugh and Hannity, industry sources said. Cumulus is also expected to move some of its existing talent -- which includes Mike Huckabee, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage - into one of the slots.

Premiere, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night, is expected to carry Limbaugh and Hannity on stations in many of the markets where they are currently signed with Cumulus, should the negotiations not go through. A spokesperson for Limbaugh was not immediately available for comment; Hannity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Back in May, a source close to Limbaugh told POLITICO that the host was considering ending his affiliation agreement with Cumulus because CEO Lew Dickey was blaming the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. On an earnings call two days later, Dickey reported a $2.4 million first-quarter decline in revenue related to talk programming, which he attributed, indirectly, to Limbaugh's remarks about Fluke.

Dickey is expected to hold another earnings call this week, though it is unclear if he will address the contract negotiations.

Follow @politico

Trayvon Martin’s parents: Juror B29′s revelations ‘devastating’

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The mother of Trayvon Martin reacted Thursday to an interview a juror in the George Zimmerman trial gave to ABC News, in which she admitted that she ultimately, she didn’t hold out for a conviction.

The Juror, known only as B29, or “Maddy,” since she revealed herself — including showing her face — to ABC’s Robin Roberts, said Zimmerman “got away with murder” in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, but that Florida law, as understood by the jury, made it impossible to convict.

“I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end,” she said during the interview, for which ABC News aired clips on Thursday. “That’s where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.”

Zimmerman was acquitted on second degree murder and manslaughter charges July 14th.

Maddy, a nurse’s aide and the lone non-white juror on the panel, said she is having trouble sleeping after the verdict.

“It’s hard for me to sleep,” she told ABC. “It’s hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin’s death. And as I carry him on my back, I’m hurting as much Trayvon’s Martin’s mother because there’s no way that any mother should feel that pain,” she said.

Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton issued the following statement Thursday night on behalf of herself and Tracy Martin:

It is devastating for my family to hear the comments from juror B29, comments which we already knew in our hearts to be true. That George Zimmerman literally got away with murder.

Read the rest of this story at theGrio.com.

Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords

By Declan McCullagh

Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of  'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

 

"This is one of those unanswered legal questions: Is there any circumstance under which they could get password information?"
--Jennifer Granick, Stanford University

A Microsoft spokesperson would not say whether the company has received such requests from the government. But when asked whether Microsoft would divulge passwords, salts, or algorithms, the spokesperson replied: "No, we don't, and we can't see a circumstance in which we would provide it."

Google also declined to disclose whether it had received requests for those types of data. But a spokesperson said the company has "never" turned over a user's encrypted password, and that it has a legal team that frequently pushes back against requests that are fishing expeditions or are otherwise problematic. "We take the privacy and security of our users very seriously," the spokesperson said.

A Yahoo spokeswoman would not say whether the company had received such requests. The spokeswoman said: "If we receive a request from law enforcement for a user's password, we deny such requests on the grounds that they would allow overly broad access to our users' private information. If we are required to provide information, we do so only in the strictest interpretation of what is required by law."

Apple, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast did not respond to queries about whether they have received requests for users' passwords and how they would respond to them.

Richard Lovejoy, a director of the Opera Software subsidiary that operates FastMail, said he doesn't recall receiving any such requests but that the company still has a relatively small number of users compared with its larger rivals. Because of that, he said, "we don't get a high volume" of U.S. government demands.

The FBI declined to comment.

Some details remain unclear, including when the requests began and whether the government demands are always targeted at individuals or seek entire password database dumps. The Patriot Act has been used to demand entire database dumps of phone call logs, and critics have suggested its use is broader. "The authority of the government is essentially limitless" under that law, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence committee, said at a Washington event this week.

Large Internet companies have resisted the government's requests by arguing that "you don't have the right to operate the account as a person," according to a person familiar with the issue. "I don't know what happens when the government goes to smaller providers and demands user passwords," the person said.

An attorney who represents Internet companies said he has not fielded government password requests, but "we've certainly had reset requests -- if you have the device in your possession, than a password reset is the easier way."

Source code to a C implementation of bcrypt, a popular algorithm used for password hashing.

(Credit: Photo by Declan McCullagh)

 
Cracking the codes

Even if the National Security Agency or the FBI successfully obtains an encrypted password, salt, and details about the algorithm used, unearthing a user's original password is hardly guaranteed. The odds of success depend in large part on two factors: the type of algorithm and the complexity of the password.

Algorithms, known as hash functions, that are viewed as suitable for scrambling stored passwords are designed to be difficult to reverse. One popular hash function called MD5, for instance, transforms the phrase "National Security Agency" into this string of seemingly random characters: 84bd1c27b26f7be85b2742817bb8d43b. Computer scientists believe that, if a hash function is well-designed, the original phrase cannot be derived from the output.

But modern computers, especially ones equipped with high-performance video cards, can test passwords scrambled with MD5 and other well-known hash algorithms at the rate of billions a second. One system using 25 Radeon-powered GPUs that was demonstrated at a conference last December tested 348 billion hashes per second, meaning it would crack a 14-character Windows XP password in six minutes.

