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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Demonstrators outside the Seminole County Courthouse react after
hearing the verdict of “not guilty” in the trial of George Zimmerman in
Sanford, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
A jury has found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in
connection to death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But while the verdict
came as a surprise to some people, it makes perfect sense to others.
This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of the way white supremacy
operates in America.
Throughout the trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman
jury” in that Seminole County courtroom, adding that most of them were
mothers. That is true—but so is that five of the six jurors were white,
and that is profoundly significant for cases like this one. We also know
that the lone juror of color was seen apparently wiping a tear during
the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But that tear didn’t ultimately
convince her or the white people on that jury that Zimmerman was guilty
of anything. Not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and killing a
black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”
In the last few days, Latinos in particular have spoken up again about Zimmerman’s race, and the “white Hispanic” label especially,
largely responding to social media users and mass media pundits who
employed the term. Watching Zimmerman in the defense seat, his sister in
the courtroom, and his mother on the stand, one can’t deny the skin
color that informs their experience. They are not white. Yet Zimmerman’s
apparent ideology—one that is suspicious of black men in his
neighborhood, the “assholes who always get away—” is one that adheres to
white supremacy. It was replicated in the courtroom by his defense,
whose team tore away at Rachel Jeantel, questioning the young woman as
if she was taking a Jim Crow–era literacy test. A defense that, during
closing, cited slave-owning rapist Thomas Jefferson, played an animation for the jury
based on erroneous assumptions, made racially coded accusations about
Trayvon Martin emerging “out of the darkness,” and had the audacity to
compare the case of the killing of an unarmed black teenager to siblings
arguing over which one stole a cookie.
When Zimmerman was acquitted today, it wasn’t because he’s a
so-called white Hispanic. He’s not.
It’s because he abides by the logic
of white supremacy, and was supported by a defense team—and a swath of
society—that supports the lingering idea that some black men must
occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep society-at-large
safe.
Media on the left, right and center have been fanning the flames of fear-mongering,
speculating that people—and black people especially—will take to the
streets. That fear-mongering represents a deep white anxiety about black
bodies on the streets, and echoes Zimmerman’s fears: that black bodies
on the street pose a public threat. But the real violence in those
speculations, regardless of whether they prove to be true, is that it
silences black anxiety. The anxiety that black men feel every time they
walk outside the door—and the anxiety their loved ones feel for them as
well. That white anxiety serves to conceal the real public threat: that a black man is killed every twenty-eight hours by a cop or vigilante.
People will take to the streets, and with good reason. They’ll be
there because they know that, yes, some people do always get away—and it
tends to be those strapped with guns and the logic of white supremacy
at their side.
The NAACP will seek the Department of Justice's intervention in the Zimmerman case. Read John Nichols's report.
“God’s Plan” as George Zimmerman once described the Trayvon Martin
killing apparently also included a not guilty verdict at around 10 PM
Eastern time, 7/13/13. The plan was to kill an effing punk and one of
those assholes (read black) who always get away. The defense lawyers
assured us that describing the victim as one of the posse of those
effing punks and a-holes in no way hints of hatred, ill-will and spite.
And that’s how you convince a jury of 6 women (4 tied closely to guns)
to let your guy walk away from a Murder 2 charge and a lesser-included
of manslaughter.
So, Zimmerman is a free “softie” (more about that later). Free to
patrol the 3 streets (one of the names escapes him) of Retreat at Twin
Lakes in Sanford, Florida.
The two biggest myths in all jurisprudence played out the same way
they almost always do at trial.
The witness oath means less than
nothing. In virtually every case ever tried, perjury is the staple of
any number of witnesses and most certainly, defendants (in this case,
Zimmerman did his lying outside the court). It’s just as bad in
depositions.
The second myth is the highly abused term “beyond a reasonable
doubt.” Do you really think cases are decided yea and nay “beyond a
reasonable doubt?” Almost never! A sly shyster (Mark O’Mara comes to
mind) attorney can cast doubt no matter the weight of the evidence.
The
O’Mara’s of our world can snake-oil their way to getting virtually any
jury to believe virtually anything, and find a manifest human killing
machine innocent because the prosecution didn’t prove their case “beyond
a reasonable doubt.” Notable exceptions are black defendants.
Why do I think O’Mara is a “shyster” attorney? Here’s a stark example
(one of many). For closing arguments he brought 2 cardboard cutouts
into the courtroom, one representing young Martin, the other Zimmerman.
