GeorgiaDon

Can you (or anyone) please provide a link to any primary news source that confirms that this happened? I've honestly tried several times over the past couple of days to find such a confirmation, and I can't. All I can find is reference to a speech where he said: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” and “All of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.” It's hard for me to see why people find either comment to be controversial. However, as far as I can tell, it is those comments that somehow mutated into "Obama called the DA and demanded Zimmerman be prosecuted". Maybe I'm mistaken? However it would fit with all the rest of the aspects of the case, such as Zimmerman's statement to the 911 operator that Martin was "walking and looking around" mutating into a statement that Martin was "skulking around looking into windows as if he was looking for a place to B&E". Thanks, Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So oh thick shelled one, can I assume that you would be agreeable to the following changes? 1. You and your spouse can no longer make any medical decisions for one another? 2. When you or your spouse dies, the survivor will have to pay taxes on the value of any inherited property or assets, even if they were jointly owned and paid for? 3. Were you ever in the military? I assume you would have been quite content if your non-military spouse was not allowed to live with you in base housing, or shop in the base store, or indeed even be allowed on base at all. If you were unfortunate enough to be killed while deployed, I'm sure you'd be happy if the military refused to notify your spouse of your death, so she'd have to "figure it out" when you stopped emailing/calling. I could go on and on of course, there are many laws and situations that treat married people as a unit instead of as two unrelated strangers. If marriage rights is solely about feeling better about yourself, I am quite certain you would be willing to relinquish each and every one of these benefits of legal marriage. You could keep the "feeling better about yourself", of course. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I thought this comment was pretty on point: "This guy actually looks funnier without the little mustache and uniform..." Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Perhaps look at it like this: You grew up thinking and believing you were better than a whole lot of other people because you happened to be born a male, and then, one day, the government decided that you weren't. Should women still be refused the vote because some men grew up believing the vote could be entrusted only to men? Since when do we allow people to exercise their rights only under the condition that no-one else has their feelings of superiority hurt? Would you apply that reasoning to the 2nd amendment, as there is no shortage of people who believe guns lead to violence, and the amendment refers to militias not individual rights. Would you be willing to defer to them, even if they are wrong, so their feelings don't get hurt? Your marriage is great, or not, solely because of the quality of the relationship you have with your spouse. Whether or not your neighbor has a good marriage, a bad marriage, or no marriage at all has no impact on the quality of your marriage. If you need to feel superior to other people to feel good about your marriage, then you have some serious problems. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thinking about married gays squashes your mojo? Hmmm, maybe there's a closet with your name on it? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Indeed. So why did YOU bring it into the discussion? It was relevant then, but not now? This is an interesting example of the old game "telephone", about how things change with retelling. Here is the start of the transcript of Zimmerman's 911 call. I have taken the liberty of underlining the relevant bits. Zimmerman: We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real suspicious guy. It’s Retreat View Circle. The best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about. [00:25] 911 dispatcher: OK, is he White, Black, or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black. 911 dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing? Zimmerman: Yeah, a dark hoodie like a gray hoodie. He wore jeans or sweat pants and white tennis shoes. He’s here now … he’s just staring. [00:42] 911 dispatcher: He’s just walking around the area, the houses? OK. Zimmerman: Now he’s staring at me. [00:48] Notice that Zimmerman did not use the term "skulking". Skulking is quite different from "walking around", as it implies an effort to evade detection. Skulking is indeed suspicious, walking around is not. Zimmerman did not say "looking into windows" or "looking for a place to B&E". He did say Martin was "walking and looking around", and the dispatcher said "looking at houses" which Zimmerman did not correct. Walking and looking around, even looking at houses, is not suspicious or unusual, especially in the dark, in the rain, and if you are in a neighborhood you aren't really familiar with, especially a townhouse community where all the buildings are similar. So let's see what you have done here: 1. change "walking around looking about" to "skulking and looking into windows" and "looking for a place to B&E" 2. retroactively use the changed (and highly prejudicial) language to justify Zimmerman's suspicion and turn Martin into a thug 3. use the newly created "thug" persona to imply that it is highly likely that Martin initiated an unprovoked attack on Zimmerman. If you care to read the transcript I linked, you will also see that the dispatcher told Zimmerman police were on the way. "When available" was never said. You made that up. Zimmerman's comment "these assholes always get away" had to do with Martin running from him, it was in no way precipitated by any statement from the dispatcher about the arrival time of the police. The transcript is really quite revealing, about Zimmerman. You should go back and read what was really said, as opposed to the distortions and fabrications promulgated by the "Zimmerman is a saint" crowd. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

