JustOneMinute

Let's Have Some John Edwards Rumors And Innuendo

The jury has spoken, but they mumbled:

The John Edwards jury told a federal judge today it had reached a verdict only on one of six campanign-finance charges, sending the courtroom into confusion and opening the door to a mistrial.

Jurors told Judge Catherine Eagles they had reached a unanimous verdict only on Count 3 of the indictment. That charge pertains specifically to more than $700,000 in donations wealthy heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon gave Edwards to allegedly cover up an illicit affair and illegitimate child.

The verdict, however, was not announced.

After the jury informed the judge of its verdict, the judge sent the panel of eight men and four women back to the jury room.

Since Edwards was not formally charged with being a sleazeball, this case is tough.

Elizabeth Warren - The Unraveling Accelerates

Elizabeth Warren finally admits the obvious when fced with overwheming circumstantial evidence:

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren acknowledged for the first time late Wednesday night that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American, but she continued to insist that race played no role in her recruitment.

“At some point after I was hired by them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,’’ she said in a statement issued by her campaign. “My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I have been open about it.’’

Warren’s statement is her first acknowledgment that she identified herself as Native American to the Ivy League schools.

Here first acknowledgment? That is putting it kindly. Here is the Boston Herald from May 4, reporting what sounds like a specific denial:

Warren — who has been dogged by questions about whether she used her claims of Cherokee lineage to further her career — has insisted she never authorized Harvard Law to count her as a Native American in the mid-1990s, when the school was under fire for not having enough minority professors.

So why the change of position?

Warren’s new statement came after the Globe asked her campaign about documents it obtained Wednesday from Harvard’s library showing that the university’s law school began reporting a Native American female professor in federal statistics for the 1992-93 school year, the first year Warren worked at Harvard, as a visiting professor.

...

The Harvard records do not list a Native American during the years Warren returned to her post at the University of Pennsylvania, but begin to list one in 1995-96, when she returned to Cambridge as a tenured professor.

Well, vigorous sleuthing has cracked the Case of the Missing Inspirational Minority.

And do let's note - the press is losing patience with their Golden Girl. Here is a Boston Herald columnist noting that he has been the only guy supporting her so in return he gets a short, unhelpful phone call about something else.

And the NY Times plays the oldest trick in the aggrieved reporter's book - print the transcript! Here they describe Ms. Warren's joint appearance with Massachusetts Governor Deval:

While recent polling shows Ms. Warren running dead even with Mr. Brown, questions about her heritage have consumed the campaign.

...[T]he Warren campaign gave the news media about 90 minutes’ notice that Mr. Patrick would appear at her headquarters and that they would hold a news conference.

This raised expectations that Ms. Warren might discuss her ancestry in greater detail than she has. But the event was orchestrated to discourage detailed questioning by including about 150 loyal Warren supporters who booed when reporters asked about it.

...

A reporter said to Ms. Warren that critics were calling her character into question, prompting the supporters in the room to boo and hiss.

Mr. Patrick told them that “even when we don’t like the question, we’ve got to let it be asked.” Turning back to the news media, he said, “We don’t care about that subject.”

Asked whether the issue spoke to Ms. Warren’s character, Mr. Patrick said, “I think I have answered that.”

“Can she answer it?” the reporter said.

Ms. Warren said she would defer to the governor.

“So, you’re not answering, basically?” the reporter asked. Ms. Warren replied, “You just don’t like the answer.”

That's not an answer.

Zimmerman - Waiting For More Discovery

While we wait for the next round of discovery in the Zimmerman case, we note, by way of Google News, this amusing commentary in the South Florida Times:

Brace for worst in Trayvon Martin case

Written by Donald Jones

Sanford police arrested George Zimmerman after he shot and killed Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26. Then they gave him back his gun.

No drug tests were done to see if Zimmerman was under the influence of drugs at the time.   Perhaps the most critical evidence that was lost was the clothes Zimmerman wore when he shot Trayvon. The police allowed him to wear the clothes home.  The critical Crime Scene Investigation forensics that should have been done immediately   were not done.  No real investigation would begin until more than 30 days later.

The state, in prosecuting Zimmerman, is like a basketball team 30 points behind before the game begins.

On the bright side, I like the basketball metaphor! However, Zimmerman's clothes were held by the police (his wife brought him a change before he went home) and the police have held onto his gun.

I worry that Mr. Jones is sitting in Marlin's Park waiting for the next Heat-Celtics game.

 

A Small, Ineffective Step In The Right Direction

Nanny Bloomberg intends to ban sugary soft drinks over 16 ounces in order to grapple with obesity. The notion is derided most colorfully by Mark Hemingway of TWS:

Is it possible for New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg to be considered both a fascist and a national laughing stock?

More mockery at The Gothamist; NY Magazine settles for an arched eyebrow.

Obviously this ban will be opposed by those who think people should be free to make their own choices, including bad ones. That said, we do regulate alcohol and tobacco, so the notion of regulating hazardous (but pleasurable) consumables is not new.

There is evidence that certain foods are quasi-addictive. There is also evidence that sugary soft drinks account for a large portion of the increase in reported sugar consumption in America since 1977 and are a metabolic disaster.

On the other hand, as social science Bloomberg's ban will probably not cut sugar consumption by much so any benefits will be unobservable.

A sugar tax is coming. Maybe even before the carbon dioxide tax.

At the risk of having my conservo-libertarian card shredded yet again let me reprise the closest thing I have to an original thought on this topic:

It would be interesting to hear from Charles Murray, author of "Coming Apart". As I recall, obesity and smoking are inversely correlated with education and income.  One might argue that the unifying theme is impulse management and the ability to defer gratification.  People who can grasp the long-term benefits of sitting in boring classrooms and saying 'no' to doughnuts may have a general flair for better decision making.  Or, maybe fat drunk and stupid is a way to go through life...

 The socialization of healthcare costs gives each of us a financial stake in the health choices made by others. The next step is then either more regulation of those choices or less socialization of the health insurace market.

FOR THE INSUFFICIENTLY CONFUSED: TheTimes frontpages the news that exercise may not be a panacea:

Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes.

By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease:blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterolortriglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why.

The article explains that they are measuring risk factors rather than actual outcomes, so they aren't saying that some of the exercisers keeled over. However:

Some critics have noted that there is no indication that those who had what Dr. Bouchard is calling an adverse response to exercise actually had more heart attacks or other bad health outcomes. But Dr. Bouchard said if people wanted to use changes in risk factors to infer that those who exercise are healthier, they could not then turn around and say there is no evidence of harm when the risk factor changes go in the wrong direction.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Dr. Bouchard said.

Puzzling. I have a hard time believing that ten percent of the population has evolved to just sit by the fire, but who knows?

GRAB THE POM-POMS: Inveterate nanny-stater Ezra Klein tells us "Why New York City’s Big Gulp ban could be a big success". Apparently some studies idicate that smaller portion sizes lead to less consumption.  Good to know, but what is missing is a metric we can track to observe the success or failure of the Big Gulp ban.

If, heaven help us, the city can actually track soft drink sales and total consumption does in fact fall, it that a success? Or would we want to also see a fall in observed obesity of New Yorkers?

 

Elizabeth Warren's Vision Is Realized

Fauxcohantas has explained that she listed herself as a minority in order to meet people like herself. Mission Accomplished!

A new group of over 150 Cherokees and growing has formed with the purpose of forcing Elizabeth Warren to give up her false claim to Cherokee heritage.

I watched a lot of 'F Troop' as a kid, so I am sure I have a dog in this fight.

Obama's Limited Powers Of Concentration

Obama manages to insult Poland during the Presidential Medal of Freedon ceremony yesterday:

Poland demanded a “strong and clear response” from the U.S. after President Barack Obama’s mention of a “Polish death camp” while honoring a Pole who told the world about the Holocaust.

“We can’t accept such words in Poland, even if they are spoken by a leader of an allied country,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told journalists in Warsaw today. “Saying Polish concentration camps is as if there was no German responsibility, no Hitler.”

Was it really just four years ago that Obama misplaced Auschwitz somewhere in the zone liberated by the Allies during WWII? Yes it was!

Well, now he has some of these death camps in Poland, which represents some kind of progress. I infer that our first Pacific President was not a big student of either the Holocaust or European history.

You Know That's Wrong, But I Wonder What's Right

Marian Burros of the NY Times delivers a puffer on Michelle Obama's new book about the White House garden. We note a tin ear for statistics here, on obesity and the importance of healthy eating (my emphasis):

“American Grown” is filled with advice for parents, schools, cities and states on how they can help combat the obesity crisis: how to start gardens, get children to like healthy foods and find more opportunities for exercise. It also provides recipes and some startling statistics. Lt. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, now the head of Army forces in Europe, writes that in 2004 only 4 percent of men and 10.5 percent of women failed the fitness test that is required to join the military. By 2010, 47.6 percent of men and 54.6 percent of women failed the test.

