Friday Reads

Posted: April 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, education, morning reads, religious extremists | Tags: , , , , , | 46 Comments

Good Morning!

I’ve been livid recently about our Governor’s jihad against public education.  Here’s some details on how Bobby Jindal used the ALEC play book to turn the state’s public schools upside down.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has remade the Louisiana public schools system with impressive speed over the past legislative session. Last week, he signed into law a suite of landmark reform bills that will likely change the direction of public education in Louisiana forever. But not all change is good, and critics say both Jindal’s agenda and the strategy to move it come right from the playbook of conservative advocacy group ALEC, in an effort to revive Jindal’s national political profile.

Louisiana is now home to the nation’s most expansive school voucher program. Charter school authorization powers have been broadened. And teacher tenure policies have been radically transformed. Louisiana already had something of a reputation as a radical-reform state, thanks to the post-Katrina educational climate in New Orleans. But not all change is good, and education advocates have deep concerns about the efficacy of Jindal’s overhaul, and the interests that have push it.

ALEC has overrun Louisiana at a time when it’s losing corporate sponsors and cronies in various state legislatures.  ALEC still has some steam left, however.

ALEC will survive, of course, kept afloat largely by the billionaire Koch brothers and their corporate allies. But as activists keep up the pressure, they must not lose sight of the worst culprits, who must be identified and targeted: the more than 2,000 legislative members of ALEC. The Center for Media and Democracy maintains a list of lawmakers allied with ALEC at ALECexposed.org. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has begun to pressure dozens of Democrats involved with the overwhelmingly Republican group to quit. Their exit from ALEC would put the lie to the claim that ALEC is nonpartisan.

Common Cause argues that ALEC has abused its tax-exempt status by lobbying, and Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan has introduced a bill requiring ALEC to register as a lobbyist in that state. But especially as November approaches, the Exit ALEC movement must go beyond the group to confront some of the damage it has done. In the past two years, thirty-four states have introduced bills to restrict voting for some 5 million eligible voters; nine have passed voter ID laws; dozens of other states have gotten rid of early voting or tried to hobble voter registration drives. In Florida get-out-the-vote efforts by the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote have been sabotaged. The most affected are blacks, Latinos and other groups that skew Democratic.

If you haven’t been following CISPA, you really should.  Here’s a primer from Truth Dig.

What is CISPA?

CISPA, an abbreviation for the Cyber Intelligence Security and Protection Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives on November 30, 2011 by Mike Rogers (R-MI), as well as 111 co-sponsors. Since then, a number of amendments have been introduced. The House is expected to vote on the bill Friday and its author has said that the latest changes brought the number of supporting Congressmen “well past” the threshold of 218 necessary for the adoption of the legislation. It is therefore very likely that the bill will be passed by the House. However, it’s not all that certain whether the bill will be made into law, especially with the White House’s latest statement that President Obama would be advised to veto the legislation.

What does CISPA entail for internet users?

The act says it is meant to create procedures allowing “elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.”  It also states that a cyber-security provider or a self-protected entity may share “cyber threat information”  “with any other entity designated by such protected entity, including… the Federal Government.”

But what does that mean?

Unnecessarily broad definitions are the factor which makes CISPA so controversial with web users.

Experts argue that the bill would give the government the ability to circumvent internet privacy laws and obtain information on user activities from private companies – be it providers, hosting companies or social networks – essentially any company involved in the Internet.

The bill does specifically say that the Federal Government can only use the information obtained for a “cybersecurity purpose” or the “protection of the national security of the United States,” but the broad definitions of the terms could potentially lump an average Internet user sending an encrypted e-mail into the same threat category as a terrorist. Privately owned corporations could, under the pretext of cyber and national security, spy on users and transfer their data to a government agency.

“You will get no accountability for that,” explains David Seaman, host of The DL Show. “If findings are turned against you in the worst possible way, you won’t be able to get a lawyer and sue because of the litigation immunity.”

You can find more analysis and links at Cannonfire.  The House has already passed CISPA.  No surprises there since these guys are standing in line to monitor US women’s menstrual periods and want to peer into every woman’s uterus.  As usual, a few Democrats joined in the effort to expand government’s intrusion into your personal lives.  Here’s wishing Obama follows through with his threat to veto.

The final tally was 248-168, enough to pass the measure but not enough to override the threatened veto. Forty-two Democrats broke with the White House to vote for the bill, and 28 Republicans voted against it.

