Month: March 2012

Why I distrust the Media. (Update)

From the Washington Times:

Except that the NRA has not issued an official statement about the Trayvon Martin case.

H/T to Sebastian

UPDATE: After being called to the carpet, Jeneba Ghatt edits the story to make it accurate.

And acknowledges the mistake:

However, I still want to know how it happened in the first place. It is not like the NRA  is hard to get on the phone or it has no official Website, Twitter & Facebook accounts.

Kudos to “carpet callers” Sebastian and Bitter of Shall Not Be Questioned.

Cui Bono with Trayvon Martin?

This apparently Left Leaning blogger ask the question “Who profits from the Treyvon Shooting?” and that is a darn good question.

I found sadly hilarious the graphic accompanying the post:

Iced tea and Skittles are being used by the demonstrators as a symbol of their “struggle.” I don’t know if the parent companies of both goods will see a substantial increase in profits, but one must believe that the local stores are indeed profiting from the protests.

Who else is benefiting? Arianna Huffington and AOL. The Huffington Post (That website that does not pay its writers) has to be racking an unprecedented amount of hits per minute and traffic worse than the Palmetto Expressway at rush hour on a Friday Afternoon. Advertising money should be coming hands over fists which will enrich Arianna even more and give the financially destroyed AOL some cash to make payroll for a couple of months.

Dead Tree Media and Analog Newscasters are also profiting albeit at a much lesser scale. Nielsen Ratings might be up some and some extra papers sold at retail locations, but not much more.

Twitter has to be buying new servers and paying cash for them. The warfare going in is amazing and if you pay attention to the extreme left and their desire to eliminate due process and their fervor for literally lynching Zimmerman, you’d go right now and buy any gun available and plenty of ammo.

And there are those who will eventually profit for the shooting of Trayvon. Lawyers come to mind immediately, Al Sharpton surely will make some bucks although I doubt MSNBC is gonna see any of it. Book deals, movie deals, etc.

I think that pretty much covers the cui bono part.

 

 

Anti Gunners say the damnest things.

I did a capture of this Slate article in the chance that they would see the sheer stupidity and then change it.

Abused Women seeking to defend themselves from death or grave bodily harm are the ones responsible for the death of Trayvor Martin?

And who is the male troglodyte that wrote such stupidity?

Emily Bazelon, Slate senior editor

Antis, they will kill their own(ed) if it advances their agenda.

Alleged Trayvon Martin Pundits will set Zimmerman free.

There is one quote that has been bothering me since I read it, but I have not been feeling well lately so it did not take till a while ago talking to the wife. Warning: This is all a huge speculation on my part mixed with very limited knowledge of legal procedures.

The quote is the original statement by Sandford Police Chief Bill Lee about the Trayvon Martin shooting:

“Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don’t have the grounds to arrest him,”

And it hits me: That does not mean that he will not be arrested in the future if evidence, witnesses or even a confession can be obtained.  Zimmerman is not scott free as people think.

I am gonna wing it here so, legal eagles, correct and enhance as you see fit. Cases can be re-opened, we know that. But once a “person of interest” becomes a suspect, certain basic legalities MUST be observed. And if he is arrested, a legal clock and a whole ‘nother load of legalities come into play such as the right to a speedy trial.

Going to trial with weak evidence is a crapshot of the highest magnitude. And I do mean the legal evidence, not what gets selectively published by the Media and regurgitated by Pundits. Whomever is the judge in a high profile case like this will see that every comma is followed in this regard so many of the crap floating around or suddenly “discovered” by certain media hungry lawyers probably will not be admitted. The prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and the defense will do its best to create such doubt which will be easy if witnesses (there are so far no eye witnesses) inject their prejudices to the case and the evidence is weak.

With a case weak in evidence, there are three probable outcomes: Guilty (doubtful), Mistrial (Probably) and Not Guilty (fair chance.) A guilty decision on a badly presented case will have a good chance to be killed on appeal necessitating a new trial. Same goes for a mistrial if the prosecution feels it can win the new trial or if it doesn’t, Zimmerman lives with the fear of another trial but not behind bars. The not-guilty immediately triggers the protection of Double Jeopardy and Zimmerman walks a free man.