That is indeed a startling statistic. In fact, I would be more than startled - I would be astonished if it were true, and the good General actualy wrote what we are reading here without any caveats and qualifiers that got lost translation. That seems like far too big a jump over a six year period unless there was a dramatic change in reporting, standards or somethig else.

Yes, obesity is up, but this study on military readiness and obesity has much different stats (p. 14 of .pdf):

Mission: Readiness used Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) weight/bodybuild data for those who were rejected for medical reasons from 1999 through 2009. ...[The data] allowed us to estimate the proportion each year of those rejected for medical reasons who were rejected for being overweight. We then compared the proportions and found that the proportion of those rejected each year increased by 69.4 percent from 12.3 percent in 1995 to 20.8 percent in 2008.

I should add that this study includes CDC data on national obesity among 18-24 year olds. That has risen by about one-third from 1998 to 2008.

Now, obesity is not the only way to fail the fitness test. But let's hear from Gen. Hertling, who rolled out new fitness standards for basic training in 2010:

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. General Hertling said that the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training center rose to more than one in five in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

So the fail rate moved from four percent to twenty percent at one center, presumably selected for its shock value. Could it really be that the Army had a four percent fail rate in 2000 and 2004, which then moved up to twenty percent in 2006 and forty-seven percent two years later? And yes, we are mixing "Army" and "Military", but did the fail rates in other services spike as well?

Here is Gen. Hertling in another story:

“The major problem is that they are coming to us in [worse] physical shape than their predecessors,” Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, Training and Doctrine Command’s deputy commanding general for Initial Military Training (IMT), said at the Army’s recent IMT forum held at Fort Jackson, SC. “This has nothing to do with who we are recruiting today. It’s just a reflection of what’s going on in American society right now.”

...

The attrition rate for new recruits in recent years has been between 10 percent and 15 percent, Hertling said, and much of it was caused by stress fractures and other serious injuries.

That does not jibe with an attrition rate rising from 4 to 47, but it is in line with the attrition rates for 1996 and 2006 shown here.

One last bit of info:

WASHINGTON, DC — Although the United States military met its fiscal year 2009 recruiting goals, 27 percent of young people in the United States are too overweight to join the armed services, a recently released report found. And nearly 15,000 potential recruits who take the military's physical fitness entrance exam fail each year because they are too heavy.

Per this press release, the 15,000 fails were offset by roughly 165,000 new recruits to all four branches of the service (70,000 to the Army).

A 47 percent fail rate is nowhere in sight by these measures. I wonder what Gen. Hertling actually wrote, what Michelle's ghostwriters actually put in the book, and how the Times reporters and editors passed this factoid along so uncritically, despite their startlement.

Flame On!

A new entrant in the cyberwar against Iran seems to have been detected:

A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation.

The malware, discovered by Russia-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab, is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years.

Dubbed “Flame” by Kaspersky, the malicious code dwarfs Stuxnet in size – the groundbreaking infrastructure-sabotaging malware that is believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010. Although Flame has both a different purpose and composition than Stuxnet, and appears to have been written by different programmers, its complexity, the geographic scope of its infections and its behavior indicate strongly that a nation-state is behind Flame, rather than common cyber-criminals — marking it as yet another tool in the growing arsenal of cyberweaponry.

And we have an old chestnut buried deep in the piece:

Kaspersky discovered the malware about two weeks ago after the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union asked the Lab to look into reports in April that computers belonging to the Iranian Oil Ministry and the Iranian National Oil Company had been hit with malware that was stealing and deleting information from the systems. The malware was named alternatively in news articles as “Wiper” and “Viper,” a discrepancy that may be due to a translation mixup.

Yes, it was the viper and it was here to vipe your vindows.

Happy Memorial Day

Can we reprise some Memorial Day mischief from 2008? Yes We Can!

On The Road With Obama

Peter Baker of the NY Times hits the road with Obama. The TimesLove from 2008 is not still there, so we see some surprising criticisms. But they leave a few comic stones unturned, so on we march:

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — By the time President Obama took the stage at the Fox Theater here, he was in the 18th hour of a 19-hour day. His tie was still knotted to the top as he launched into his stump speech, attacking his opponent’s record and defending his own. “I still believe in you,” he said, “and I hope you still believe in me.”

He still believes in me! Giminy, it's feeling stronger every day. Why is Obama singing old Chicago classics? Which bright light among his speechwriters (or ad-libbers) thought that his belief in me was the issue? And why pick a song about lovers going their separate ways?

Obama shows an odd news sense here:

Flying on Air Force One last week, Mr. Obama read to aides a letter he had received from a 90-year-old man from Florida who said he was looking for work in sales and marketing. “I’m rounding third but not ready to slide into home,” the man wrote the president. “This is the best letter of the day,” Mr. Obama told the aides.

Hmm - does the old guy plan to score standing up? Is he going to head back to third and wait for the next batter (Romney, presumably) to bring him home?

And more importantly, why is this old chap looking for work? Did his home equity fall off a cliff in Florida? Did his 401(k) implode? I think it is great that this guy has the energy and motivation to look for a job but my goodness - if Obama has led us to a point where ninety year olds need to look for work to avoid the cat food diet, it's time for a change.

I hope the media tracks this guy down to hear the rest of his story.

Zimmerman Case - Jeralyn Merritt's Perspective

Having reviewed the first wave of discovery Jeralyn Merritt lays out her best guess as to what happened on the night of Feb 26.

Do keep in mind it is a mix of "facts" (i.e., witness statements and physical evidence) and highly informed speculation.

Let me highlight this:

GZ did not have TM in sight when the dispatcher told him they didn't need him to follow TM. He responded OK. He didn't follow him after that. He didn't know where Trayvon was. He continued walking towards the front of the Retreat View Circle, where the first house is 2861, home to W-13 and W-12. He then turned around to walk back to his car. He just passed the T and the pet waste can when Travyon came up on his left. 

That is Zimmerman's story, as told by his father - crossed the top of the sidewalks 'T' from Twin Trees Lane to Retreat View Circle and then headed back.

However, several minutes elapsed between the end of Zimmerman's 911 call and the fatal encounter. Zimmerman had plenty of time to wander down and around the commons area, which was my guess at the end of March.

Legally, one might say, so what? It was dark, no witnesses saw him, and Zimmerman is legally free to walk around his neighborhood. However, it speaks to his credibility, and it seems to me that crossing the 'T' to Retreat View Circle and then heading back should not have taken as long as it seems to have taken.

Well. This may have inspired doubts in the minds of the police and we hope it helped motivate their investigation, but there comes a time when the state needs to move past a theory of the crime and start offering proof of a crime. I think the state is stuck at a theory.

Bucking Up John Roberts

George Will tries to push Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts back on track. Hard to believe that in a few short weeks it will be the 4th of July and Obamacare will have been affirmed, repealed in part, or repealed in whole.

I think repealed in part is a non-starter, so fully repealed it will be. A possible hint - Obama is running on culture wars and his sons, but is he mentioning his unpopular legacy achievement?

 

Elizabeth Warren's Ride On The Diversity Train

The Boston Globe does an exhaustive review of Harvard University's push for diversity in the 90's, with special emphasis on Elizabeth Warren's place in that push. As the only Native American female on the law school faculty and the faculty of the entire school, she was quite a catch, as the Harvard Federal filings made clear:

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago.

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet.

Ms. Warren has insisted that the topic of her prized ethnicity never cme up in job interviews. So how, one wonders, did Harvard ever discover her non-secret?

The answer is in Harvard's 1999 Affirmative Action plan (291 page .pdf) dredged up by the Globe. Here is the law school desription of their approach to identifying minority candidates for recruitment (p. 110, my emphasis):

In furtherance of its commitment to increasing the diversity of the Faculty, the School has, for many years, acted in the following ways:

• Faculty Solicitation....

• Canvass of HLS Honors Graduates. ...

• Recruitment of Non-Harvard Scholars. Members of the appointments committees monitor faculty composition at leading law schools around the country to identify and solicit the candidacies of promising scholars. In 1996, the Lateral Appointments Committee began to identify professors who have recently received tenure at major law schools for possible recruitment as tenured faculty or visiting professors. The Entry Level Appointments Committee targets promising women and minority candidates, among others, through an exchange of information with their counterparts at other leading law schools.

• Participation in the AALS Annual Meeting. The American Association of Law Schools (AALS) holds an annual conference where teaching candidates are interviewed by interested law schools. The Law School regularly sends two members of the Entry Level Appointments Committee to interview approximately 20-24 job-seekers, who have been selected in advance for their scholarly promise and fit with the existing and anticipated needs of the School. After the AALS interviews, the most attractive candidates are invited back to make mini-presentations to the appointments committee and, if successful in that forum, the full Faculty. At each step in this process, the appointments committee gives weight to the affirmative action goals of the School in determining the relative strength of a particular candidate. Promising women and minority applicants are identified at the outset, and tracked in their progress from application through interview, mini-presentation, and Faculty presentation.