The administration and Democratic critics opposed the bill because of privacy and civil liberties concerns. The other main sticking point was that, unlike a Senate bill by Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), CISPA would not mandate new security requirements for a critical infrastructure network.

Although those disagreements still exist, House Republicans have now jumped ahead of the Senate in a race to avoid the political fallout in the event of a major cyberattack.

At least some of CISPA’s Democratic supporters weren’t happy with their colleagues’ opposition to the bill, nor with the White House.

After the White House issued the veto threat Wednesday, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, Rogers’s chief Democratic ally, launched an all-out lobbying effort to persuade his fellow Democrats to back the bill.

Here’s an article that pretty much outlines my worst nightmares: “How Christian Groups Push Right-Wing Religion With the Help of Your Tax Dollars”;Taxpayer-funded crisis pregnancy centers are using religion to oppose abortion, and many of them only hire Christians.

If you want to help carry out the anti-abortion mission of the taxpayer-funded Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, you have to be a Christian.

It’s right there on the Rapid City, S.D., center’s volunteer application.

“Do you consider yourself a Christian?” “If yes, how long have you been a Christian?” “As a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation?” “Please provide the following information concerning your local church. Church name … Denomination … Pastor’s name.” “This organization is a Christian pro-life ministry. We believe that our faith in Jesus Christ empowers us, enables us, and motivates us to provide pregnancy services in this community. Please write a brief statement about how your faith would affect your volunteer work at this center.”

But that hasn’t stopped the center from receiving federal funding and other forms of government support.

In 2010, it was awarded a $34,000 “capacity building” grant as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill.

Last year, the nonprofit National Fatherhood Initiative, with “support from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance,” awarded the center $25,000 for capacity building.

And when South Dakota passed a law requiring that women get counseling from a “pregnancy help center” before receiving an abortion, the Rapid City center was quick to sign up — becoming one of three such facilities listed on the state’s official website.

When do we get our country back from these whackos and when do we get to say that they don’t get our money?

I’m sending Hugs out today to Senator AL Franken for this.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Trayvon Martin: Why Is the Zimmerman Family Getting Preferential Treatment?

Posted: April 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, Crime, racism | Tags: , , , , | 76 Comments

I just watched George Zimmerman’s bond hearing, and I was shocked to see that Zimmerman’s family members were permitted to testify by telephone. Where is the evidence that their lives are in danger? All of the protests have been peaceful so far. Why the exaggerated fear that somehow African Americans will use violence against Zimmerman and his family? And why is the court going along with it?

If George’s father Robert and his brother Robert, Jr. are so fearful of all the scary black people out there, why have they been willing to make multiple appearances on television and radio programs? Robert, Sr. appeared with his face hidden, although I don’t know why that was the case. Robert, Jr., the brother, was on a high-profile CNN program twice, and was in no way disguised.

Who was more hated than Casey Anthony and her family? They even experienced having people picketing their home and screaming “baby killer” at them when they came out of their house. Yet they were not permitted to testify by telephone. Even child witnesses in abuse cases have to come to court to testify. Occasionally they are allowed to testify by video-conference, but I have never heard of telephone testimony before. The implication was that George Zimmerman and his family are in danger comparable to testifying in a mafia trial.

The state permitted George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara to hold a mini-trial during a bond hearing! An investigator was called to the stand and cross examined about the wording of the probable cause affidavit.

“Evidence” was introduced to indicate that George Zimmerman had two vertical cuts on the back of his head, and O’Mara got the investigator to say that that is consistent with Zimmerman’s story that Trayvon Martin banged his head on concrete. How would that cause two vertical scratches? Isn’t it more likely those scratches were caused by Martin’s fingernails as he tried to defend himself from his mysterious stalker?

The ultimate insult came when George Zimmerman was permitted to take the stand and “apologize” to Trayvon Martin’s parents. He was also permitted to claim that he did not know how old Trayvon was and that he believed Trayvon was only a little younger than he (George) is. Yet, on one of the police tapes, Zimmerman is heard saying that he thinks Trayvon is in his “late teens.” Zimmerman is 28.