The best practice among Silicon Valley companies is to adopt far slower hash algorithms -- designed to take a large fraction of a second to scramble a password -- that have been intentionally crafted to make it more difficult and expensive for the NSA and other attackers to test every possible combination.

One popular algorithm, used by Twitter and LinkedIn, is called bcrypt. A 2009 paper (PDF) by computer scientist Colin Percival estimated that it would cost a mere $4 to crack, in an average of one year, an 8-character bcrypt password composed only of letters. To do it in an average of one day, the hardware cost would jump to approximately $1,500.

But if a password of the same length included numbers, asterisks, punctuation marks, and other special characters, the cost-per-year leaps to $130,000. Increasing the length to any 10 characters, Percival estimated in 2009, brings the estimated cracking cost to a staggering $1.2 billion.

As computers have become more powerful, the cost of cracking bcrypt passwords has decreased. "I'd say as a rough ballpark, the current cost would be around 1/20th of the numbers I have in my paper," said Percival, who founded a company called Tarsnap Backup, which offers "online backups for the truly paranoid." Percival added that a government agency would likely use ASICs -- application-specific integrated circuits -- for password cracking because it's "the most cost-efficient -- at large scale -- approach."

While developing Tarsnap, Percival devised an algorithm called scrypt, which he estimates can make the "cost of a hardware brute-force attack" against a hashed password as much as 4,000 times greater than bcrypt.

Bcrypt was introduced (PDF) at a 1999 Usenix conference by Niels Provos, currently a distinguished engineer in Google's infrastructure group, and David Mazières, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University.

With the computers available today, "bcrypt won't pipeline very well in hardware," Mazières said, so it would "still be very expensive to do widespread cracking."

Even if "the NSA is asking for access to hashed bcrypt passwords," Mazières said, "that doesn't necessarily mean they are cracking them." Easier approaches, he said, include an order to extract them from the server or network when the user logs in -- which has been done before -- or installing a keylogger at the client.

Sen. Ron Wyden, who warned this week that "the authority of the government is essentially limitless" under the Patriot Act's business records provision.

(Credit: Getty Images)

 
Questions of law

Whether the National Security Agency or FBI has the legal authority to demand that an Internet company divulge a hashed password, salt, and algorithm remains murky.

"This is one of those unanswered legal questions: Is there any circumstance under which they could get password information?" said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. "I don't know."

Granick said she's not aware of any precedent for an Internet company "to provide passwords, encrypted or otherwise, or password algorithms to the government -- for the government to crack passwords and use them unsupervised." If the password will be used to log in to the account, she said, that's "prospective surveillance," which would require a wiretap order or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order.

If the government can subsequently determine the password, "there's a concern that the provider is enabling unauthorized access to the user's account if they do that," Granick said. That could, she said, raise legal issues under the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The Justice Department has argued in court proceedings before that it has broad legal authority to obtain passwords. In 2011, for instance, federal prosecutors sent a grand jury subpoena demanding the password that would unlock files encrypted with the TrueCrypt utility.

The Florida man who received the subpoena claimed the Fifth Amendment, which protects his right to avoid self-incrimination, allowed him to refuse the prosecutors' demand. In February 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed, saying that because prosecutors could bring a criminal prosecution against him based on the contents of the decrypted files, the man "could not be compelled to decrypt the drives."

In January 2012, a federal district judge in Colorado reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that a criminal defendant could be compelled under the All Writs Act to type in the password that would unlock a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

Both of those cases, however, deal with criminal proceedings when the password holder is the target of an investigation -- and don't address when a hashed password is stored on the servers of a company that's an innocent third party.

"If you can figure out someone's password, you have the ability to reuse the account," which raises significant privacy concerns, said Seth Schoen, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Last updated at 8:00 p.m. PT with comment from Yahoo, which responded after this article was published.
 
Disclosure: McCullagh is married to a Google employee not involved with this issue.

Juror B-29 proves that the George Zimmerman jury needed diversity of all kinds

Cenk Uygur talks to Ana Kasparian, Jayar Jackson, and TYT producer and legal analyst Robin Sax about the latest aftermath from the George Zimmerman trial.

On Thursday, Juror B-29, the jury’s sole minority member, gave an interview with ABC News in which she said that Zimmerman “got away with murder” and that she “fought to the end” for a second-degree murder conviction, nearly causing a hung jury.

“Think about it, if you are a white person living in this area in Florida, you have a very different experience than a black person living in this area in Florida,” Kasparian says.

The panel agrees that lack of racial diversity on the jury was one of many problems. “This woman is a mom to eight children,” Sax points out. “Juror B-37 has no children. Maybe it’s not about race, maybe it’s being a parent.”

Chris Hayes blasts Rep. Steve King for incendiary comments

By Collier Meyerson, @youngcollier

Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa recently said of Latino immigrants to the conservative site Newsmax: “They aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents. For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

MSNBC's Chris Hayes called King’s statement “hideous” on Wednesday’s All In. “The GOP can try to spin this. They can condemn these remarks and claim Steve King doesn’t speak for the party. But, really, until proven otherwise by actions, he does. He’s the GOP immigration id, without the filter. And the id continues to run the party,” said Hayes.