In short, they were actively looking for minority candidates and (utterly unsurprisingly) used the AALS as a key resource. Which strongly suggests they used her minority listing in the AALS to find Elizabeth Warren, even if she never realized that recruiters at other schools did that sort of thing (as if).

TALKING IT OVER: We can hear from Jane here.

Barack, Youthful Leader!

Up to now Barack Obama's youth has been a cipher. The future President,Nobel Prize Winner and world-changer was not a student council president club president, or much of a presence at all in high school, Occidental, or Columbia.

But now David Maraniss, in his new Barry bio, digs up compelling evidence of Barack as a young leader. We are with the 'Choom Gang', a group of highschool potheads:

The first Obama-inspired trend: “Total Absorption” or “TA”.

“TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled,” explains Maraniss. Here’s how it worked: If you exhaled prematurely when you were with the Choom Gang, “you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.”

As one of Obama’s old high school buddies tells Maraniss: “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated.”

Another Obama innovation: “Roof Hits.”

“When they were chooming in a car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.”

Maraniss also says Obama was known for his “Interceptions”: “When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!,’ and took an extra hit.”

I think some of that has carried over to the White House. Of course, "TA" is now "Total Self-Absorption".

Patterico And The Brett Kimberlin Gang

Patterico has a stunning post about the extreme lengths to which a group of nutjobs will go to harass and intimidate their opponents. Of course, Brett Kimberlin was convicted of planting bombs back in the 1980s, so maybe one man's extreme is another man's normal:

You’re about to listen to one of the most bone-chilling pieces of audio you will ever hear. At least, it was to me when I first heard it.

It’s a phone call that could have gotten me killed.

In this post you will hear that audio clip. You will also read about a months-long campaign of harassment carried out by at least three individuals: Ron Brynaert, Neal Rauhauser, and Brett Kimberlin — much of it directed at critics of Brett Kimberlin. This harassment includes repeated references to critics’ family members, workplace complaints, publication of personal information such as home addresses and pictures of residences, bogus allegations of criminal activity, whisper campaigns, frivolous legal actions, and frivolous State Bar complaints.

A deadly phone call? What is this, Ring II? Hardly:

At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.

When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.

They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?

I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.

Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3 houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.

Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to make sure they were alive.

The call that sent deputies to my home was a hoax. Someone had pretended to be me. They called the police to say I had shot my wife. The sheriff’s deputies who arrived at my front door believed they were about to confront an armed man who had just shot his wife. I don’t blame the police for any of their actions. But I blame the person who made the call.

OK, that is crazy stuff.

Reason highlights the free speech issue. Ken at Popehat deplores the reality that this will break down as yet another left-right thing, even though a few lefties have been caught up in Kimberlin's madness as well.

Breitbart attempts to follow the money by contacting donors to the 501(c)3s run by Kimberlin. They get off to a limping start by failing to understand that Fidelity and Schwab run donor-directed funds.

Actually, those donor directed funds could be an excellent money laundering gambit. If, for example, I were Mr. Kimberlin myself, I could donate to a Fidelity directed fund, have that fund donate to my charity, and then report the cash as having come from the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift. Since Mr. Kimberin was a drug dealer back in the day, he might have problematic cash to clean up. Just ruminating, obviously.

Rosslyn Smith of the American Thinker provided the donor list and this TIME piece from 2007 examining how Kimberlin became a hero to the left. Apparently he got on the vote fraud bandwagon and has helped make the case that Diebold and various Republican operatives have stolen various seats. That said, one of the evil-doers has been booted off of DKos, so there is hope.

My thought - since it is mostly righties being harassed, this story lacks a legacy media news hook. Obviously, if (heaven forbid) this were happening to a Times reporter or columnist we would read about nothing else. Similarly, it would be front-paged and leading the evening news if Kimberlin could be connected to the Tea Party.

That said, there is some glimmer of an Anthony Weiner connection. This is not to allege that Anthony Weiner is in any way supportive of this group, but they seem to be supportive of him.

Per Patterico, we have a snppet from Andrew Breitbart's last interview:

[O]ne of the things they’ve done to people who have worked with me in the past, including an L.A. prosecutor, is to “SWAT.” That means that they’re spoofing phones, pretending to be somebody else’s phone, calling 911, and saying “I killed somebody” and then the person’s home is met with the guns drawn, the SWAT and the helicopters, in a horrifying act. It’s happened twice: once in New Jersey, once in Los Angeles, with an L.A. County . . . prosecutor who [is] associated with me.”

Still with Patterico:

As Andrew Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And both of us received email threats days before we were swatted

The man in New Jersey was Mike Stack, who came to fame with WeinerGate. And, by what I assume is a non-coincidence, Patterico was on the phone at the time of the 'swatting' opign to discuss the Weiner case. Let's also note that outing the Ace of Spades seems to be a priority for the Kimberlin crew, and the Ace played a role in the Weiner story.

Well. Following the donor money seems like a good course. Surely some of these donors (Heinz Family Foundation, $20,000) ought to show a bit more awareness.

Just to pick one - here is the HKH Foundation (my emphasis):

For over 30 years, the HKH Foundation has been guided by a fundamental philanthropic imperative: to create new possibilities in pursuit of meaningful and lasting change. We have sought to convene, challenge and enable visionaries, advocates and activists across our areas of grantmaking towards the goal of re-conceiving "the possible." Historically the Foundation has made grants in the arenas of Environmental Protection, Safeguarding Civil Liberties and Peace and Security. We have also fostered non-partisan Civic Engagement as important to securing change across issues. Recently, we have developed a cross-cutting initiative on Protecting the Commons. We have long had a regional focus on the Adirondacks.

One of Kimberlin's groups, Justice Through Music, is a grantee in the Civic Engagement category. HKH ought to review their rules of engagement.

Some Zimmerman Maneuvering

Both sides have motions to seal some of the evidence (State, defense).

The Orlando Sentinel includes this amusing detail about the state's motion:

Also mentioned are "tests" performed by police on Zimmerman that de la Rionda argues may not be admissible...

From the filing, we are very probably reading about the voice stress test Zimmerman allegedly took and passed. It almost looks as if the prosecutor is worried about his ability to secure an unfair trial.

And new video of Zimmerman visiting the Sanford Police Dept. three days after the shooting shows him still bandaged on the back of his head. The usual noisemakers will insist that this simply shows Zimmerman acting on shrewd legal advice and that, lacking video of whatever was under the bandage, it tells us nothing other than Zimmerman is very crafty. Can't rebut that.

GUESS HIS WEIGHT: From that video and knowing his height to be around 5' 8", Zimmerman must be the lightest 200 pounder ever.

Mama Also Said There Be Days Like This

Elizabeth Warren, the favorite of right wing comics everywhere, is back on the warpath:

Elizabeth Warren says she knows she is part Native American 'because my mother told me so'

George Will noted this:

Blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate and Harvard professor who cites "family lore" that she is 1/32nd Cherokee, was inducted into Oklahoma's Hall of Fame last year. Her biography on oklahomaheritage.com says she "can track both sides of her family in Oklahoma long before statehood" (1907) and "she proudly tells everyone she encounters that she is 'an Okie to my toes.'" It does not mention any Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother. A DVD of the induction ceremony shows that neither Warren nor anyone else mentioned this.

I guess her Cherokee pride was a variable thing.

Some Questions Answer Themselves

Overheard: "Who is more famous, Rush Limbaugh or that other guy?".

Hmm. I put my money on Rush.

Hope And Change, RIP

ABC News surprises us with a eulogy to Obama's era of hope and change.

Zimmerman Case - The Evolution of The Evidence

George Zimmerman will presumably claim self-defense in the Tryvon Martin shooting, and (presumably) will also claims that Martin attacked him. An important factoid in evaluating the plausibility of this claim would be George Zimmermn's size. However, I have a concern - in the newly released evidence, are the Sanford PD trying to pull a fast one on the defense?

We will let Charles Blow of the NY Times set the stage, as of March 25:

Zimmerman’s statement, as related by police, says he was following the boy but “he had lost sight of Trayvon and was returning to his truck to meet the police officer when he says he was attacked by Trayvon.”

Trayvon’s personal account of who initiated the physical encounter is forever lost to the grave, but the initiation is likely to be the central question in the case.

To believe Zimmerman’s scenario, you have to believe that Trayvon, an unarmed boy, a boy so thin that people called him Slimm, a boy whose mother said that he had not had a fight since he was a preschooler, chose that night and that man to attack. You have to believe that Trayvon chose to attack a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds...

That weight differential was based on a 2005 police report showing Zimmerman weighed 250 lbs. Eventually, after the ABC News video of Zimmerman at the police station and an interview with a friend of Zimmerman's, the NY Times took a new guess - 170 lbs.