Why is Zimmerman apologizing now? As Ben Crump, the Martin family attorney said afterwards, this was nothing but a self-serving act on Zimmerman’s part. It has been fifty days since Zimmerman shot Martin. He never apologized through his attorneys. His father and brother never expressed any sorrow at the young man’s death. Instead they tried to paint Martin as a thug who beat up on their son and brother. George Zimmerman created a private website, and he did not express remorse or sorrow on the site. In fact he posted photos of graffiti that had been posted on a black student center building and signs from a rally led by Koran-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones. Why didn’t the prosecution object to this self-serving display?

In the end, the judge granted George Zimmerman $150,000 bail, meaning that he only needs to pay $15,000 and he is free. He does have to have GPS tracking, but he will be permitted to leave the state and keep his location secret.

Alleged photo of Zimmerman's head after the shooting

Finally, to top all this off, a supposed photograph of the back of Zimmerman’s head taken by an anonymous bystander was released to the media today. It shows blood dripping from two small cuts, but it doesn’t seem like that much blood for a head wound. We also know that the EMTs didn’t see fit to bandage the cuts after they wiped the blood off, and there was no blood visible in the videotape of Zimmerman arriving at the police station less than an hour after the shooting.

I think we are seeing the writing on the wall. I am very concerned that George Zimmerman is going to get off on the stand your ground defense. I think it is time for those who care about justice for Trayvon Martin to start marching again.

ALEC Announces It Will No Longer Focus on Social Issues

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, fundamentalist Christians, Human Rights, legislation, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

ALEC has sent out a press release announcing a very significant change in its organizational structure and goals. The headline: ALEC Sharpens Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth — Announces the End of the Task Force that Dealt with Non-Economic Issues. Here’s the gist:

“We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus.

“We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned….

“Our free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies are the reason ALEC enjoys the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states. ALEC members are interested in solutions that put the American economy back on track. This is our mission, and it is what distinguishes us.”

Except those really aren’t the reasons ALEC was founded. The brains behind ALEC were Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation and joined with Jerry Falwell to found Moral Majority, and other right wing legislators focused on social issues like Henry Hyde.

One of the first to envision fusing the conservative movement with evangelicals, he and the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority as well. In fact, Weyrich coined the phrase the “moral majority”. No believer in majority rule, he said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” His statement was a harbinger to ALEC’s later very dogged voter suppression activities. “Recently Voter ID legislation based on ALEC’s template was introduced in states across the country and passed in at least fourteen states,” under the guise of preventing election fraud.

So voter suppression was part of the organization’s charter, apparently.

ALEC’s model legislation has been instrumental in the explosive growth of the prison population. It helped pioneer “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws, which serve to abolish or curb parole so converts are made to serve the entire length of their sentence. “Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically.” In fact, one of ALEC’s benefactors, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), made an offer to cash- strapped states to buy up their prison populations at a cost savings as long as the state kept their prisons 90 percent filled to capacity.

And of course ALEC was behind the Stand Your Ground laws that have become such a big issue since the Trayvon Martin shooting.

And now ALEC is dropping this part of their agenda. This is a huge victory for anyone who care about human rights.

Exposing and Dismembering ALEC and its Kleptocracy Agenda

Posted: April 16, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Big Pharma, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Corporate Crime, corporate greed, corporate money, corporatism, corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, education, Environment, New Orleans, We are so F'd | Tags: | 13 Comments

I have a personal interest in seeing ALEC dismembered.  My governor Bobby Jindal has adopted and enacted some of its worse cookie cutter laws.  There are three progressive interests that  are leading actions to defund and defang this supposedly “nonpartisan individual membership organization of state legislators which favors federalism and conservative public policy solutions”. They are the Urban League, Common Cause, and ColorofChange.   I would hope that many more groups will join in.

Many of ALEC’s corporate sponsors have quit funding the organization which seeks to remove oversight and regulation of all kinds of industry, privatize public services and goods, and deprive minority communities and women of basic voting rights and civil rights.  They seek tort reform that would limit corporate exposure to liability from unsafe products and practices.  They like to remove laws providing consumer protection and information.  They are not nonpartisan and are responsible for some of the most heinous, radical legislation of the last few years. Woe to those of you whose governors or legislators belong to this organization for you will live in a world with very little protection from big money and big business and your tax dollars will be used to line their coffers.