Watch Telemundo’s Jose Diaz-Balart discuss King’s comments on Wednesday’s All In with Chris Hayes.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mr. Weiner and the Elusive Truth

By THE NYT EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 23, 2013

At some point, the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexual relationships and texting habits will finally be told. In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.

Mr. Weiner, who resigned from Congress two years ago after sending lewd messages and photos of his crotch to women he had not met, was forced to revisit the issue on Tuesday, and so were we all. A Web site called The Dirty had another woman’s story, another round of sex texts, and another picture of Mr. Weiner’s penis. The startling news was that this new episode apparently took place last summer, only a few months before Mr. Weiner was to begin another run at public office. The marital trauma that Mr. Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, had said was behind them was not as far behind as we thought.

When the first texts were revealed two years ago, Mr. Weiner lied about it, saying he had been the victim of hackers. Then he owned up, tearfully abandoned his office and retreated into private life. 

Then he was back, telling the world that therapy and his wife’s forgiveness had turned him around and that he was ready to begin a new chapter. That turned out to be the mayor’s race, which he entered in May. What he did not say then, and what voters did not realize until Tuesday, was that his resignation had not been the end of his sexual misconduct.

The timing here matters, as it would for any politician who violates the public’s trust and then asks to have it back. Things are different now, he insists. “This behavior is behind me,” he said again on Tuesday. He suggested that people should have known that his sexting was an unresolved problem well into 2012.

That’s ridiculous and speaks to a familiar but repellent pattern of misleading and evasion. It’s up to Mr. Weiner if he wants to keep running, to count on voters to forgive and forget and hand him the keys to City Hall. But he has already disqualified himself.

It’s difficult not to feel for Ms. Abedin. The couple deserved privacy as they worked through their problems — and they had it, until they re-emerged in public life and Mr. Weiner decided he was a good fit to run New York City. Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin have been saying that his sexual behavior is not the public’s business. Well, it isn’t, until they make it our business by plunging into a political campaign.

Mr. Weiner says he is staying in the mayoral race. To those who know his arrogance and have grown tired of the tawdry saga he has dragged the city into, this is not surprising.

Bid A Tearless Goodbye To Mitch McConnell

By Deborah Montesano

Why is U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell sitting in the back of the room, twiddling his thumbs, as the Senate pushes for bipartisan compromise on difficult issues? When the heat was on last week for an agreement between the GOP and Democrats to avoid the end of the filibuster, McConnell was nowhere to be seen–and it was thanks to the Tea Party.

McConnell faces a race for re-election next year and, until recently, thought he could focus his efforts on the likely Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. On Tuesday, however, Tea Party member Matt Bevins–an investment adviser who has never held public office–sent out a media advisory stating his intention to challenge the incumbent senator in the 2014 primary. Bevins will be making appearances around Kentucky for the rest of the week to create visibility for his campaign.

In what must be an ominous sign for McConnell, 15 local tea party groups appealed to national tea party groups to withdraw endorsements of the senator that they’ve already made. In a letter, the groups wrote:

Senator McConnell’s Progressive Liberal voting record, his absolute iron fisted rule over the Republican Party in Kentucky and his willingness to roll over and cede power to President Obama and the Liberals in Washington, prove that he is no friend to the American people or the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Your endorsement undermines the work of the real grassroots Tea Party organizations all over Kentucky. Had you taken the time to reach out to us, you would have learned that the Tea Parties in Kentucky do NOT support Senator McConnell’s campaign.

Uh-oh, McConnell. There’s more. Senator Rand Paul, who has also pledged his support to the minority leader, refused to discourage Bevins from making the challenge by saying:

I’m not giving (Bevin) encouragement or discouragement. It’s a free country and anybody who wants to run, can.

Still, there’s a silver lining to Bevin’s challenge–maybe not for McConnell, but certainly for the Democratic opposition. The fact that the Senate’s minority leader has been endorsed by two national TeaParty groups, TeaParty.net and Tea Party Nation, but not by the local groups, indicates a split in their movement. In May, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation made the case that the movement needs to “grow up” and “pick our fights”, writing on the group’s website:

For those who scream that McConnell isn’t ‘Tea Party’ enough, would you prefer Harry Reid?

So expect McConnell to continue twiddling his thumbs as others–like John McCain, who is not up for reelection–step in to fill the GOP leadership gap on issues requiring bipartisan cooperation, like immigration reform and the budget ceiling. By avoiding any further erosion of his position as a conservative, McConnell seeks to inoculate himself from further Tea Party accusations–and opens himself up to vulnerability from the probable Democratic candidate.

Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her candidacy on July 1st, hoping to take advantage of both McConnell’s deep unpopularity and her own status as underdog. In 2011, she won the office of Secretary of State by first defeating the Democratic incumbent and then the Republican who had Tea Party backing. She won the most votes of any Democratic candidate statewide.

After her announcement for the Senate race, Guy Cecil, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, pointed out a poll showing that over 60 percent of Kentucky voters disapprove of McConnell’s job performance. Cecil had this to say about Lundergran Grimes’ prospects:

The Kentucky Senate race is now a toss up. Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular incumbent in the entire country. He is a relic of the past and a symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington. Kentuckians want a change.