When he was finally booked on April 11, per his Intake Sheet, Zimmerman weighed 185 lbs. But what did he weigh on the night of the shooting? Did he lose fifteen pounds due to stress or crafty legal advice to look small and non-threatening? Did he balloon up from 170 due to, well, stress and a Dorito-heavy on-the-lam diet?

And here is the fast one. Baack when the Sanford PD first released parts of the relevant Offense Report (printed March 6, 2012) Zimmerman was listed as having a height of 509 but his weight was left blank.

Yet the same report, clearly updated with new witnesses, appears in the latest evidence dump in the first few pages. Because there are more witnesses, Zimmerman is moved back a bit in the "Persons" section (p. 4 of 183). However! He is also described as having a height of 507 and a weight of 200.

And what is that based on? Is that a weight actually recorded on the evening of Feb 26 which no one entered into the system until sometime after March 6? Is it somebody's subsequent guess based on something, such as the station house video? Did Zimmerman agree to be weighed sometime after March 6 while cooperating with the investigation?

Well. This number is being accepted by some as clear evidence of Zimmerman's weight on the night of the shooting. I don't think it is firmly established that this was Zimmerman's weight that night, since the March 6 report did not include it.

The defense may never need to reach this level of detail, but if they do, let's keep in mind the uncertain provenance of that 200 lb. figure.

FWIW: The March 6 police report has height/weight info as part of the description for all  of the other witnesses (this was redacted for the evidence dump). Were they all put on scales, were these eyeballometric guesses, or did they come from a driver's license database?

NOW WE PLAY 'GUESS THE AGE': On p 182 of the evidence dump we see that the EMTs described Trayvon Martin as "approx. 20 y/o male". That relates back to 'GOOD POINT' in this post - Zimmerman described Martin as 'late teens' in his 911 call but in his bond hearing apology he said he thought Martin was " little bit younger than I was". Zimmerman is 28, so the first guess was better.

Zimmerman Case - Witness Evolution

The Orlando Sentinel has an interesting article about the evolution of witness testimony in the Zimmerman case. Their key insight is on 'John', who saw Martin on top beating Zimmerman, who was calling for help and later waffled on who was screaming. However, I cannot replicate their scorecard:

Evidence released last week in the second-degree-murder case against George Zimmerman shows four key witnesses made major changes in what they say they saw and heard the night he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford.

Three changed their stories in ways that may damage Zimmerman. A fourth abandoned her initial story, that she saw one person chasing another. Now, she says, she saw a single figure running.

I have it as three changes that hurt the defense and the abandoned story helping the defense. Here we go:

Witness 2

A young woman who lives in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community, where Trayvon was shot, was interviewed twice by Sanford police and once by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

She told authorities that she had taken out her contact lenses just before the incident. In her first recorded interview with Sanford police four days after the shooting, she told lead Investigator Chris Serino, "I saw two guys running. Couldn't tell you who was in front, who was behind."

...

That all changed when she was reinterviewed March 20 by an FDLE agent. That time, she recalled catching a glimpse of just one running figure, she told FDLE Investigator John Batchelor, and she heard the person more than saw him.

"I couldn't tell you if it was a man, a woman, a kid, black or white. I couldn't tell you because it was dark and because I didn't have my contacts on or glasses. … I just know I saw a person out there."

This sounds like the shadow-watcher from the bond hearing, so I guess we may never learn which shadow was black and which was Hispanic:

Gilbreath: "We have a witness statement who observed shadows or figures running by her residence." He says he can't identify who they were.

Hmm, *IF* this is the same person, this witness had more or less invalidated herself by the time of the bail hearing. Even though it was factualy accurate that she had made earlier statement about seeing things, one wonders whether Gilbreath was skirting the line of truth and falsehood here.

Obviously, the non-chase helps Zimmerman.

Witness 12

A young mother who is also a neighbor in the town-home community never gave a recorded interview to Sanford police, according to prosecution records released last week. She first sat down for an audio-recorded interview with an FDLE agent March 20, more than three weeks after the shooting.

During that session, she said she saw two people on the ground immediately after the shooting and was not sure who was on top, Zimmerman or Trayvon.

"I don't know which one. … All I saw when they were on the ground was dark colors," she said.

Six days later, however, she was sure: It was Zimmerman on top, she told trial prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda during a 21/2-minute recorded session.

"I know after seeing the TV of what's happening, comparing their sizes, I think Zimmerman was definitely on top because of his size," she said.

Does that hurt Zimmerman?  I suppose it is not helpful, but still - *after* the gunshot Martin ended up on the ground and Zimmerman ended up on his feet. If she witnessed that transition, that tells us nothing abut the prior fight. It's hard to believe the prosecution can hang their hat on this.

Unless I have gotten turned round, Jeralyn Merritt discussed the evolution of Witness 12 over time. Here is her original 911 call ("Why would this man just shoot hinm") and her interview with Anderson Cooper. A TalkLeft commenter provides a useful breakdown, including the detail that she originally described two men arguing and a man screaming for help. Later, youth was served. Or at least, served up to the credulous.

Witness 6

This witness lived a few feet from where Trayvon and Zimmerman had their fight. On the night of the shooting, he told Serino he saw a black man on top of a lighter-skinned man "just throwing down blows on the guy, MMA-style," a reference to mixed martial arts.

He also said the one calling for help was "the one being beat up," a reference to Zimmerman.

But three weeks later, when he was interviewed by an FDLE agent, the man said he was no longer sure which one called for help.

"I truly can't tell who, after thinking about it, was yelling for help just because it was so dark out on that sidewalk," he said.

He also said he was no longer sure Trayvon was throwing punches. The teenager may have simply been keeping Zimmerman pinned to the ground, he said.

He did not equivocate, though, about who was on top.

"The black guy was on top," he said.

Well, that is 'John', obviously. He is the best 'scream' witness, so losing him on that point hurts the defense. Obviously, the defense will have to raise questions about why the guy on top would be screaming for help; the prosecution will counter that Zimmerman had drawn his gun while lying on the ground, brandished it for forty seconds or so, and then fired.

As to the notion that 'John' saw Martin pinning Zimmerman to the ground, Zimmerman claimed Martin was trying to cover his mouth with his hands. That is an odd way to suffocate someone - why not choke them out? Still, it does tie in to what 'John' may have seen.

Witness 13

He is important because he talked with Zimmerman and watched the way he behaved immediately after the shooting, before police arrived.

After this neighbor heard gunfire, he went outside and spotted Zimmerman standing there with"blood on the back of his head," he told Sanford police the night of the shooting.

Zimmerman told him that Trayvon "was beating up on me, so I had to shoot him," the witness told Serino. The Neighborhood Watch captain then asked the witness to call his wife, Shellie Zimmerman, and tell her what happened.

In two subsequent interviews about a month later — one with an FDLE investigator and one with de la Rionda — the witness described Zimmerman's demeanor in greater detail, adding that he spoke as if the shooting were no big deal.

Zimmerman's tone, the witness said, was "not like 'I can't believe I just shot someone!' — it was more like, 'Just tell my wife I shot somebody …,' like it was nothing."

Those witnesses are likely to be interviewed at least once more before Zimmerman's trial. Defense attorneys in Florida routinely question witnesses under oath as they prepare for trial.

So a month later this witness is an authority on how people ought to react to extreme stress.  Stress he was not feeling  himself, despite just having come across a homicide scene.

[Maybe we can find a stress expert or two at Wikipedia, the site libs love:

Symptoms of acute stress reaction

The symptoms show great variation but typically include an initial state of "daze", with some constriction of the field of consciousness and narrowing of attention, inability to comprehend stimuli, and disorientation.

This state may be quickly followed by either further withdrawal from the surrounding situation (to the extent of a dissociative stupor), or by agitation and overactivity, anxiety, impaired judgement, confusion, detachment, and depression.

I have no doubt the defense can find an expert to say that Zimmerman's reaction, as described, is well within normal bounds.  Still, I can see why the OS chose to score this as 'not helpful to the defense'.]

I LOVE A MYSTERY: Back in the day Zimmerman's weight, originally reported as 250 lbs based on a 2005 arrest report, was a matter of speculation. That speculation was not eased by the orignal police report placed at the City of Sanford website and immortalized here, since Zimmerman's weight (p. 3) was left blank.

However, the new evidence dump (183 page .pdf) reprises that police report on the first couple of pages. Zimmerman appeared at the bottom of p. 2 of 4 in the report printed March 6 2012; in the new report he appears at the top of p. 4 of 18 but his weight is given as 200 lbs. and his height has changed from 509 to 507.

So when was this weight taken or estimated? He hadn't been booked as of April 2; when he was booked on April 12, his 'Intake Sheet' had him at 5' 8" and 185 lbs.