The American Legislative Exchange Council describes itself as a nonpartisan champion of free markets. But if you spend some time at an ALEC conference (Bloomberg Businessweek did, for an article last year) you will be hard-pressed to find many Democrats. And when the entire conference meets for lunch, you will hear from the podium nothing that would seem out of place in a press release from Eric Cantor’s office. Last year in New Orleans, for example, Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisana, told an ALEC annual meeting, “Defeating the president is crucial to defending our economy,” and “Obama has been a disaster.” I didn’t hear anyone boo. What I did hear was the sound of fevered applause when the conference played a videotaped greeting from Ronald Reagan.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to feverishly applaud Ronald Reagan. I am saying that only in the most thinly defensible, legalistic sense can ALEC call itself “nonpartisan.” And the council doesn’t really support free markets, either. It supports the companies that fund it. This is an important distinction, because the corporations that donate to ALEC aren’t doing so to protect markets. They’re protecting favored tax treatments and pushing regulations that lock in their market positions. As best as we were able to determine in reporting our piece last year, corporations propose bills at the state level and then push them up to ALEC, which has both corporate and legislative members. ALEC pushes the legislative members to the foreground, stamps the bills as “model legislation,” and then the corporations push them back out to other state legislatures. This may not be the case with all ALEC legislation, but it certainly was with the bill we followed.

So ALEC is not what it says it is. That’s not extraordinary: Few advocacy groups are what they say they are. In ALEC’s case, however, the fingers-crossed-behind-its-back description of itself is definitional. If the American Legislative Exchange Council operated with complete openness, it couldn’t operate at all. ALEC has attracted a wide and wealthy range of supporters precisely because it does its real work in a black box. Membership lists are secret. The origins of the model bills are secret. Deliberations and votes on model bills are secret. The model bills themselves are secret. The council has designed its entire structure to disguise industry-backed legislation as grassroots work from state legislators. If this becomes clear to everyone, there’s no reason for corporations to use it. And that is exactly what has been happening.

Minority advocacy groups have been most active in the fight against ALEC.  ALEC is responsible for the legislation that requires specific picture ids to vote and they are responsible for the Stand Your Ground Laws. Both of these issues have been front and center in Civil Rights Groups.  The Trayvon Martin case is important in two key ways. First, it is bringing to light the institutional racism implicit in the criminal system.  Second, it has exposed the role of ALEC in sneaking through legislature in states that most voters do not support or like.  The vigilante-empowering Stand Your Ground laws are now seeing daylight.

The tension in corporate boardrooms over the case is the latest example of the pitfalls companies can sometimes face when they donate to political and lobbying groups, even those that seem safely below the radar of public consciousness.

The ALEC controversy is now sparking a broader debate about corporate participation in politics and the polarized state of political discourse. At a minimum, it has strengthened calls for companies to develop clear policies explaining their spending.

“I would caution companies to be very aware of where their money is going,” says Nell Minow, director of GMI Ratings, which provides corporate governance information to investors, corporate auditors and regulatory agencies. “Companies are going to realize they can take a real reputational hit with this kind of affiliation.”

She and others recall the tempest that erupted in 2010 around Target after the company donated to a nonprofit group supporting a Minnesota gubernatorial candidate who was known for opposing gay rights initiatives.

Like Louisiana, many Arizona politicians are in cahoots with ALEC. ALEC likes to use laws to funnel public money into corporate income statements. This isn’t free market promotion, this is more like being given the ability to loot public resources.

Legislators in Arizona continue to advance extremist legislation inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its out-of-state corporate backers, according to a new analysis by People For the American Way Foundation, Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Now. This report shines a new light on the Arizona Legislature’s unprecedented ties to the secretive organization, which recently drew nationwide fire for its role in implementing radical policies across the country like “Shoot First” laws and voter suppression laws, and anti-worker measures. ALEC’s extreme agenda has recently led companies such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wendy’s, KRAFT and Intuit to withdraw from the organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday also withdrew its support from ALEC.

The comprehensive report found that Arizona’s large concentration of ALEC-member legislators, working hand-in-hand with the corporate leaders who make up ALEC’s membership, are continuing to endorse special interest legislation that harms ordinary people by limiting consumers’ rights, privatizing education and dismantling unions.

The report, ALEC in Arizona: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests in the Halls of Arizona’s Legislature, updated for the Fiftieth Legislature, second regular session is available here.

“Recent polling shows that Arizonans are appalled by the out-of-touch and extremist agenda at their State Legislature. This report shows that agenda is no accident,” said John Loredo, a member of Arizona Working Families and a former Arizona House Minority Leader. “Unfortunately, Arizona has one of the highest concentrations of ALEC legislators in the country, and that makes us a petri dish for anti-worker legislation and a host of other bad ideas.”