McConnell is starting the race with a huge war chest of over $8.6 million. However, Lundergan Grimes comes from a political family with extensive connections and the possibility of raising large amounts of cash herself. She lost no time in framing the race from the perspective of a younger, fresher face, saying:

The question never was, is Mitch McConnell vulnerable? The question never was, does Kentucky deserve a change? The answer to both of those questions remains and is, yes.
I agree with thousands of Kentuckians that Kentucky is tired of 28 years of obstruction. That Kentucky is tired of someone who has voted against raising the minimum wage while all the while quadrupling his own net worth.

So, here’s McConnell’s dilemma: stop the obstructionism and face the wrath of the Tea Party, or continue with that course and face the wrath of voters who want to see progress on the issues that most affect their daily lives.

Whatever the outcome, the nation is already reaping the benefits of the race: no more Mitch McConnell in their faces until at least after the primary season is over.

Ed Schultz outlines his four step plan to save Detroit

By the Ed Show staff

Republicans have given up on the city of Detroit, they want to wipe the slate clean and start privatizing city assets, and in the process, city workers are in danger of losing their pensions.

Ed Schultz outlines his four step plan to save Detroit. Lansing, Michigan Mayor Virg Bernero and Michael Eric Dyson join Ed to discuss.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

All Cars To Have Black Boxes by 2014

By Alan Colmes

Much like airplanes, more and more cars have black boxes to help determine details of crashes, and the National Highway Safety Administration would like all cars to have them by 2014.

The boxes have long been used by car companies to assess the performance of their vehicles. But data stored in the devices is increasingly being used to identify safety problems in cars and as evidence in traffic accidents and criminal cases. And the trove of data inside the boxes has raised privacy concerns, including questions about who owns the information, and what it can be used for, even as critics have raised questions about its reliability.

To federal regulators, law enforcement authorities and insurance companies, the data is an indispensable tool to investigate crashes.

The Resurgence of the Smart Stupid Person

By Heather



Bill Maher bemoaned the resurgence of the "smart stupid person" during his New Rules segment on Real Time this Friday evening. After explaining that this is nothing new, Maher ran down the recent list which includes the like of Dr. Ben Carson, who is a brilliant surgeon, but also believes the earth is 6000 years old, likened homosexuality to bestiality and said the Bible calls for a flat tax.

And then there's Antonin Scalia, Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal, who are all, as Maher described them, accomplished scholars on the outside, and a creamy layer of Michele Bachmann on the inside.

Maher wrapped things up by going after the "know-nothing" doctors like Scott DesJarlais, Paul Broun and Tom Coburn, who as Maher noted, are OBGYN's but "know nothing about reproduction."

He wasn't through with the list of wingnut OBGYN's yet though. He went on to go after Ron Paul, Michael Burgess, and last but not least, Phil Gingrey.

MAHER: Let's ask the more important question. Why are we electing so many gynecologists to Congress? If having your head between a woman's legs is a qualification for public office, then why not Congressman Michael Douglas?

I don't think the problem with those clowns is having their heads between women's legs. It's having it up their own posteriors.

Obama Says Americans Should Do 'Soul-Searching' on Race

By Taegan Goddard

During a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, President Obama that Americans should respect the George Zimmerman verdict, but white Americans should also understand the problems of racism, USA Today reports.

Said Obama: "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."

He added all Americans should do "soul-searching" in the wake of the verdict and the reactions to it.




Below is a transcript of President Obama's remarks as provided by the White House.


     THE PRESIDENT:  I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session.  The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there's going to obviously be a whole range of issues -- immigration, economics, et cetera -- we'll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.

     The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week -- the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling.  I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday.  But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

     First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle's, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they've dealt with the entire situation.  I can only imagine what they're going through, and it's remarkable how they've handled it.

     The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there's going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case -- I'll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.  The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner.  The prosecution and the defense made their arguments.  The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict.  And once the jury has spoken, that's how our system works.  But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling.

You know, 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.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me -- at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.

And I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.  And it's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.  The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws -- everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.  And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Now, this isn't to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they're disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.  It's not to make excuses for that fact -- although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.

     And so the fact that sometimes that's unacknowledged adds to the frustration.  And 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.

     I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.  So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys.  But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there's no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.

     Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this?  How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?  I think it's understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent.  If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.  But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do.

I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it's important for people to have some clear expectations here.  Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code.  And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.

     That doesn't mean, though, that as a nation we can't do some things that I think would be productive.  So let me just give a couple of specifics that I'm still bouncing around with my staff, so we're not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.

     Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.

     When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things.  One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped.  But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.

And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and, in turn, be more helpful in applying the law.  And obviously, law enforcement has got a very tough job.

So that's one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought to bear if state and local governments are receptive.  And I think a lot of them would be.  And let's figure out are there ways for us to push out that kind of training.

Along the same lines, 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 diffuse potential altercations.

I know that there's been commentary about the fact that the "stand your ground" laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.  On the other hand, if we're sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there's a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we'd like to see?

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these "stand your ground" laws, I'd just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?  And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

Number three -- and this is a long-term project -- we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African American boys.  And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about.  There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement.  And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?