A related factoid - Trayvon Martin is named correctly in the March 6 report even though he came in as a John Doe and was only identified the next day. Dare we infer these reports are updated over time? So what was the basis for updating Zimmerman's height and weight?

Just from counting redactons in the "Persons" area of the report, I see that the March 6 report has six redacted people plus Martin and Zimmerman. The April 2 report has twelve plus Martin and Zimmerman. Obviously, this has been updated. Lest you doubt, the only juvenile in the March 6 report is Trayvon Martin. By April 2 we see a second juvenile immediately after Martin, which ought to be the 3 year old dogwatcher whose name would fit about there alphabetically (I am not mentioning it but it is easily found).

We All Gotta Go Sometime, But What's The Hurry?

Glenn links to this bit of health news from Theodore Dalrymple at PJ Media.

It is meant to be funny, and is, but it has still summoned forth my Inner Pedant, always lurking beneath the surface of this seemingly fun-loving exterior. And not far beneath the surface, either.

The question is, how much exercise provides a health benefit? The theme is set here:

Between 1996 and 2008, the Taiwanese researchers divided 416,175 people into five categories, according to the amount of exercise, on self-report, that they did: from none to a lot. They discovered that those who did a little exercise, on average 92 minutes per week, had a reduction of 14 percent in their all-cause rate of mortality. They also found that “every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum of 15 minute per day further reduced all-cause mortality by 4 percent.”

The subsequent letter to the Lancet pointed out that this cannot be correct: for if it were correct, and on the assumption that the relation between exercise and longevity were a causative one, Man would be immortal if only he did sufficient daily exercise, something in the region of six hours. In these circumstances, at least in my opinion, life would not actually go on forever; it would merely seem as if it did, in the sense of being boring and pointless.

I remember reading about life extension by calorie restriction and had a similar reaction - these people may live to age 120 by eating ground shirt cardboard and walking around at 6'2", 120 lbs, but it will seem a lot longer. But then again:

''For every calorie you save, there's about a 30-second increase in your life span,'' he said. ''It's worth more to me to have an extra two to three minutes of life than an extra slice of pizza.''

Worth keeping in mind.

But let's not keep the Inner Pedant waiting! The obvious problem with the 'exercising to immortality' hypothesis is that it represents an extrapoloation beyond the experimental range, and we know how problematic that can be.

In fact, the paper itself makes that very point:

After the minimum recommended 15 min a day of exercise, every additional 15 min of daily exercise (up to 100 min a day, after which additional exercise gave no additional health benefi t) is expected to generate an additional reduction of 4% (95% CI 2·5–7·0) all-cause and 1% (0·3–4·5) allcancer mortality.

This gives me an excuse to clip in their cool graph and use the word "asymptotic":

At a more basic level, this paper does not seem to distinguish cause and effect. Rather than randomly assigning large groups of people to the different exercise intensity groups (as if that could be done over a long period), they rely on self-selection and self-reporting. Consequently, as is so often the case with this type of study, we are left wondering whether exercise makes people healthier, or healthier people simply enjoy exercise more.

Well. Make the mock if you will, but those diligent exercisers are lookin' good and feelin' better. Unless they are laid up with some ghastly injury, natch.

 

Their Lips Are Unsealed

Judicial Watch discovers that Obama 2012 is leaking secrets to Hollywood in order to faciltate the movie about Obama's execution of Osama.

In a bit of a cross-marketing fail the movie's release date has been moved back to December 2012, possibly after Hollywood finally realized it was a Navy SEAL and not Obama himself who killed Bin Laden.

 

Catholics v. Obama

The Hill describes the wave of Federal lawsuits filed by Catholic organizations against the ObamaCare "free" contraceptive coverage.

Dem-backed law may be downfall of Obama birth control mandate

The biggest legal threat to the White House’s birth control mandate could come from a decades-old law that was championed by liberal Democrats, according to legal experts.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has been mentioned in nearly all of the more than 30 lawsuits pending against President Obama’s administration over the mandate. One, filed by the University of Notre Dame on Monday, cited RFRA’s protections in the first paragraph.

The RFRA was kicked around by Ed Whelan and David Rivkin, writing in the WSJ, and Ms. Greenhouse of the NY Times last February. Ms. Greenhouse presented an abbreviated version of the law,so her analysis is a bit more lib-friendly. Let's cut back to The Hill:

Because of the law, courts now have to apply certain standards to federal actions that might inadvertently infringe on religious liberty. In one sense, laws under scrutiny must aim to achieve a “compelling” government interest. In another sense, they must be designed in a way that burdens religion as little as possible. 

The second claim might be hard for the administration to meet when regulators could have taken many other steps — like expanding Medicaid — to provide better access to birth control, DeGirolami said. 

“Even if one concedes that the state has a ‘compelling interest’ in ensuring that all women have free access to contraception,” he said, “there are many, many less restrictive means of achieving that interest.”

Ms. Greenhouse overlooked the "least restrictive" requirement.

SHAKE DOWN THE THUNDER: Here is the Notre Dame filing.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

If a tree falls in the forest but no one from the liberal media is there to blame Bush, then how did the Yankees do last night?

Sorry. The WaPo has a laugh-out-loud attempt to evaluate the Zimmerman 911 'Scream' tape which includes this headscratcher:

If you can’t hear the 45 seconds, how do you hear the 45 seconds?

Nobody can really hear anything on that tape, it's too loud.  But you can observe a lot just by watching, so maybe Yogi Berra can take over the prosecution.

OK, seriously.

Legal experts say the recording could be enormously important or disastrous for either side, depending on what a jury determines it can hear.

But what happens when a potentially crucial piece of evidence in one of the most explosive court cases in recent memory is a poor-quality recording of overlapping voices and unintelligible yells, essentially a wilderness of sound?

I think that expert testimony will confirm a juror's common sense - if the background screaming on the tape is unintelligible (my experience) and we don't have samples of Zimmerman, Martin and the 13 year old dogwalker screaming (we don't) then any attempt to draw a conclusion from that tape is unreasonable speculation and should not be admissible. The FBI experts brought in by the state prosecutors couldn't draw any conclusions, and plenty of voice experts explain why at their websites.

The WaPo finds one expert who hears Martin begging for his life. No scenario leading up to that is suggested; given Zimmerman's injuries I guess the theory would be that Zimmerman let Martin beat him for a while, then drew his gun, taunted him for nearly a minute, and executed him. I don't think that timing works with what witness 'John' saw (Zimmerman on bottom getting beaten ad screaming for help, and a gunshot very shortly thereafter), but who knows?

The WaPo also talks with the former head of the FBI audio lab:

Ryan is the retired head of the FBI forensic audio, video and image analysis unit. He said even the best audio forensic expert in the world using the most sophisticated equipment available would have a difficult time determining much at all from a recording of such degraded quality.

“I think it’s hard to scientifically say anything definitive with audio like this,” Ryan said. “. . . One person will come up with one scenario, one speech, one sentence, and some other well-meaning person, trying hard, unbiased in a controlled environment with headphones, will come up with another one.”

...

Ryan also questioned the basic idea that the age of the person or persons screaming during the 45 seconds — and thus whether it was 17-year-old Martin or 28-year-old Zimmerman or both — can be determined by measuring frequency, or pitch.

“To my knowledge, there are no scientific studies of pitch as an indicator or anything else in a scream that would give someone confidence to say how old somebody was,” Ryan said.

When it comes to emotionally charged situations, especially a life-or death situation, the range of the human voice is simply too wide and varied to correlate it accurately to age, Ryan said.

A 28-year-old might scream like a 17-year old. A 17-year old might yell like a 28-year-old.

“The science doesn’t help with a recording like this,” Ryan said. “There isn’t anything to hang your hat on.”

The WaPo concludes with a bit of broadly applicable wisdom:

Ultimately, the only answer to that question that will really matter, if the case goes to trial, is the jury’s. How it hears the 45 seconds, said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University, will depend partly on the machinations and strategies deployed during the trial.

...

“Most trial lawyers believe, and most psychologists who study the way that people process information believe, that once people interpret something in a certain way, once they begin to believe something, they become committed to that,” he said. “And if they become committed, it’s hard to change their minds.”

That certainly explains the media coverage.

A (Fat) Nation Divided

The NY Times reports, for the umpty-bumpth time, about alarming statistics on national obesity.

Nearly one in four American adolescents may be on the verge of developing Type 2 diabetes or could already be diabetic, representing a sharp increase in the disease’s prevalence among children ages 12 to 19 since a decade ago, when it was estimated that fewer than one in 10 were at risk for or had diabetes, according to a new study.

That time series has jumed around a bit since 1999 and I am not able to pin down whether the definition change of pre-diabetes in 2003 has been incorporated into this study (one would hope so.)

But my real cause for concern is the vast division in the comment section.  The vegetarian faction insists that our national obesity epidemic is caused by excessive meat consumption. The Paleo/Primal/Atkins/Taubes crowd insist the problem is refined grains and sugar. And of course, there is always an omega3/omega6 faction making valid points about grain fed chickens and cows versus grass fed animals.