And Zimmerman was fully aware of this, of course. How else could he have known that Martin was an "asshole" who "always gets away"? Or maybe it's post-hoc reasoning about why he "deserved what he got"? Does every skydiver who ever smoked a little weed know that that is justification should some wannabe cop shoot them? Life is indeed cheap. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That is, of course, what lawyers get paid to do. And, why it is so important to have clearly and precisely crafted laws. People complain that laws are long and complicated, but it seems laws that don't go into excruciating detail about every possible contingency just become superhighways for any lawyer to drive a truck over to get their client to their destination. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Re: politics You seem to have a big problem with scientists calling for political action to mitigate what most believe will probably be a major ecological disaster. What alternative course of action would you find more palatable? Is there any non-political mechanism for achieving any goal that requires the participation of a large fraction of society? Especially when there are up front costs, and the risk/benefit is a generation or two downstream. Lets take CFCs for example. Evidence was developed that CFCs in the atmosphere reacted with and depleted ozone, which prevents a lot of UV radiation from reaching the surface. Models were developed, observations made, and it turned out that ozone depletion was happening faster than expected. Clearly the scientists were "wrong" in that observations didn't fit the model. Cities in the Southern Hemisphere began experiencing dangerous levels of UV, and people were warned to cover up or stay indoors. A political response resulted in the replacement of CFCs despite strong opposition from CFC manufacturers and industries that used CFCs. Subsequently the rate of ozone depletion has slowed markedly. In the face of potential environmental disaster, with loss of the ozone layer and extremely damaging amounts of UV reaching the surface, what (in your opinion) would have been the appropriate course of action for scientists to take? Continue to refine their models until prediction and observation were in agreement to 1 part in 100 million, so they could confidently claim they understood exactly every nuance of what was happening? Publish annual updates of ever-more-dire measurements of ozone depletion in obscure journals no-one except atmospheric scientists ever read? Go to conferences and lament to other scientists that UV alerts and massive crop failures could have been anticipated had "someone in a position to do something" only read and understood their paper they published five years ago? What do you think is the appropriate thing for a scientist to do when their research indicates an impending disaster? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks for the overview. I hope I can remember it if I'm ever called to serve on a jury for a murder trial. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks for doing that, seriously. Too many people would do anything they could to get out of jury duty. It really pisses me off when I hear people say the only people on juries are the ones who are too stupid to get out of it. I won't be, as I can see the arguments either way. All I have ever objected to, in this particular case, is the presumption that Zimmerman's word (which is obviously self-serving) is golden, and that Martin was obviously a thug who needed killin' because of his attire, or some Facebook posting he made weeks before. I find the practice of combing through someone's past indiscretions to find some reason why they "deserved what they got" to be repugnant. If wearing a grill in a photo and talking smack is a death penalty offense, then who among us has never done anything that someone could use to justify killing them. "Crazy skydivers, they obviously have a death wish. They aren't like normal people, you can't predict what they'll do next so better shoot first." In a broader sense I have reservations about "stand your ground" laws as they seem to be applied in Florida, though I realize Zimmerman is not applying an overt SYG defense. When a law is so loose that drug dealers can shoot it out on the street, and kill an innocent bystander, and no-one can be charged with a crime because police can't determine who fired the first shot, there is a problem. (see the link Rick posted, post #87 in the "Zimmerman jury" thread for many such examples). Kennedy says self defense no longer applies if one party turns their back and walks away, but that article details several cases where people were shot in the back as they left a confrontation, yet the shooter was not charged or was tried and acquitted under SYG. You can bring a concealed gun, provoke a fight, then use the gun, and subsequently walk. You can even shoot unarmed people checking the reading on your power meter and not be held accountable, as long as you claim you felt "threatened". Is it any wonder the police may just take the word of the survivor that it was self defense? Why make the effort to conduct a rigorous investigation if the odds are high that no charges will be pursued? It seems that judges and juries have no idea how broadly or narrowly to apply the law, so the same facts could result in a murder conviction in one jurisdiction and complete exoneration in the next. Is that "justice"? We might know more about what actually happened in the Zimmerman case, had the police not been so ready to take Zimmerman's word at face value. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So being young, male, and a bad fashion sense means "deserves to die"? Is that also so if the person is white? I suppose you'd have fed his body to your pigs. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I take it you're in the "taking out the trash" camp? Or perhaps the "shit happens" camp. Either way it's all good, at least until it's your kid, right? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I don't pretend to know if Zimmerman is guilty of murder, some lesser crime, or if he's a hero who just took out the garbage as some seem to imply. I do object to the notion that he must be as innocent as new fallen snow because his nose got bloodied. I'm happy to let the jury hear the evidence and come to a decision. A young man went out to pick up some snacks and ended up dead. I'm not happy to relegate that to "shit happens". There had better be a very good reason why Martin, or me, or you cannot walk home from the store and end up dead at the hand of someone who claims to be protecting the neighborhood. People claim that following someone is not provocative or threatening. Imagine your child calls you and tells you they are walking home alone, after dark, and a man they don't recognize is following them. How do you imagine most parents would respond? Would they rush out to meet their child and try to protect them from the stranger? Or would they tell their child that following someone is not illegal, and that they should just ignore the stranger? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So person A doesn't like person B for some reason. Person A arms themselves, then goes and attacks person B with their fists. Person B responds, and then person A takes out their weapon and kills person B. Person A claims he was in fear for his life, and no charges are filed. Is this an acceptable outcome in your eyes? Makes it easy to get rid of a rival. Think it doesn't happen? Read the article Rick posted in the Zimmerman jury thread (post #87). Drug dealers are shooting it out on the street, innocent bystanders are killed, and no-one is prosecuted because the police can't prove who started shooting first and who was standing their ground. People are shot in the back as they are walking away, and no charges. Numerous instances of people arming themselves, instigating a confrontation, wounding/killing their target, then successfully claiming "stand your ground". I doubt the Wild West was ever like this. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

WolfRiverJoe said it well, so I'll keep it short. Just because Zimmerman was on the losing end of the fight (that no-one denied occurred), can you not imagine any possibility other than that Martin started it? Have you never seen a fight where the instigator finds himself on the losing end? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Since you were apparently the only eye witness to the event, don't you have some sort of a moral obligation to contact the court and offer to testify? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Out of curiosity, is it your argument that the government has absolutely 0 responsibility to try to provide any measure of defense against terrorism or crime? Can you envision or suggest anything the government should do before the event to limit the ability of terrorists or criminals to cause damage to citizens, or should the government be strictly deaf, dumb, and blind to these events until after the fact? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Israel is probably in violation of more UN resolutions than any other country. Should somebody do something about that too? It's hard to affect the way the UN does business. Maybe someday....The UN is like the US government on steroids. What do I mean by that? The US government is set up with 3 levels so to get anything done they all have to agree. In theory, at least, that makes it hard to get legislation through the process. The UN has five permanent member of the security council with veto power over any resolutions, plus 10 other members who change out every five years. To get anything to pass you have to have 9/15 votes, plus unanimous support from the five permanent members. Good luck getting China, Russia, and the US+UK+France block to vote the same way on anything. You'd probably have better odds getting a consensus on climate change from the Speaker's Corner regulars. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

It's remarkable how many people get their constitutional panties in a wad over certain rights (prominently the 2nd amendment), yet have no problem at all with people using a government entity (schools) to force people to listen to their religious quackery. How many would be defending this kid if his speech had been about the greatness of Allah? Does the call to "witness" include an indulgence to break Commandments? If you submit one speech for review, assure the school that this is the speech you will deliver, then substitute a blatantly religious sermon, haven't you lied? Isn't there a Commandment about lying? Just as there is tension between security and privacy, there is going to be tension between religious freedom and freedom of speech. You may believe whatever religion you wish, and you can preach that religion in an almost unlimited number of ways and venues. However, you cannot co-opt government facilities and use them to proselytize or coerce on behalf of your beliefs, as the government is bound by the constitution to be strictly neutral with regard to religion. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That's one of the things that bothers me, and it seems to me a real possibility for abuse. Say the police have a "hunch" about someone, but no probable cause for a warrant to collect a DNA sample. Now they can just generate an excuse for an arrest (for example, a traffic stop and then provoking or initiating a "confrontation") and they get their sample. Of course if the "suspect" is innocent they now have an arrest on their record, which can be problematic in itself (think applying for a job) and may later be used to "prove" the innocent "suspect" has violent tendencies. Not to mention the "slippery slope" of requiring a DNA sample to get a driver's license, a business license, or whatever. If the DNA is "just to verify your identity", and collecting it is not a "search", then there seems to be no constitutional bar to requiring such a sample. If the police have suspicion but no evidence, they currently can collect a DNA sample by following the subject and collecting discarded materials such as a drink cup that will contain transferred DNA. More work for sure, but that way innocent people don't end up saddled with an arrest record. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Potentially, sure, but not the way DNA is currently processed for forensic purposes. A number of distinct molecular regions have been identified where the nucleotide sequence is quite variable. Say, for example, that there are 10 possible sequences at each of 20 sites in the genome. That yields 20 to the 10th power (~10,000,000,000,000) possible combinations of characters, many times the total population of the planet, so it is possible to identify the source of a DNA sample very precisely to a unique person (except in the case of identical twins). However, none of those variable regions come from regions of the DNA that actually encode proteins, so you couldn't predict anything about height, eye color, etc from that information. To do that you would need to actually sequence a large fraction of the genome, a process that is coming down in price but still runs about $10-20,000. Sequencing is the easy part, assembly and annotation (figuring out what is what) is the more labor- and cost-intensive part. Most phenotypic characters that might be used to create a picture of a suspect such as height, weight, or hair texture are influenced by many interacting genes and interact strongly with environment, so it would be impossible to translate a DNA sequence into an artist's sketch of a suspect. You could determine race and eye color, but I doubt many police agencies would care to (or be able to afford to) spend thousands of dollars to sequence someone's genome to get info they could get and record much more cheaply just by looking. Plus, I believe there are already laws on the books restricting law enforcement from collecting genetic information other than those limited markers required to match a sample to a source. So personally I am not worried that the police will somehow use information about my risk of developing Alzheimer's or some other disease against me. I do dislike the idea of being required to participate in a genetic database when I have not been convicted of any crime. In my case it's more or less water under the bridge, though, as I have already been fingerprinted many times in connection to immigration to the US. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks for the link. I find my self in agreement with Scalia on this one. I found this to be quite interesting (from pg 18): "All parties concede that it would have been entirely permissible, as far as the Fourth Amendment is concerned, for Maryland to take a sample of King’s DNA as a consequence of his conviction for second-degree assault. So the ironic result of the Court’s error is this: The only arrestees to whom the outcome here will ever make a difference are those who have been acquitted of the crime of arrest (so that their DNA could not have been taken upon conviction). In other words, this Act manages to burden uniquely the sole group for whom the Fourth Amendment’s protections ought to be most jealously guarded: people who are innocent of the State’s accusations." Lawrocket, do you hold fingerprints in the same category as DNA? Should law enforcement also no be able to use fingerprints from arrestees to compare to latent prints from crime scenes, until the owner of the fingerprint has been convicted of some other serious crime? Or should the (and DNA) not be useable even from convicts, unless there is other evidence to link that suspect to the crime? Of course that would mean that many crimes would go unsolved. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Although this topic has nothing to do with guns, evil muslims, or Obama, I think it raises interesting issues for discussion. The Supreme Court has ruled that police may collect a DNA sample from people who have been arrested but not yet convicted, and use it to search against databases from past unsolved crimes. The decision was 5-4, but with an usual mix in that the "4" included Scalia together with 3 "liberal" justices. Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority (as is often the case in these split decisions), but Breyer, also considered a liberal justice, joined with the majority. I'll admit to feeling conflicted by this one. On the one hand, if someone has been arrested for a crime, there is certainly probable cause to get a warrant to collect DNA in relation to that case. However the suspect is still technically innocent at that point, so searching databases to look for a match in other cases, where no evidence exists to suggest a connection, seems like a fishing expedition. Once the suspect has been tried, and if they are convicted of the original crime, then I have no problem with searching databases to see if a link can be made to unsolved crimes. On the other hand, it can be (and was) argued that DNA is no different than fingerprints or photographs, and those are routinely used (and have been for a long time) to link suspects in one crime to other similar crimes. There is no question that DNA is a powerful technique for identifying people who were at the crime scene for some reason, though that in itself doesn't necessarily prove involvement in the crime. The court in this ruling seem to have come down on the side of the convenience and power of the technique to solve crimes, and decided that that outweighs privacy concerns. Do y'all think the court got this one right? It's now the law of the land, so disagreeing is kind of moot, but still it seems an interesting topic for discussion. What's next? Collecting a DNA sample as a condition of getting a drivers license? Surely crimes would be easier to solve if everyone's DNA was on file? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

They are, but I hope somebody puts a lid on John McCain, or they may be headed to Syria.+1 OMG, I agreed with rickjump1 on something! Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)