I'm not naïve about the prospects of some grand, new federal program.  I'm not sure that that's what we're talking about here. But I do recognize that as President, I've got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front.  And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they're a full part of this society and that they've got pathways and avenues to succeed -- I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation.  And we're going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.
And then, finally, I think it's going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching.  There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race.  I haven't seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations.  They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.  On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there's the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?  Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character?  That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.

     And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don't want us to lose sight that things are getting better.  Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race.  It doesn't mean we're in a post-racial society.  It doesn't mean that racism is eliminated.  But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they're better than we are -- they're better than we were -- on these issues.  And that's true in every community that I've visited all across the country.

     And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues.  And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions.  But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we're becoming a more perfect union -- not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.

     Thank you, guys.

Department of Justice Will Take George Zimmerman's Gun

By Jozen Cummings

In the days after George Zimmerman was acquitted on second-degree-murder and manslaughter charges for his killing of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, it was revealed that Zimmerman would receive back all of his property that held during the trial, including the gun he used. But now, according to the Orlando Sentinel, the FBI has requested that Sanford, Fla., police hold the gun and all the other evidence used in the trial pending a further investigation by the Department of Justice.

The Seminole County Clerk of Courts released the evidence earlier this week to the police department.

Before returning individual items to their owners, however, department officials talked to one or more FBI agents in Orlando, according to Sanford police spokesman Capt. Jim McAuliffe.

On Thursday, the police department finalized its plan.

"The evidence is just in a hold status, pending their DOJ investigation," McAuliffe said.

It is being stored in a secure area within the police department, he said.

The items include Zimmerman's gun, Trayvon's clothes, cell phone, the bag of Skittles and beverage found in his pockets – in short all the evidence collected by the agency as it investigated the Feb. 26, 2012, homicide.

Prior to the trial, the Department of Justice was already investigating Trayvon's killing, as well as the Sanford Police Department, which is what prompted the state to press formal charges against Zimmerman. After the six-person jury found Zimmerman innocent on all charges last Saturday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DOJ will renew its investigation.

Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.
 
Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Memo to Charles Barkley: Shut The Fuck Up

Hey, Charles Barkley!

Posted by Curtis Bunn

Sometimes—OK, a lot of times—you want to tell Charles Barkley to just shut up. This is one of those times.

It is often refreshing when the former NBA star waxes humorously about basketball or personalities or even politics. The mouth-all-mighty finds no topic he does not have an opinion on to spew.

In some ways, it is admirable that he is not afraid to speak his truth, however silly it might be at times.

But saying, as he did on CNBC’s Closing Bell Thursday, that the George Zimmerman verdict of acquittal of killing Trayvon Martin was proper, makes one cringe.

Of course, Barkley is entitled to his opinion. But the very fans who admire his audacity—black men—take this position as a personal affront.

This was a case where Barkley would have been wiser to take a middle-of-the-road approach. Black America is incensed, heart-broken, disenchanted and even disbelieving that a man responsible for the death of a teenager who was minding his business, bothering no one, talking to a friend on the phone  was found not guilty on Saturday night of his death.

After days of tears, expressions of anger and vows to be more active in addressing injustice and racial bias, no one wanted or needed to hear Barkley say, “I agree with the verdict.”

It gives the impression that he is a privileged black man in white America, unaware and inexperienced in the racial harassment black men encounter daily just for being black.

For sure, life is different for Barkley; he’s a mammoth figure and personality, a recognizable millionaire who surely receives preferential treatment most everywhere he goes. But one of the worst things he can do—or say—is project that he is disconnected from the community from which he comes. He’s from Leeds, Alabama, for crying out loud.

If he just had to comment on the verdict, it would have been more sophisticated for him to take a different approach. To the cynic, it sounds like he is more interested in coddling to the right wing that historically has expressed through words, actions and legislation its disregard for blacks.

“I’m sorry that young kid got killed,” Barkley said, “but they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him.”

Really?

He went on to say that “racial profiling” took place, but spit out the same gibberish the defense laid out, that “something happened that changed the dynamic that night.”

Barkley added: “Trayvon Martin, God rest his soul, he did flip the switch and start beating the hell out of Mr. Zimmerman.”

Barkley, like those who support the verdict, seemed to disregard that the changed dynamic came when Zimmerman followed Martin, who even ran in an attempt to elude the borderline stalker.

Barkley, of all people, should understand Martin’s right to defend himself when confronted.

After all, this is the same Barkley who blatantly elbowed a puny player from Angola during the 1996 Olympics because Barkley said the player had elbowed him.

This is the same Barkley who threw a heckling fan through a window in a Milwaukee bar during an altercation, the same Barkley who consistently fought when confronted in non-life-threatening situations.

And now, when a man follows and approaches a kid in the dark, Barkley holds it against the teen that he defended himself? Weak.

His view is “probably not a popular opinion among most people,” he conceded, but “looking at the evidence,” Barkley said he concurred with the jury of six white women.

Whatever.

Barkley being Barkley, he continued his outspoken nonsense by attacking the media covering the case, saying it does not have a “pure heart” on race.

“Racism is wrong in any shape or form,” Barkley said. You think?