These are people who are intrigued enough by the topic to read the Times and leave a comment, but among that group there is no clear consensus as to the solution. That bodes poorly for any sort of regulatory or public education approach.

Well - when I am king for a day, sugar producers will learn the meaning of fear! OK, as king I will learn the meaning of "public backlash", but still...

Zimmerman Case - Dershowitz Said What? No Context No Peace!

In a story titled "George Zimmerman Case: Should Charges Be Dropped?" Matt Gutman of ABC News contemplates the implosion of the case against George Zimmerman, but he has us puzzling over this:

"There is no second-degree murder evidence in this case," Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said. "It's a very close case."

I see those quotation marks, but when did Dershowitz say "It's a very close case"? Last Friday he wrote this in the Daily News:

A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey, will do the right thing. Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.

Believe it or not, I did not find the words "close case" in that article.

Back in April, before the recent evidence dump, Dershowitz was scathing about the arrest affidavit:

“Most affidavits of probable cause are very thin. This is so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge,” Dershowitz said. “There’s simply nothing in there that would justify second degree murder.”

Dershowitz said that the elements that would constitute that crime are non-existent in the affidavit. “It’s not only thin, it’s irresponsible,” said Dershowitz.

...“This affidavit does not even make it to probable cause,” Dershowitz concluded. “everything in the affidavit is completely consistent with a defense of self-defense. Everything.”

If there was a segue to "close case" I missed it.

Now, it may be that somewhere Prof. Dershowitz has opined that a manslaughter charge could lead to a close case. And I can believe that the motion to dismiss based on Florida's self-defense immunity might be close. But that is hardly the context being presented by ABC News.

I think ABC News ought to present a bit of context for that "close case" quote, which seems way out of line with everything else Dershowitz has said.

Free the quote! No context, no peace!

Extending The Annals Of Dumb

Dylan Byers of Politico turns his misapprehension of statistics into an attention-grabbing blog post about Rush Limbaugh:

Rush Limbaugh took a significant ratings hit in some key radio markets last month in the wake of the Sandra Fluke controversy.

The conservative radio host's ratings fell 27 percent in the key 25-54 demo in New York City, 31 percent in Houston-Galveston, 40 percent in Seattle-Tacoma, and 35 percent in Jacksonville, according to a selection of the March 29-April 25 Arbitron ratings provided by an industry source.

This is making something out of nothing. The story notes that the Fluke controversy, which generated huge attention for Rush, was in early March, so this may be a return to normal.

Secondly, the statistics are noisy city by city:

Radio uses what's known as the Portable People Meter, or PPM, an electronic measurement created by the marketing research firm Arbitron that tracks the activity of a limited number of listeners and uses that data to make estimates about the entire market. This means that when a few listeners change listening habits, it can account for a significant shift in the monthly numbers. As a result, data can swing significantly month to month while actually looking relatively stable over an extended period of time.

As evidence of those drastic swings, Limbaugh's numbers were actually up significantly in some markets -- by as much as 79 percent in both San Francisco and Las Vegas -- even as he took losses in Dalls-Ft. Worth, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Kansas City, and the cities mentioned above.

So there's your headline - Vegas and Frisco love their slut-bashers. Whatever.

What's fun, in an entirely predictable way, is the loss of nuance at Media Matters, which only notes the lead.

The Asbestos Will Remain In Altgeld Gardens Afghanistan

David Sanger of the Times describes Obama's evolution on Afghanistan. From an early belief in remaking their society, Obama quickly shifted his focus to the US political calendar and the pursuit of victory there.

Mr. Sanger needs to flatter his sources and is broadly sympathetic to Team Obama (certainly relative to Bush). Nevertheless, his picture of a President who tuned out his generals is clear:

Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on Afghanistan

By DAVID E. SANGER

It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.

Not long before, after a highly contentious debate within a war cabinet that was riddled with leaks, Mr. Obama had reluctantly decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops. The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.

“Well,” Mr. Obama responded that day, “I’m not going to give them more time.”

A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks.

So facts were not going to matter, and didn't? I believe that, but I am still surprised to see it reported. The timing is clear:

The tight group of presidential aides charged with answering questions like that — of redefining the mission — began meeting on weekends at the end of 2010. The group’s informal name said it all: “Afghan Good Enough.”

“We spent the time asking questions like: How much corruption can we live with?” one participant recalled. “Is there another way — a way the Pentagon might not be telling us about — to speed the withdrawal? What’s the least we can spend on training Afghan troops and still get a credible result?”

By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.

So immediately after the Republican wave in 2010 Team Obama cut out the generals (as well as their civilian masters) and charted a new course.

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.

After a short internal debate, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton came up with a different option: end the surge by September 2012 — after the summer fighting season, but before the election. Mr. Obama concurred. But he was placing an enormous bet: his goals now focus largely on finishing off Al Qaeda and keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from going astray. Left unclear is how America will respond if a Taliban resurgence takes over wide swathes of the country America invaded in 2001 and plans to largely depart 13 years later.

It is revealing is that Mr. Sanger feels no need to explain that September 2012, "before the election", is not before any important election in Afghanistan.

Mr. Sanger provides a snippet of Early Obama, when he still believed in his Hope and Change:

So in the first days of his presidency, Mr. Obama asked Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer with deep knowledge of the region, to lead a rapid review. At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. He talked about remaking “an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs” in Afghanistan and a “civilian surge” to match the military effort. But he said little about the Riedel team’s central insight: that Pakistan posed a far greater threat.

He really needed an expert to tell him that?

And a bit more on Obama's commitment to victory. Ooops, that's ambiguous - victory in Afghanistan:

But he also began to reassess whether emerging victorious in Afghanistan was as necessary as he had once proclaimed. Ultimately, Mr. Obama agreed to double the size of the American force while training the Afghan armed forces, but famously insisted that, whether America was winning or losing, the drawdown would begin in just 18 months.

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Obama's lack of commitment has been noted here for years. Oddly, the killing of Osama (by Obama!) is not highlighted as an excuse for leaving.

NONE DARE CALL IT NATION BUILDING: Both of the following passages are from young Obama's March 2009 announcement of his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.  That's the goal that must be achieved.  That is a cause that could not be more just.  And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same:  We will defeat you.

Per the White House press office the President's team agreed this was not a Bush-era nation-building effort. But later in the same speech:

This push must be joined by a dramatic increase in our civilian effort.  Afghanistan has an elected government, but it is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people.  The economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency.  The people of Afghanistan seek the promise of a better future.  Yet once again, we've seen the hope of a new day darkened by violence and uncertainty.

So to advance security, opportunity and justice -- not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up in the provinces -- we need agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers. That's how we can help the Afghan government serve its people and develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs.  And that's why I'm ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground.  That's also why we must seek civilian support from our partners and allies, from the United Nations and international aid organizations -- an effort that Secretary Clinton will carry forward next week in The Hague.

At a time of economic crisis, it's tempting to believe that we can shortchange this civilian effort.  But make no mistake: Our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don't invest in their future.  And that's why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs.  These investments relieve the burden on our troops.  They contribute directly to security.  They make the American people safer.  And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run -- because it's far cheaper to train a policeman to secure his or her own village than to help a farmer seed a crop -- or to help a farmer seed a crop than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.

Clear and focused. Not nation building.

Here is TNR on the December 2009 surge and withdrawal:

I wonder how many Americans who may be paying only cursory attention appreciate the thinness of Obama's pledge to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. Subsequent commentary from administration officials has made this point clearer than Obama did last night.

Administration officials were earnestly insisting the withdrawal would be "conditions-based".  I guess they had not internalized Obama's commitment to victory - November 2012.

Kill Bambi, Save A Bird

Here is one for the "Nuke the whales" files.

I would kill Bambi to cut down on Lyme disease and traffic accidents, but that is my petty humano-centrism showing.

To be fair, the author does mention ticks in his concluding sentence.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt

Alan Dershowitz thinks State Prosecutor Corey is a long way from clearing the reasonable doubt threshold in the Zimmerman case.

But here is a bit of a minor point for the Mixed Martial Arts fans - if (IF!) Martin was on top of Zimmerman in a high straddle, how did Zimmerman's gun (holstered in his waistband) become visible (which was how Zimmerman's father described the showdown)? Martin should have been kneeling over his hips or abdomen.

Obviously, scuffles can get confusing very quicky. And this would be a lot more important if Zimmerman had the burden of proving his self-defense story beyond a reasonable doubt.

But it seems to me that Zimmerman mnust have been making a bit of progress in freeing himself if his hips had become visible (and accessible to himself).