“ALEC-member legislators are unabashedly continuing to push legislation straight from corporate headquarters to Arizona’s lawbooks,” said Marge Baker, Executive Vice President at People For the American Way Foundation. “Well-heeled special interests are circumventing the democratic system and bypassing Arizona’s citizens, who can’t match the level of access that ALEC provides. As a result, Arizonans are facing an endless assault from laws that serve the interests of the rich and powerful instead of everyday people.”

You can find ALEC’s model bills and reports on its activities in many states at the site ALEC Exposed.  ALEC is responsible for the horrible school voucher and privatization plan that Bobby Jindal has ramrodded through our state.  It is also responsible for some of the worst climate change denial propaganda. The source of this funding is big oil, big coal, and the Koch Brothers.

$375,858 received from Koch foundations 2005-2010 [Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2010: $708,858]

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is one-stop shopping for state elected officials interested in perusing the wares of an array of Koch-funded opposition organizations including IER, ACCF, Mercatus and other sources. ALEC has successfully peddled corporate-written legislation to numerous states attacking the Kyoto Protocol, undermining climate science education in schools and numerous other anti-environmental legislation. ALEC has close ties to Koch Industries, which helped bail the organization out of financial troubles with a half-million dollar grant.

ALEC publishes its own materials as well, including a “Climate Change Overview for State Legislators” which downplays the science and risks of global warming and exaggerates the costs of addressing it. The Overview was written by Daniel Simmons, who moved from ALEC to become AEA’s Director of State Affairs. Simmons was at the Mercatus Institute before ALEC and is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law.

Here’s some of the background information on the laws that ALEC creates with the intended purpose of “starving Public Schools“.

ALEC’s most ambitious and strategic push toward privatizing education came in 2007, through a publication called School Choice and State Constitutions, which proposed a list of programs tailored to each state. That year Georgia passed a version of ALEC’s Special Needs Scholarship Program Act. Most disability organizations strongly oppose special education vouchers—and decades of evidence suggest that such students are better off receiving additional support in public schools. Nonetheless, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Indiana have passed versions of their own. Louisiana also passed a version of ALEC’s Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act (renaming it Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence), along with ALEC’s Family Education Tax Credit Program (renamed Tax Deductions for Tuition), which has also been passed by Arizona and Indiana. ALEC’s so-called Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act has been passed by Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma.

ALEC’s 2010 Report Card on American Education called on members and allies to “Transform the system, don’t tweak it,” likening the group’s current legislative strategy to a game of whack-a-mole: introduce so many pieces of model legislation that there is “no way the person with the mallet [teachers’ unions] can get them all.” ALEC’s agenda includes:

§ Introducing market factors into teaching, through bills like the National Teacher Certification Fairness Act.

§ Privatizing education through vouchers, charters and tax incentives, especially through the Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act and Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, whose many spinoffs encourage the creation of private schools for specific populations: children with autism, children in military families, etc.

§ Increasing student testing and reporting, through more “accountability,” as seen in the Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One-to-One Reading Improvement Act and the Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind.

§ Chipping away at local school districts and school boards, through its 2009 Innovation Schools and School Districts Act and more. Proposals like the Public School Financial Transparency Act and School Board Freedom to Contract Act would allow school districts to outsource auxiliary services.

ALEC is also invested in influencing the educational curriculum. Its 2010 Founding Principles Act would require high school students to take “a semester-long course on the philosophical understandings and the founders’ principles.”

Perhaps the Brookings Institute states the mission most clearly: “Taken seriously, choice is not a system-preserving reform. It is a revolutionary reform that introduces a new system of public education.”

The passage of radical public school defunding in Louisiana is leading to a recall Jindal effort. We’ve already had some of this type of reform in New Orleans and it’s clearly not working well at all unless you count teacher union busting and lowering teacher salaries progress.  Here are some of the things we will now be suffering in Louisiana.   I personally am opposed to the state funding religious indoctrination hiding under the guise of education. These laws funnel public money into any thing that deems itself a school, it seems.

A vast expansion of charter schools, an overhaul of teacher tenure and establishment of a statewide program to pay private school tuition with public dollars moved within one step of final passage Thursday, as the Louisiana Senate Education Committee endorsed the headliner components of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education agenda without changes or dissent.