The cutouts were designed to show how much taller the kid was than Mr.
Softie. When standing next to the Martin cutout, O’Mara was exactly the
same height. O’Mara is 6’2″. Martin is 71″ (5’11″) according to a
measurement of the body by an associate medical examiner. The Zimmerman
cutout was supposedly 5’7″ (it could have been less). Zimmerman was
called to stand next to the phony Martin cutout and it looked like Paul
Bunyan vs. Matt Roloff from TLC’s “Little People, Big World.” That’s
what a shyster attorney like O’Mara will do. And nobody called him on
it.
I repeatedly listened to and timed the now iconic 911 call replete
with multiple screams and the sound of the shot that killed Trayvon
Martin. Here’s my take on the tape. I timed the intervals between the
screams. I’ve concluded that both the victim and the killer screamed,
mostly the killer. I’m convinced that Martin was on top fighting for HIS
life. I’m equally convinced he was pummeling Zimmerman.
I’m not
remotely convinced that Zimmerman’s head struck the concrete more than 3
or 4 times at the most, and lightly at that, his wildly diverse claims
of 12, 25 and dozens of times notwithstanding.
But, back to the 911 tape. You can follow along at the AudioBoo
site that has the clearest version I’ve been able to find. I started
with what I perceived as a Zimmerman scream 32 seconds into the tape.
Listen to the tape. Two different voices without a doubt. At the end, I
feel that Zimmerman pulled his gun and Martin sat up, not yet shot and
exclaimed, as Zimmerman told Sanford police officer, Doris Singleton,
“You got me” meaning, you’ve got a gun and I’m through fighting.
I think
Zimmerman advanced the gun to Martin’s chest eliciting 2 Martin screams
at :41 and :43 into the tape just before the :44 fatal shot. Zimmerman
later changed his story to include more Martin verbiage, but I believe
the first version fits the timeline seamlessly.
And Zimmerman? Here’s the non-burnished and accurate version of “Mr.
Softie” compliments of a well-researched Reuter’s profile. As you’ll
see on the Reuter’s site,
Zimmerman is not exactly as painted by O’Mara and friendly witnesses.
“Mr. Softie” has a nasty temper. He pushed an alcohol control agent
checking out Zimmerman’s underage pal in a bar one night. He was charged
with resisting arrest, violence and battery of an officer and beat the
rap only when agreeing to a diversion program that included ANGER
MANAGEMENT!
Then there’s the “calm” Mr. Zimmerman’s relationship with Veronica
Zuazo. The one where he and his then-fiancé each filed a restraining
order against each other. Zimmerman was accused of domestic violence
(gee, more ‘violence’) and there must have been enough bad guy indicia
there to make sure he stayed away from the lady. She terminated the
relationship. And how ’bout the gun-toting side of “Mr. Softie?” He was
packing a fully loaded Kel-Tec PF9 semi-auto while supposedly heading
toward his nearest Target store (yet another lie?) on that fateful
night. So you go to the store with a holstered pistol?
To me there were four turning points in the trial. One was the
abysmal prosecution effort of Bernie de la Rionda. I’ll just describe it
as pathetic and let it go at that. Another critical juncture in the
trial was the appearance of prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, a native Haitian teenager who was on the phone with Martin at vital points prior
to the confrontation. I’ve covered this territory before. She could have
been a star witness, but, in the main was combative, confusing and
added nothing to the state’s case.
Third, was the appearance of prize bullshit artist, John (or
Jonathan) Good. This guy claimed to have seen Martin on top raining down
blows on Zimmerman, who while having the balls to push a cop and being
schooled in MMA for nearly a year, was completely helpless under a boy
more than a decade his junior who he outweighed by 46 pounds. In a night
variously described as pitch dark and virtually impossible to see even a
few feet (remember, Zimmerman had a flashlight), Good, with owl-like
night vision, was able to clearly describe the confrontation and exact
coloring of the outer clothing of both combatants.
The fourth turning point borders on obscene. I refer to the phony,
doctored, fairytale “animation” of the night’s events as seen
(“created”) through the eyes of the defense. How Judge Debra Nelson
could allow a single pixel of something that even she described as not
being evidence into the final argument for the defense defies
comprehension and logic.