THE TIMES ON DEE-DEE: The NY Times describes Trayvon Martin's call with his girlfriend and includes this bit of amusement as to how she was discovered:

Several weeks after Mr. Martin’s death, his father, Tracy, discovered that his son had been talking to the girl just before he was shot. He learned this by reviewing Mr. Martin’s phone bills. She was subsequently interviewed by the Martin family’s lawyer, Benjamin L. Crump, but not by the Sanford police.

Uh huh. Several days after the shooting (I recall March 5 from the evidence file but can't look it up just now) the Sanford PD contacted Mr. Martin and asked for their wireless plan PIN so they could access Martin's phone records. Mr. Martin said he would take their request up with his lawyers, and that is where the Sanford PD drop out of the story, as weeks weeks went by with no apparent action on the cell phone front.

But by happy coincidence, the girlfriend was discovered a day or two after the 911 phone calls were made public. Did the information in those calls aid her recollection? We will never know.

All Zimmerman All The Time

Let's have a new thread.

Operation Sooo-eeee!

Looking for change in the state with Hope.

The WaPo On The Zimmerman Evidence - Are They Kidding?

The WaPo pretends to examine the newly released Zimmerman evidence. They get off to a promising start on the gunshot wound but deliver some dreadfullly incomplete information on other topics.

They lead well with the wound:

Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin from a very close range, according to documents a Florida prosecutor released Thursday that indicate a hand-to-hand struggle occurred before the teenager was killed.

A lab report, based on an examination of the two sweatshirts Martin was wearing, found holes and gunshot residue consistent with a “contact shot,” meaning the gun was pressed against Martin’s chest. An autopsy report said that the gunshot wound indicated he was shot from an “intermediate range,” which experts say is between one and 18 inches away.

MSNBC saw a contradiction between contact with the sweatshirt and intermediate range with the skin, so I am glad that some members of the media can sort this out.

However, their attempt to create drama and a sense that Zimmerman was brandishing his weapon and threatening Martin is abysmal journalism:

The documents include new details about what witnesses said they heard and saw that dark, rainy night outside their townhouse windows. One witness told police that he heard someone saying, “I’ve got a gun. I’ve got a gun.”

That is what the witness said and we will accept that is reflecting what the witness heard. However, that was *after* Zimmerman fired the fatal shot, when he had his hands up and was identifying himself to the approaching police officer. In fact (p. 41) the full quote is "I've got a gun, I've got a gun. Take my gun from me".  How did the WaPo miss that?

My understanding is that any concealed carry permit holder would endorse this approach - as a general rule, police don't like to be surprised to find a gun on someone. (Zimmerman still got cuffed, but he had to expect that.)

Comparably shameful is the mystery the WaPo creates around the question of who was heard screaming on the recorded 911 call:

Witness accounts indicate that in some cases, officers seemed to have rushed to judgment about one of the most critical questions in the case: who was screaming in the last seconds before the gunshot rang out.

One distraught witness, said she who regretted not helping the person yelling outside her window, said in her handwritten statement that an investigator tried to comfort her by saying that the cries for help “were not the person who died.”

A police report also concluded that the voice screaming in the background of a recorded 911 call placed by a resident was Zimmerman, “who was apparently yelling for help as he was being battered by Trayvon Martin.”

But an FBI audio analysis of that crucial call could not determine whether it was Martin or Zimmerman who was screaming, because of the poor quality of the recording and the “extreme emotional state” of the person screaming, an FBI report said.

Also included in the reports is an account of a meeting between an investigator and Tracy Martin two days after his son was shot. The investigator played the 911 call to Martin and asked him whether the voice calling for help was his son’s.

“Mr. Martin, clearly emotionally impacted by the recording, quietly responded no,” the report said.

But in the days and weeks after the shooting, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, the teenager’s mother, said they had no doubt that the screams were those of their son. In an interview with an investigator, Zimmerman’s father said, “That is absolutely, positively George Zimmerman yelling for help.”

What the WaPo fails to report is that the Sanford PD had a witness who was thirty feet from the action and was crystal clear that the white or Hispanic guy in red was on bottom, getting beaten by a black guy, and screaming for help (p. 38). This is "John", who spoke to the local Fox station the day after the shooting and told a similar story to the police.

Ye, witnesses get confused, but the police hardly leapt to the conclusion that Zimmerman was screaming for help.

And from another perspective, Zimmerman has the injuries of a guy in trouble who might well need help. What would have prompted Martin to be screaming?

That is misleading and incomplete reporting by the WaPo.

Zimmerman Case - "Contact Shot" Versus "Intermediate Range"

MSNBC has not had time to do their homework with the Zimmerman evidence dump [but the WaPo did; see UPDATE]:

But the documents give contradictory assessments of how far away Zimmerman was when he shot Martin. 

Lab tests by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Orlando operations center concluded that residue tests on Martin's sweatshirt were "consistent with a contact shot" — that is, one in which the muzzle of the weapon is physically touching the victim.

But the autopsy report from the Volusia County (Fla.) Medical Examiner's office reached a different conclusion based on examination of the wound itself, saying, "This wound is consistent with a wound of entrance of intermediate range."

The report doesn't define "intermediate range."

As several commenters explained to us yesterday, when a pistol or rifle is fired the projectile, gunpowder (including unburned powder) and expanding gases all exit the barrel.  If the victim is close enough to the barrel, the projectile as well as gunpowder particles and gas residue will end up on, or in, the victim. If the victim is more than a few feet away, the shot is "distant" and only the projectile will make impact [Ref 1, 2].

Intermediate Range Definition: Hot powder grains accompany bullet to wound site & are driven into skin, leaving small red marks on skin - stippling/tattooing

Short & Close Range Definition: Bullet hole, stippling & soot present

Contact Range Definition: Bullet hole, muzzle burn mark & impression of firearm present; loose fit - near contact; cornea of soot may be present where weapon not placed directly against skin

Direct contact is pretty obvious when the gun is against the skin. However, as one report explained, an "intermediate" result would occur even over a distance of an inch or two if the victim was wearing clothing or standing, for example, behind a door because most of the powder and gas would be blocked by the obstacle.

So in the current situation there is no contradiction at all - the FDLE placed the gun directly on Martin's sweatshirt (beneath which he had on a t-shirt); the medical examiner, looking just at the body, saw powder residue and stippling consistent with an intermediate range, which would be explained by the two layers of clothing.

ERRATA: Per the police report (p. 16 .pdf) the bullet casing was recovered in the grass. Someone cared, I don't recall why. I do recall Mr. Turner gloating, however, so this "Told you so" thing must be catching.

UPDATE: The WaPo lead:

Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin from a very close range, according to documents a Florida prosecutor released Thursday that indicate a hand-to-hand struggle occurred before the teenager was killed.

A lab report, based on an examination of the two sweatshirts Martin was wearing, found holes and gunshot residue consistent with a “contact shot,” meaning the gun was pressed against Martin’s chest. An autopsy report said that the gunshot wound indicated he was shot from an “intermediate range,” which experts say is between one and 18 inches away.

Zimmerman Case - Evidence Released, But Where?

[MSNBC has 183 pages of documents]

[UPDATE: ABC News has quite a headline:

Cops, Witnesses Back Up George Zimmerman's Version of Trayvon Martin Shooting

MSNBC:

Court docs: Trayvon Martin shooting 'ultimately avoidable by Zimmerman']

The Orlando Sentinel has a story on the new Zimmerman evidence dump but I can't find the raw material at the court website yet. [MSNBC has 183 pages here.]

JACKSONVILLE - Never before seen evidence in the case against George Zimmerman shows that Sanford Police believed the encounter between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin was "ultimately avoidable," if Zimmerman had "remained in his vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement," according to hundreds of pages of evidence in the case released this afternoon.

Direct TV prepared the arrest affidavit: "Don't get out of your car.  If you get out of your car...".

Somehow, an even more helpful societal message - don't punch strangers in the face - seems to have been lost.

There is a cryptic tox result:

The autopsy report says there was THC — the active chemical found in marijuana — in Trayvon's blood and urine.

Before I say "I told you so", let me ask this - would this result indicate recent drug use, as in, Martin went out for a smoke to prime himself for the NBA All-Star game, or would it mean he had smoked in the previous weeks or month (Martin was on suspension for having an empty marijuana baggie, after all)? I know the normal employment test can pick up deferred use, but maybe this was a more time-sensitive blood test or some such. [In UPDATES I am currently concluding the drug use was probably *not* recent, but I am hardly an expert.]

Zimmerman did say on the 911 call that Martin looked like he was "on drugs or something".  The defense will find this to be very interesting.

The report by Serino said Martin had $40.15, Skittles candy, a red lighter, headphones and a photo pin in his pocket.

A lighter but nothing to light. He smoked 'em, he ditched 'em, he never had 'em. Pick one.

MORE: CNN posts the autopsy and has a story on the drug result:

(CNN) -- Trayvon Martin had drugs in his system when he was fatally shot earlier this year by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, according to autopsy results released Thursday.