By now Zimmerman is probably so lawyered up not even Eric Holder with a SWAT team of DOJ lawyers can get close to him. I am doubtful that we will hear another word from Zimmerman unless is through his lawyer and only to say he is innocent. And even if the Department of Justices decides to play Kangaroo Kourt and charge Zimmerman, they are facing the same problems the locals have plus the fact that the conduct of the DOJ under this administration has been less than stellar and borderline criminal.

So, whatever incriminating remarks that he could have made in the future are pretty much gone and buried inside him. And whatever investigation on the sly that the Sandford Police might have going has gone to the crapper because somebody decided than rather than wait, the case should be tried in the Court of TV presided by the Honorable Nancy Grace and prosecuted by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

And true injustice in this case is that we will never know the truth of what happened.

 

 

Why we win. The CSGV/Martin Edition.

If it is any indication, the followers of the Coalition to Stop Gun Rights Violence are not the brightest color in the Unicorn Farting Rainbow.

I wondered what state demands background checks and psych evaluations to drive a car, so I checked her info:

Arizona does not require all that crap to get a drivers license. What truly amazed me is that she went to Rutgers Law which is supposed to be a good law school. And yet Ms. Wagner has not figured out the laws of Arizona regarding the issue of a Drivers License. Tuition at Rutgers Law is $34,010 for non-resident, do I smell another wasted student loan here?

But I would like to recommend Ms. Wagner to Ladd & Co. so she can be part of their legal team,

Is the Trayvon Martin Case about to turn into a crap sandwich ?

In the Miami Herald’s article Grand jury to probe Trayvon Martin killing, there are some things that are making me think this is not going to be the cakewalk to eradicate the Stand Your Ground law.

The first one is obviously that they case goes to the Grand Jury. Brevard County State Attorney Norm Wolfinger decision to go that route may indicate that after careful examination of the evidence presented to them, he cannot afford the political explosion that it surely come if he said that there is nothing indicating that the shooting was not within the parameters of the law. Wolfinger, a Republican is up for re-election this year and there is already a Democrat registered to contest him.  Even though there are more registered Republicans than Democrats in Seminole County, the number of Independents can shift an election. Leaving the decision to the Grand Jury to charge or not Zimmerman with a crime shields him from a possible fallout.

The second is the statement given by the Department of Justice.

“The department will conduct a thorough and independent review of all of the evidence and take appropriate action at the conclusion of the investigation,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “The department also is providing assistance to and cooperating with the state officials in their investigation into the incident. With all federal civil rights crimes, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which the law forbids — the highest level of intent in criminal law.

“Negligence, recklessness, mistakes and accidents are not prosecutable under the federal criminal civil rights laws.”

The last part caught my attention. It sounds like DOJ is already preparing the table to say that the case does not fall under federal purview. Not being a lawyer, I’d say that if he is brought to trial, the prosecution will aim for manslaughter instead of murder. It would be much easier (and if the evidence says so) to obtain either a conviction or a plea deal. Still it would be pushing it. The definition of manslaughter according to Florida Statutes is “The killing of a human being by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another, without lawful justification.”  So, it is very possible that DOJ already perused the Martin case file and thought it would be best to add that little disclaimer.

The last bit is also very interesting:

Police Chief Bill Lee told The Miami Herald that he was comfortable that his investigators were fair and thorough.

“I can say very confidently we would welcome any outside entity that wants to come look at what we did,” Lee said last week. “They are welcome to come here and look at it. We have not done anything but conduct a fair and complete investigation.”

The amount of pressure that Chief Lee must be under has to be monstrous. Yet his stance has remained firm from day one and even inviting the State and the Feds to review his investigation. So either he is totally nuts or he has all the ducks in a row and knows that it will survive any inquiry. And it it indeed survives the inquiry, that would mean Zimmerman will walk free.
And in case you have not been paying attention, the media frenzy is not about the alleged unlawful killing of a young black male but about the Stand Your Ground Law. Since it became part of the Florida Statutes in 2005 (yes, it has been in the books and applied for the past 7 years) Anti Gunners and Liberal prosecutors have hated it with relish. A case that was perceived as barely within the law but had a probable racial component was too good to pass up.