I know this thread wanders around through many topics but the number of right wing bills pressured cooked into law by ALEC and their toadies is just as wandering and perverse.  Check out the site and be aware of which politicians supposedly representing the people of your state that are ALEC cronies.  The movement to get corporations to defund the organization should be paramount.  Ordinary Americans have already lost a lot to their agenda.  It’s time to stop them.  Put pressure on organizations to join in the effort.  Let’s defang this beast  together.

Friday Night Open Thread: Trayvon Martin Case Updates

Posted: April 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, Crime | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Good Evening! The big news today is that Minkoff Minx is back home and resting after her surgery. She even managed to send off an e-mail to the rest of the administrators, so she might even be reading this–if so, hi there, Minx!

I have several updates on the Trayvon Martin case. The city of Sanford is preparing for the aftermath of the special prosecutor Angela Corey’s decision on whether or not she will order the arrest of George Zimmerman.

Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett said on Thursday that the city’s emergency management team has met regularly with the U.S Department of Justice to construct a plan. Officials said extra police officers and fire department officials are on standby. Neighboring agencies have also been asked to assist, if needed.

“You always prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” Triplett said. “We’re planning for the ‘what-if’ case scenario, and that would be to make sure that all of our citizens get the protection they pay their taxes for.”

The grand jury ordered by Governor Rick Scott is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 10, so Corey is expected to decide soon.

If she finds probable cause, Corey could direct-file the charges anytime or present evidence to a Seminole County grand jury, which was tentatively scheduled to meet on Tuesday. The grand jury could indict, ask to hear more evidence, or decline to indict.

Since the Stand Your Ground Law has been invoked by Zimmerman, even if charges are filed, a judge could review the case and grant immunity, thus dismissing the charges.

Corey previously stated that she may not need the grand jury. I’ll be honest: I just have a gut feeling that she will decline to charge Zimmerman. I hope I’m wrong, but Corey is known for charging juvenile offenders very harshly and trying them as adults. Last year, she charged a 12-year-old boy with first degree murder and ordered him tried as an adult in the death of his two-year-old brother. HuffPo reports that Corey

is known for her tough tactics aimed at locking up criminals for long sentences and making it difficult to negotiate light plea bargains.

Furthermore, 57-year-old Angela Corey has handled hundreds of homicide cases involving the justifiable use of deadly force – experience that could prove invaluable.

Angela Corey

On the other hand, they also report that Corey is exceedingly close to the Sheriff’s office and police. One colleague told HuffPo that she is “too close” to them.

Hal Uhrig

George Zimmerman has a new attorney who is a former police officer, now a criminal defense attorney, who has experience with the media. But that experience did not serve him well today when he suggested in a TV interview that Zimmerman may have suffered from “shaken baby syndrome” after Trayvon Martin supposedly bashed his head on the sidewalk. Except that the new attorney is now claiming his client’s head was bashed into the “ground.” (Just a side note: neither of Zimmerman’s attorneys has actually met him in person yet. They’ve only talked with him on the phone.)

Hal Uhrig, a lawyer and former Gainesville, Florida, police officer who recently joined Zimmerman’s defense team, cited in a TV interview the brain damage that can seriously injure or kill an infant.

His point, which has been made before, was that Zimmerman contends he shot Martin in self defense and feared for his life after the 17-year-old attacked him and began pounding his head into the concrete pavement of a gated community on a rainy evening in Sanford on February 26.

But Uhrig’s choice of words, and use of a recognized sign of child abuse to defend a 28-year-old man who killed a kid, seemed likely to raise more than just a few eyebrows.

“We’re familiar with the Shaken Baby Syndrome,” said Uhrig on the CBS This Morning program. “You shake a baby, the brain shakes around inside the skull. You can die when someone’s pounding your head into the ground.”

Shaken baby syndrome can occur in very young infants because their skulls are still soft, they aren’t yet in control of their neck and limbs, and their heads are very large in proportion to their bodies. Adults can obviously suffer serious head trauma leading to internal bleeding and death, but if EMT’s believed that had happened to Zimmerman they would have insisted he be transported to a hospital.

One of Uhrig’s first actions after taking the job was to get rid of Zimmerman’s “friend” Joe Oliver (now being called a “media adviser”), who made innumerable embarrassing media appearances in which presented a number of inconsistent explanations of what supposedly happened the night of the shooting.

A group of about 40 Florida college students have organized a 3-day march from Daytona Beach to Sanford (41 miles), Florida to demand racial equality in honor of Trayvon Martin. The march is “modeled after the historic 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.”