“A lot of black people are racist too,” he went on to say. “I think sometimes when people talk about racism, they say only white people are racist, but I think black people are too. I don’t think the media has clean hands.”

Here’s an idea, Chuck: Stick to talking basketball.

But Barkley being Barkley, he just cannot shut his pie hole. Of the pundits, he mused: “Every white person and black person who is racist (used) the platform to vent their ignorance. That’s the thing that bothered me the most. I watched this trial closely. I watched these people on television talking about it. A lot of these people have a hidden agenda. They want to have their racist views, whether they are white or black. . . Their biases come out.”

Barkley’s bias is toward shock value. And what was he doing on CNBC, anyway? Basketball season is a ways away.

For sure, Barkley’s right to express his opinion is equal to anyone’s. But five days after the verdict, it would have been nice if he had offered ways to come together in peace or how to deal with Florida’s sick laws that would allow an aggressor to stalk a kid, shoot him through the heart, and walk out of court a free man.

Better yet, it would have been better if Barkley had just kept his mouth shut.

 

About Curtis Bunn

Curtis Bunn is a best-selling novelist and national award-winning sports journalist who has worked at The Washington Times, NY Newsday, The New York Daily News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Trayvon Martin could be this generation’s Emmett Till

Cenk Uygur talks to TYT panelists Jayar Jackson, John Iadarola, and Jimmy Dore as well as TV One’s Roland Martin about nation-wide reactions to the George Zimmerman verdict.

“This case, the death of Trayvon Martin, I believe can potentially serve as the Emmett Till of this generation,” Martin declares, referring to the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old black boy in Mississippi, which has been cited as a strong motivating factor in the Civil Rights Movement.

“There are thousands of young people who are ready to mobilize and organize… I think there’s a moment here where we can actually have a twenty-first century social justice movement that will be beneficial to the rest of this country.”

Did Trayvon Martin’s race motivate George Zimmerman’s verdict?

Cenk Uygur talks to panelists Ana Kasparian, Jayar Jackson, and NationBuilder’s Lauren Brown Jarvis about the Zimmerman verdict. One of the women on the jury, anonymously referred to as B37, did an interview with Anderson Cooper in which she referred to Zimmerman as “George” and 17-year-old victim Trayvon Martin as “that boy,” leading many to speculate that racism or prejudice could have motivated the not-guilty verdict.

“I think that we forget that a lot of people, no matter how liberal or how loving they are, don’t often interact with communities of people who don’t look like them,” Jarvis says. “I wasn’t surprised by this verdict at all. This is America, and no matter what you say, everything is inherently racial here.

That’s just how this country was founded.”

The genetically modified food debate: Where do we begin?

By Nathanael Johnson

Shutterstock

I’ve lingered at the fringes of the debate over genetically modified foods since the ’90s, hoping that some solid fact would filter out and show me clearly who was in the right. But that hasn’t happened.

Every shred of information, it seems, is contested, and all this turbulence keeps the water muddy.

Now the debate is coming to a head again. Britain is reconsidering its restrictive position. Here in the U.S., bills to require the labeling of GM foods were introduced to the legislatures in 28 states this year. Now that I’m writing on food for Grist, I can’t keep waiting on the sidelines for someone else to clear this up. I’m going to have to figure it out for myself.

A project like this requires humility. Many people — including, I’m sure, many of you — may have greater expertise in this area than I do. If so, let me know where you think I should be pointing the searchlight. Or, if you’re like me, and just want to get reliable information from someone who’s not bent on convincing you one way or the other, well, come along for the ride.

My goal here is to get past the rhetoric, fully understand the science, and take the high ground in this debate — in the same way that greens have taken the high ground in talking about climate. It’s hard to make the case that we should trust science and act to stem global warming, while at the same time we are scoffing at the statements [PDF] of *snort* scientists on genetic modification.


Now that doesn’t mean we have to stop thinking, and simply accept everything that the voice of authority lays in front of us. I’m going to look at the science critically, and take into account the efforts of agricultural corporations to cant the evidence. When Mark Lynas made his speech saying that he’d changed his mind about genetic engineering, I was unconvinced, because he didn’t dig into the evidence (he provides a little more of this, though not much, in his book). Lynas did, however, make one important point: There are parallels between opposition to GM crops and other embarrassingly unscientific conspiracy theories. If there are grounds to oppose genetic engineering, they will have to be carefully considered grounds, supported by science.

Of course people who are concerned about genetic engineering don’t have a monopoly on error and overstatement. As the journal Nature put it in a special issue in on transgenic crops:

People are positively swimming in information about GM technologies. Much of it is wrong — on both sides of the debate. But a lot of this incorrect information is sophisticated, backed by legitimate-sounding research and written with certitude. (With GM crops, a good gauge of a statement’s fallacy is the conviction with which it is delivered.)

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of pieces, attempting to highlight legitimate concerns and identify the arguments that should be taken out back and … retired. In the courtroom, a judge will often work with both sides to determine a set of facts that all can agree upon, before moving on to argue about how the law should apply to those facts. I’d like to do something similar here: sort out established facts, and gain a sense for what the bulk of the science indicates.

I’m going to start with the most politicized issue: Is there any evidence that genetically modified food is directly harmful to people who eat it? There’s a one-word answer to this: no.