Nelson said the animation could be used as a “Demonstrative Exhibit.”
Even O’Mara allowed that the animation was “Somewhat made up.” What an
understatement. To prove Zimmerman was injured on concrete both the
victim and defendant were essentially stretched out on just the
concrete. The scene was bathed in enough light for the grand opening of
an auto dealership and the animation was shot over the shoulder of Good,
while O’Mara mouths a running commentary on “ground and pound.”
So, it’s over. The killer walks. Quoting Zimmerman, “These assholes always get away.”
George Zimmerman’s acquittal has put the exclamation point on America’s new
and much more subtle racism, which is defined by the claims of conservatives
that racism is dead.
Even as the jury was deliberating, Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara kept selling
his client as the victim, “I believe his life is at risk, and I don’t say
that for dramatic effect. There are a lot of people who think George killed
Trayvon Martin for racial reasons, even though nothing supports that. And if
they feel that anger enough, they could react violently.”
O’Mara was wrong. There has been no violence from African Americans. In fact,
the delusion that African Americans would immediately turn to violence is a
symptom the racism that conservatives like to claim does not exist.
Much like how the Supreme Court used the success of the Voting Rights Act to
argue that racism was on the decline, Zimmerman’s attorney used the fact that
his client said that he would have done the same thing if Trayvon Martin was
white to simplistically argue that there was no racism motivating his client’s
deadly act.
America’s new racism is always hidden by claims that it is not racism.
Racists are much more savvy today. The defense of Zimmerman was entirely based
on criminalizing Trayvon Martin. An unarmed young African-American man was
painted as a threat, because he was not white. No one will come out and say it,
but that’s the truth.
Some people have asked what would have happened if Zimmerman was black, but I
don’t think that is the correct question. The appropriate question is what would
have happened to Zimmerman if he would have shot a blue eyed, blond haired,
captain of the football team, suburban white kid? My guess is that the entire
perception of the case would have been different.
African Americans are being told that they don’t have the same right to
safely walk down the street.
The message here is that an African American who is
doing nothing wrong is still a threat, and most dangerously, that white people
have a right to shoot a minority if they feel threatened.
The race based attacks that Republicans have been using for years against
President Obama have seeped into the national consciousness. America’s new
unspoken racism has been empowered by the country’s refusal to openly talk about
race. Republicans have mainstreamed unspoken racial attitudes, and the defense
used these attitudes to get George Zimmerman acquitted.
This sort of racism calls for a new civil rights movement. Barriers to
minority voting are being erected on a daily basis, a young African American man
was killed for walking down the street. Even if nobody will come out and say it,
conservatives are turning the clock back to an ugly time in our national
history. People don’t want to talk about it, but racism is alive and growing stronger
by the day.
On July 13, Jay Smooth, who among many things does a hip-hop radio
show in New York and occasional music commentary on NPR and is the son
of an African American father and a white mother, got to the real
problem of an acquittal for George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon
Martin.
Via the Obama Diary, Smooth tweeted, “The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George ZImmermans.”
The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George ZImmermans.
Now that the acquittal has happened, the angry whites at Fox News are
fear-mongering about the inevitable “riots” of “those people”. Yet
there have been no riots, oddly enough, given the magnitude of the
injustice.
Let’s not gloss over the inferred wrongness of a “riot” by the angry
whites at Fox (also known these days as the Republican Party, or
conservatives). They would call any demonstration a “riot” (they just
did this in Texas against women). When the people they’re doing wrong
speak up, they call it a “riot”. This is supposed to mark the victim as
the bad one in the court of public opinion (aka, the mainstream media),
which is still run by mostly white men, just like our courts.
But it’s not the victimized minority we need to fear. Nope. It’s the
empowered Zimmermans. Finding Zimmerman not guilty is the same thing as
rewarding sick aggression without cause. There’s a whole lot more where
that came from.
Stalking someone without cause is now “defense” in NRA America,
courtesy of the Republican Party. Now that Zimmerman got off, thanks to a
terrible job by the prosecution who, let’s face it, seemed to be happy
to have lost and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was under some pressure
to do so, the next Zimmerman is dusting off his/her short fuse and
getting ready to go hunting.
Yes, hunting.
What else do you call chasing down an innocent person, confronting
them because you profiled them (I was recently robbed by a white man, do
I have the right now to chase every white man with a gun?) because
another, unrelated person of the same color allegedly committed a crime
in the neighborhood? If that’s all it takes to justify chasing and
gunning someone down, then every single person in this country is at
risk of being profiled.