They call themselves the Dream Defenders. The march began earlier today.

The campaign began at Daisy Stocking Park and will conclude on April 9 at Sanford City Hall. During the march, students will be stopping every two hours and receiving training. They will also work on developing a strategy to launch a larger youth movement to address racial inequalities. Their first stop is the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center for a prayer vigil and speakout. You can track the group as they march on their website.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office and police officers in Daytona Beach, DeLand and Orange City are coordinating and will be helping with traffic control to make sure the students are safe while crossing busy highways.

Vanessa Baden, a 2007 alumna of Florida State, flew in from Los Angeles to attend the march on behalf of Dream Defenders. She said the purpose of the march is to call for the arrest of George Zimmerman and the investigation of the process of law enforcement following the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

“What we’re not trying to do is try Zimmerman in the court of public opinion. We get that there’s a process in this,” Baden said. “We’ll be patient with the process if they allow the process to begin.”

The group expects other college students to join the march along the way. Good for them. I know darn well if Martin Luther King were still alive, he would be there too.

Unfortunately, a group of “armed neo-Nazis” is already in Sanford, supposedly to help in riot control after Angela Corey makes her decision.

Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are “prepared” for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect “white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety” in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. “We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it,” he says. “We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over.”

Because nothing diffuses racial tension like gun-toting racial separatists patrolling an already on-edge community.

Lots of audio “experts” are still analyzing Zimmerman’s initial 911 tape to see if he used word “coons” in a whispered utterance. CNN’s expert claims Zimmerman said “fucking cold.” Another expert says it was “fucking punks.”

In addition, I found this slowed down tape of the 911 call by a witness. It was posted by a self-described “audio person.” You can hear screams for help in the background, then a gunshot, and another sound after the shot. It sounded like a scream after the gunshot to me.

NBC has fired a producer who edited the Zimmerman 911 tape and played the edited version on the Today Show as if it were the original.

The person was fired on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the disciplinary action who declined to be identified discussing internal company matters. They also declined to name the fired producer. A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment.

The action came in the wake of an internal investigation by NBC News into the production of the segment, which strung together audio clips in such a way that made George Zimmerman’s shooting of Mr. Martin sound racially motivated. Ever since the Feb. 26 shooting, there has been a continuing debate about whether race was a factor in the incident.

The segment in question was shown on the “Today” show on March 27. It included audio of Mr. Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

But Mr. Zimmerman’s comments had been taken grossly out of context by NBC. On the phone with a 911 dispatcher, he actually said of Mr. Martin, “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.” Then the dispatcher asked, “O.K., and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic?” Only then did Mr. Zimmerman say, “He looks black.”

Obviously, the editing was misleading, but I actually think the real 911 tape sounds worse and more racially biased. JMNSHO.

Family and friends of George Zimmerman are starting a website to raise funds for his defense and his living expenses. The reporter, Frances Robles says that Zimmerman has suffered “weeks of withering media coverage lambasting him and his supporters…” I’d say the lambasting of Trayvon Martin has been even more “withering,” but of course he no longer has “living expenses,” because George Zimmerman shot and killed him. But what do I know? Poor George….

Robles also notes that Zimmerman has attract some troubling supporters

such as white supremacists and the Rev. Terry Jones, the Gainesville pastor who announced last year plans to burn the Quran and now plans to hold a rally for Zimmerman. Gun ownership advocacy groups have also announced intentions to contribute $10,000 towards Zimmerman’s defense.

But one of Martin’s attorneys points out that

“It’s a PR strategy, a propaganda campaign,” said Natalie Jackson, an attorney for Trayvon’s parents. “His friends and family are doing him a big disservice by race-baiting. They are trying to divide a jury. Frank Taaffe, Joe Oliver, everybody gets up there and says, ‘George Zimmerman is not a racist.’ That’s not what we’re talking about.

“We’re talking about whether he was justified in taking Trayvon Martin’s life.”

I agree with Jackson that the racism issue is a red herring. It’s up to the FBI to decide whether this was a hate crime or not. But Zimmerman needs to be arrested and charged. Then he can plead his case for self-defense to a judge and jury instead of the media.

Feel free to discuss any topic on this thread. I decided to focus on the Martin case because there was so much news coming out today on it, and it has otherwise been a pretty slow news day because of the upcoming christian holiday.

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