If you aren’t prepared to take my word for it (especially that particular word), things get a bit more complicated. The most persuasive evidence is that millions of people have been eating genetically modified foods for the past 20 years without any obvious ill effects. If anyone exhibited acute symptoms after eating GM food, we would have seen it.

At the same time, the absence of evidence of harm does not prove safety. If the effects were subtle and chronic, and showed up in only a small subset of the population, it’s possible that we could have missed something. And we don’t know what to look for.

That’s the point Margaret Mellon made when I called her at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in Washington, D.C. Mellon has been critical of U.S. policies on genetically engineered crops.

“People need to understand how hard it is to use the scientific method to address the issue of, ‘Is genetic engineering safe?’” she said.

The problem: It’s not a yes-or-no question.

“It does not appear,” Mellon said, “that there’s any risk that applies across the board to all genetically engineered food and to all people. Each plant is different, each gene insertion is different, each person’s response is different.”

In other words, every GM food could be wonderfully healthy until one particular gene insertion causes things to go awry in just such a way that it messes with the immune system of one particular person. How do you deal with this?

“You need to make a list of all the things that might be potential problems and analyze each of these risks in a wide variety of genetically engineered products,” Mellon said.

Dozens of scientific advisory panels have done this sort of brainstorming. The World Health Organization [PDF], for example, reached the fairly common conclusion that the problems in genetically engineered foods are fundamentally the same as the dangers that arise naturally in plant breeding. Each relies on mutations randomly mixing up the genome. Each sometimes provides unexpected outcomes — try to make corn disease-resistant, end up with too many toxins in the kernels. In both GM and conventional breeding, scientists rely on screening to weed out the bad cobs.

However, researchers generally acknowledge that there’s something a little different about genetic engineering. The United Kingdom’s 2003 Genetic Modification Science Review [PDF], led by David King, puts it this way: “By virtue of the different processes involved, there will be some sources of uncertainty and potential gaps in knowledge that are more salient with respect to GM food production techniques.”

If you have no idea what that means, that’s because it’s incredibly vague. Sure, King is saying, there’s something unusual about transferring a firefly gene into a tomato — that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often in nature. (Although it does happen, amazingly — scientists have found examples of genes moving between different species.) But we don’t know what that difference implies. The report goes on to say that the science so far suggests that those implications have amounted to nothing so far. All the same, this unique technique does create “uncertainty and potential gaps in knowledge.”

The quest for greater certainty on genetic engineering leaves you chasing shadows: When you’re dealing with gaps in knowledge, rather than hard data, it’s hard to tell what’s an outlandish hypothetical, and what’s the legitimate danger. Anything, of course, is possible, but we shouldn’t be paralyzed by unknown risks, or we’ll end up huddled in our basements wearing tinfoil hats.

There’s no way to completely eliminate risk. The real question is, have we thought through the realistic potential for problems, and put regulatory safety nets out to protect ourselves?
Trying to answer that opens another can of worms. Critics like Mellon say that, right now, the producers of GM crops aren’t required to do any testing at all. GM boosters say that regulations are so onerous they stifle innovation. Clearly, someone is wrong here. I’ll take that up in my next post.

George Zimmerman—How to kill teens and influence people

At Long Last, the Most Perfect Crime

By Rude One

Mystery novels are filled with criminals who attempt to commit the perfect crime. That is, a murder, usually, that they get away with. Most of the time, there is some cat-and-mouse game between the detective trying to solve the case and the killer. The perfect crime is the one that the killer never even gets arrested for, the one where, perhaps, as in the case of Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," the cops unwittingly eat the murder weapon.

But the verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, proves that everyone from Agatha Christie to James Patterson has been thinking small. The perfect crime is not just the one you get away with. The perfect crime is the one for which you are acquitted in a court of law. In fact, the most perfect crime of all is the one where, no matter what your true intent, the law supports and sanctions your right to murder in cold blood.

The shooting of Trayvon Martin, it turns out, was that most perfect of crimes.

This blog has previously discussed the complicity of the Florida legislature in making laws that are so ludicrously pro-murder that a Trayvon Martin-type killing was inevitable. It has also argued that the police and conservative media figures successfully turned Martin into a nigger thug who was looking for trouble. It has shown, quite clearly, that Stand Your Ground and other so-called "self-defense" laws do not apply to African Americans who choose to defend themselves. Any anger the Rude Pundit feels, at Zimmerman, at the verdict, at the prosecutors, at the defense attorneys, he expressed last night on Twitter; it has been expressed by others and is being expressed in the streets of America tonight. He agrees with Ta-Nehesi Coates that the law in the state of Florida, a law passed by politicians who can be voted out of office if the people of the state really want it changed, demanded that George Zimmerman be let free and given back his gun.

So he'll just say this: On that night last February, when he got out of his car, George Zimmerman became the judge and jury of Trayvon Martin, accused of the crime of being a black male teenager walking in a neighborhood. Zimmerman then became Martin's executioner because, like so many oppressed people before him, Martin resisted Zimmerman's judgment. So Zimmerman did what scared people in power do all the time. He used overwhelming force to stop Martin's resistance. It is the same kind of force that has killed people and movements in America and all over the world.