But not every single person in this country is at risk of being shot down and having their shooter acquitted.
That’s because our justice system is not color blind, or blind to the
sex of the accused and the victim.
White men fare better in our system
for obvious reasons- white men run the system, and they tend to
sympathize with those they identify with; those who remind them of
themselves.
I am ashamed of this country tonight, and horrified that we have let
out public policy be hijacked by the NRA to such an extent that we can
gun down fellow citizens with no repercussions.
Recently, the Supreme Court killed fundamental aspects of the Voting
Rights Act under the premise that Congress should sort it out because
things are so much better now. That’s the big, dangerous lie
conservatives are using to dismantle protections needed for minorities.
Yes, clearly there’s no prejudice here. No need for laws protecting certain groups from the predatory laws of the powerful.
Be careful out there. The streets are teeming with angry, bitter,
impotent men like George Zimmerman – someone just looking for a victim
to blame for his crappy life. A dog to kick so he can feel better. A
life to take so he can feel powerful. Someone like Zimmerman who wants
to play dress up cop. Someone who thinks he’s Dirty Harry, and he just
needs an easy target to prove it to himself.
Our courts just gave that person a license to pursue and kill without accountability.
SANFORD, Fla.--George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon
Martin, has been found not guilty of second murder and manslaughter.
The
verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation's
attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America's history. The
not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman
justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force
was "necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" to
himself— Florida's definition of self-defense.
The women decided
Zimmerman didn't "intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death"
or demonstrate a "depraved mind without regard for human life"
--Florida's definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder,
respectively.
"Its means there was reasonable doubt," said Susan
Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended
Zimmerman's trial regularly. "They just could not put the pieces
together."
The case has gripped the nation since the shooting
happened on Feb. 26, 2012. Police initially did not charge Zimmerman
with a crime, citing Florida's "stand-your-ground" law, which allows
someone who believes they are in imminent danger to take whatever steps
are necessary to protect themselves.
Protests ensued in several
cities, including New York, by supporters of Trayvon's family. Many
protesters voiced the opinion that Trayvon was targeted and killed for
racial reasons. Trayvon was black and Zimmerman is Hispanic.
"You
have a little black boy who was killed," said Benjamin Crump, an
attorney for the parents of Trayvon. "It's going to be reported in
history books and 50 years from now, our children will talk about
Trayvon Martin's case like we talk about Emmett Till."
Emmett
Till, a 14-year-old black young man, was tortured, murdered and grossly
disfigured in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white
woman.
In Zimmerman's case, State Attorney Angela Corey stepped in
and charged Zimmerman with murder on April 11, 2012. Prosecutors
however never argued that Zimmerman racially profiled the teen and
instead said the teen was profiled as a criminal.
The five-week
trial of Zimmerman, held in the same Florida city where Trayvon was
killed, brought the facts of the case under a nationally-televised
spotlight, with every moment captured on camera.
More than 50 witnesses
testified and on the first day of deliberation requested a list of the
plethora of evidence that lawyers presented.
Some of the items
include several statements Zimmerman gave to police, Trayvon's autopsy
report and photos of both Zimmerman's injuries and Trayvon's body.
Witnesses included forensic experts who testified about the angle in
which Trayvon was shot, the position Zimmerman's gun may have been in,
and where DNA and blood was found.
Other witnesses offered
conflicting statements about how the fight happened, who had the upper
hand when Zimmerman shot and who was screaming for help in a 911 call
recording.
Eyewitness Jonathan Good said he saw Trayvon on top of
and striking Zimmerman moments before the teen was shot. While Selma
Mora, who lived a couple of houses down from Good, said Zimmerman was on
top and told her to call the police.
A 911 call recorded screams
and the fatal gunshot moments before the shooting. Who was screaming was
a critical question before the jury.
The defense called nine
people -- including both of Zimmerman's parents -- to testify that the
screams belonged to Zimmerman. Both of Trayvon's parents and his brother
all said Trayvon was screaming moments before he was shot.
In at
times riveting detail, prosecutors tried their best to convince jurors
that Zimmerman was a killer who "tracked" Trayvon, an innocent teenager,
and murdered him before police arrived.