George Zimmerman wanted Trayvon Martin to submit to his power, to be what Zimmerman had adjudicated him to be. Trayvon Martin refused. Trayvon Martin resisted. And that's why Trayvon Martin, like so many resisters before him, had to be killed.

There was no way George Zimmerman was going to be found guilty because his guilt would have made Trayvon Martin innocent and said that the law was wrong. Even worse, it would have made Trayvon Martin, the black male teenager, right in his resistance, and the state of Florida, if not the entire nation, would not allow that to happen.

Is it just me, or is this Stand Your Ground shit as stupid as it gets?

SC Supreme Court stops murder trial, orders hearing on ‘Stand Your Ground’ defense

By JOHN MONK — jmonk@thestate.com

COLUMBIA, SC — An armed intruder is making a “Stand Your Ground” argument in a murder trial, saying he shouldn’t be prosecuted for shooting and killing the man whose home he broke into because it looked as though the man was about to shoot him first.

The state’s 2006 “Stand Your Ground” law effectively allows people to claim “immunity from prosecution” when they have used deadly force to deal with and even kill people in various situations if they believed they were being threatened by them.

On Monday, before a jury had been seated in the trial of murder defendant Gregg Isaac, Columbia defense attorney Mark Schnee told Judge Clifton Newman that Isaac wanted immunity from prosecution in his 2005 shooting and killing of Antonio Corbitt.

Schnee went on to tell Newman that he wanted a hearing on the matter and asked Newman to grant Isaac that immunity. To help his case, Schnee put Isaac on the stand, and Isaac admitted shooting Corbitt at Corbitt’s own apartment on Fernandina Road in April 2005.

At the time, Isaac also said, he and another man, Tavares World, entered Corbitt’s apartment after World kicked the door in. World and Isaac each had pistols. World and Corbitt began fighting.

As World and Corbitt fought, at one point, Isaac testified Monday, it looked like Corbitt was going to pull a gun from his pants and shoot Isaac, so he – Isaac – shot Corbitt twice. Corbitt stumbled outside and died on a front walk. Isaac told Newman he feared for his life, both from Corbitt and from World, whom Isaac said had threatened to kill him unless he went along with World.

Isaac’s attorney, Schnee, argued briefly to Newman that Isaac should be granted immunity from prosecution under South Carolina’s “Stand your Ground” law, which allows people to use deadly force if they fear for their lives. Isaac testified he was in fear for his life.

The idea that an armed, self-confessed home invader should claim immunity from prosecution appeared to amuse Judge Newman.

“It borders on the preposterous for the defendant in this case to claim he was acting lawfully and had the right to kill Mr. Corbitt,” Newman told Schnee in open court.

Newman turned down a request by Schnee to hold a full hearing on the matter.

After the trial began, Schnee had an emergency petition filed with the S.C. Supreme Court, requesting a stay in the trial because Newman turned down the request.

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court granted that stay on Tuesday, on the trial’s second day, causing Newman to halt the trial and dissolve the jury panel.

The Supreme Court – which rarely stops an ongoing trial – said in its order that it wants to hear arguments concerning the state’s 2006 “Stand Your Ground” law, which effectively allows people to claim immunity from prosecution when they have used deadly force to deal with and even kill people who they believe have threatened them in various situations.

The arguments the high court wants to hear apparently don’t involve the substance of the law – they involve at what point in a trial process a judge should hold a full hearing about whether evidence can be introduced about whether the defendant can assert that he enjoys immunity from prosecution because he was in fear for his life when he used deadly force. If a judge were to grant immunity, then a trial would not have to be held.

“The circuit court is without jurisdiction to proceed,” the high court said in its ruling halting the trial. It was signed by Chief Justice Jean Toal.

So Isaac will get to make his “Stand Your Ground” argument again, before the state’s highest court.
Without commenting on the merits of the case, 5th Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson – whose high-profile violent crime prosecutor Luck Campbell was prosecuting the case – said in an interview, “I’m glad it’s an issue that the court is taking a look at.”

The issue of when and if a full pretrial hearing should be held on the “Stand Your Ground” law is an important one, Johnson said. “As you know, court time is at a premium. In essence, you’ll have to have a mini-trial before you go ahead with the full trial. It makes it more difficult to have a trial in a speedy fashion when you have to have mini-trials in factual scenarios that might be absurd, in my opinion.”

The long-unsolved Corbitt killing has attracted much publicity.

Last year, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott held a press conference to announce that his fingerprint experts had re-examined a fingerprint at Corbitt’s apartment and linked it to one of the home invaders. The fingerprint, found on a lamp, came from Isaac.

In the spring of 2012, Lott’s detectives picked up Isaac, and he confessed to the shooting and named World and another man, Vernorris Dixon, as being involved. Isaac, World and Dixon all face charges of murder, attempted armed robbery, first-degree burglary and attempted armed robbery.

It isn’t known when Isaac’s trial will begin again. Apparently, the Supreme Court will want to hear full arguments from all sides. It also will need a court transcript of Monday’s open court discussion between Schnee and Newman.

Reach Monk at (803) 771-8344.