"That child had every
right to be afraid of a strange man following him," prosecutor John Guy
told jurors before they began deliberations. "This case isn't about
standing your ground. It's about staying in your car."
Fellow
prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda focused heavily on the state's theory
that Zimmerman, frustrated by recent burglaries in his neighborhood,
profiled Trayvon as a criminal and choose to take the law in his own
hand.
"A teenager is dead, and he's dead through no fault of his
own," de la Rionda said to jurors. "He's dead because another man made
an assumption."
The majority of legal experts USA TODAY
interviewed however said the prosecution had a weak case based largely
on circumstantial evidence. Some said the state could possibly succeed
if they appealed to the emotions of jurors. However, sympathy was not
supposed to play a part in the verdict and defense attorneys reminded
jurors of that fact repeatedly.
Mark O'Mara, an attorney for
George Zimmerman cast Trayvon as the aggressor saying the teen may have
been charged with aggravated battery had he survived the shooting.
Trayvon, instead of going home, likely hid, waited for Zimmerman and
confronted him, the lawyer said.
"Trayvon Martin came towards George Zimmerman," O'Mara said. '"That is not an unarmed teenager.'
O'Mara explained saying Trayvon used his fists and a concrete sidewalk to threaten great bodily harm.
He
also focused on what he said was the state's failure to prove Zimmerman
did anything legally wrong. "Where is one shred of evidence to support
the absurdity that they are trying to have you buy?" O'Mara asked
pointedly in his closing statement to the jury.
Elizabeth Parker, a
former prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Palm Beach,
Fla., said the defense did a good job of humanizing Zimmerman .
"The
defense did a phenomenal job of presenting their case through the
state's witnesses," Parker said. "They were able to get George
Zimmerman's testimony in through several witnesses --sparing him from
having to undergo vigorous cross-examination by these bulldog
prosecutors."
One such is example was the testimony of Sanford
police officer Christopher Serino, called by the state and later the
defense, Parker said. Serino agreed with prosecutors that Zimmerman may
have been profiling Trayvon but said no physical evidence or witness
statements contradicted Zimmerman's claim of self-defense and that the
medical examiner's report supported Zimmerman's version of events.
Still,
Valerie Houston, pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church in Sanford, said she
hoped Zimmerman was convicted because he followed Trayvon and initiated
the events leading up to the shooting. Many meetings in support of
Trayvon and his family were held in her church and Houston joined those
who early on asked for Zimmerman to be arrested.
"I feel that
he's guilty," Houston said. "If he's not found guilty people will be
disappointed--the African American community for sure."
Now that
the verdict is in, people who share Houston's views will have to accept
that the justice system believes Zimmerman is innocent.
However,
despite now being a free man, Jose Baez, a Florida criminal defense
attorney, said Zimmerman will likely go into hiding and be unable to
live a normal life for some time.
"The end is not near for George Zimmerman," he said.
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, THE GRANDMASTER is an epic
action feature inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu
master, Ip Man.
The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of
China’s last dynasty, a time of chaos, division and war that was also
the golden age of Chinese martial arts.
Filmed in a range of stunning locations that include the snow-swept
landscapes of Northeast China and the subtropical South, THE GRANDMASTER
features virtuoso performances by some of the greatest stars of
contemporary Asian cinema, including Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang.
It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for Wong Kar Wai‘s The
Grandmaster, but next month our patience will finally be rewarded. To
prepare us for the martial arts epic’s release, The Weinstein Co. has
released a new full-length U.S. trailer.
Tony Leung leads the cast as Ip Man, who’s probably best known in the
U.S. as the guy who trained Bruce Lee. In the 1930s, when The
Grandmaster begins, he’s a happily married man practicing the Wing Chun
kung fu form in southern China. He’s challenged to a fight by a martial
arts master from the north (Wang Qingxiang), and then later by the man’s
daughter (Zhang Ziyi).
The trailer starts out with the same rain-soaked scene we’ve enjoyed in
other trailers, but quickly moves on to other, equally dramatic scenes.
There’s no dialogue at all, lest the appearance of subtitles turn off American moviegoers. At least the voiceover isn’t as annoying
this time around. Wong hasn’t done much in the martial arts genre, but
he seems to acquit himself nicely. There’s lots of exciting action,
choreographed beautifully by the Yuen Woo Ping, but Wong hasn’t lost the
moody introspection that marks his other works.