Martin's blood contained THC, which is the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to an autopsy conducted February 27 -- the day after the teenager was shot dead.

Toxicology tests found elements of the drug in the teenager's chest blood -- 1.5 nanograms per milliliter of one type (THC), as well as 7.3 nanograms of another type (THC-COOH) -- according to the medical examiner's report. There was also a presumed positive test of cannabinoids in Martin's urine. It was not immediately clear how significant these amounts were.

Concentrations of THC routinely rise to 100 to 200 ng/ml after marijuana use, though it typically falls to below 5 ng/ml within three hours of it being smoked, according to information on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website.

While some states have zero-tolerance policies for any drug traces for driving while impaired, others set certain benchmarks, the website of California's Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs notes. In Nevada, that equates to 2 ng/ml for THC and 5 ng/ml for THC-COOH -- also known as marijuana metabolite. The cutoff level in Ohio is 2 ng/ml for THC and 50 ng/ml for THC-COOH.

If I am following along, this means that Martin exceeded one impairment threshold but not the other in Nevada and was below both thresholds in Ohio. And the obvious caveat is that the autopsy was a day later; I have no idea whether death would halt the breakdown of those drugs, but I bet we will find out.

From the California branch of NORML:

Blood tests are a better detector of recent use, since they measure the actual presence of THC in the system. Because they are invasive and difficult to administer, blood tests are used less frequently. They are typically used in investigations of accidents, injuries and DUIs, where they can give a useful indication of whether the subject was actually under the influence.

We also learn that as THC is metabolized it forms

THC-COOH, which can linger in the body for days and weeks with no impairing effects.

And pressing on: 

Blood Tests

Unlike urine tests, blood tests detect the active presence of THC in the bloodstream. In the case of smoked marijuana, THC peaks rapidly in the first few minutes after inhaling, often to levels above 100 ng/ml in blood plasma. It then declines quickly to single-digit levels within an hour. High THC levels are therefore a good indication that the subject has smoked marijuana recently. THC can remain at low but detectable levels of 1- 2 ng/ml for 8 hours or more without any measurable signs of impairment. Chronic users have been found to show residual blood THC levels of 1.5 (+/- 0.5) ng/ml for a full week after ceasing use [Karschner].

Note: THC blood levels above are recorded in terms of concentration in serum or plasma. Most U.S. labs report levels based on whole blood instead. Concentrations in whole blood are about half as high. Therefore 1 - 2 ng/ml in plasma is equal to 0.5 - 1.0 ng/ml in whole blood.

Unlike urine, blood test results can give a useful indicator of whether one is impaired by marijuana. Studies have shown that high THC blood levels are correlated with impaired driving. An expert panel review of scientific studies on driving under the influence of cannabis concluded that THC levels above 7 - 10 ng/ml in plasma or 3.5 - 5 ng/ml in blood indicate likely impairment [Grotenhermen].

More here:

Marijuana and Impairment
In A Primer of Drug Action, pharmacologist Robert Julian, MD, PhD, wrote, “ . . . absorption of inhaled drugs is rapid and complete. The onset of behavioral effects of THC in smoked marijuana occurs almost immediately after smoking begins and corresponds with the rapid attainment of peak concentrations in plasma. Unless more is smoked, the effects seldom last longer than 3 to 4 hours.”

In the Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, Franjo Grotenhermen, MD, wrote, ”Pulmonary [lung] assimilation of inhaled THC causes a maximum plasma concentration within minutes, while psychotropic effects [the “high”] start within seconds to a few minutes, reach a maximum after 15 to 30 minutes, and taper off within 2 or 3 hours.”

In summary, any mental or motor “impairment” is associated with the psychotropic effects (the “high”), and these effects are equally associated with pain relief. When the plasma THC levels return to low-levels at 3 hours and baseline around 4 hours after smoking marijuana, the high resolves, and so too does any impairment. This is important: no impairment after 3 or 4 hours from taking THC.

Nevada talked about raising the level to 15.

And this chart (from a marijuana advocacy group) shows THC and THC-COOH levels after one joint. If we work with that, it is hard to see how Martin could have smoked a joint in the previous hour.

IF I CAN GET OFF DRUGS FOR A MOMENT: The Orlando Sentinel is continually updating their story, which now includes this on the screaming:

Two FBI audio specialists tried to identify who was screaming in the background of one 911 call and concluded it was impossible, according to the documents. The quality of the recording was not good enough and the screams didn't last long enough, they wrote.

We gleaned this from the bond hearing, but I will take another "Told you so". And while I indulge my dark side, let me wonder about this - does "Dolt" mean "Dances on lefty tools"?

The FBI report audio report starts on p. 146. The FBI took a listen to the "Effing Punks/Phones/C**ns/Pukes" mystery but came up empty; the FDLE took a stand in their arrest affidavit, apparently on their own initiative.

As to the screaming (p. 147-8):

"ULTIMATELY AVOIDABLE": Several news outlets are keying on the notion that the tragedy was "ultimately aviodble" if Zimmerman had stayed in his car. The complete passage includes a second scenario - Zimmerman identifies himself as a concerned citizen:

It is not clear at all as to how their encounter unfolded, so how do we know this did not happen? And in any case, both Jeralyn Merritt and Bill Jacobson explain that this "Butterfly Effect" theory of the crime is not how the law works.

THE CHALLENGE OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: Two people (the 13 year old and a woman) saw someone lying on the ground calling for help, but no assailant.  That's on p. 42.

ID'ING The SCREAM: Mr. Martin's statement (p. 56) that the screaming heard on a 911 call was not from Trayvon was not helpful to an arrest:

DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

This 7-Eleven video seems to have a timeatamp in the upper left corner. One set of numbers is fixed at 18:9:9, which woul dbe one second short of 7PM.

However, the numbers that actually change as the 'action' unfolds run from 23:44 to 24:14 (roughly half a minute), with the lead numbers apparently cut from the picture. Presumably the missing hour number does not correspond to 7PM, so I infer that either (a) Martin left the 7-Eleven at 6:24 and took a slow walk home, or (b) that timestamp means something else entirely, or is erroneous.

Presumably the police have pinned this down, but I don't see it in the reports.

 

Zimmerman Case - Eyewitness Contamination and Witness Deconstruction

Jeralyn Merritt tracks the evolution of a witness's story from her first 911 call on through various media appearances.

This is the 'mystery witness' on Anderson Cooper, who saw little and heard less, but has been getting more emphatic over time. My snark for the first Cooper interview - "Anyone autotuning that should include "Getting dark, too dark to see; feel like someone's knocking on heaven's door".

That said, the O'Mara defense team will be going through this exercise to prep for this possible witness. If they are smart (and want to hold down the billable hours), they will start with Ms. Merritt's work.

Obama Brings Unity To Washington

It's Hope and Change we can believe in as Obama proposes legislation that sweeps to unanimous votes in the House and Senate:

President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.

Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

It's great to see Obama uniting Washington and developing some momentum. Especially as that momentum seems to be carrying him to the exit.

Zimmerman Case - Keeping Hate Alive At The Times

The NY Times can't quite bring itself to report on the latest news in the Zimmerman case - Zimmerman's medical file shows he was banged up and Martin's autopsy showed bloody knuckles - so they hand the mike to the Ben Crump, the Martin family attorney, and rehash every possible mistake made by the Sanford PD.

Presumably their goal is to pretend that, however ludicrous the current situation, the media and the prosecutor acted in good faith in bringing us here.

What would really be impressive would be a mea culpa about the Times mis-reporting and errors. Some of those errors have been corrected. On the other hand, the Times also makes new ones, such as the laugher in today's story (my emphasis):

Given Mr. Zimmerman’s assertion that he was acting in self-defense, and lacking enough evidence to the contrary, the original prosecutor in the case, Norm Wolfinger, whose jurisdiction includes Sanford, filed no charges against him.

That decision resulted in an increasingly strident public outcry. After Gov. Rick Scott of Florida contacted Mr. Wolfinger and had a conversation with him in late March, the prosecutor recused himself, citing, among other things, an unspecified conflict of interest.

He cited "an unspecified conflict of interest"? Really? Until I can find the full letter I will have to rely on this reporting, which quotes the letter as follows:

"In the interest of the public safety of the citizens of Seminole County and to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, I would respectfully request the executive assignment of another state attorney for the investigation and any prosecution arising from the circumstances surrounding the death of Trayvon B. Martin," Wolfinger wrote.

I think even the Times can understand the difference between the appearance of a conflict and an unspecified conflict. And I am sure many of their readers could, if the Times chose to report this accurately.

Full disclosure - I had my fun with this at the end of March. Basically, lefties and Ben Crump, the Al Sharpton of the South, were screaming that we needed a new investigation, that the Sanford PD was inept, and that DA Wolfinger was covering for their ineptitude by not charging Zimmerman. My goodness, even the Times was aware of some of this.

Then Wolfinger stepped down, citing a desire to avoid the *appearance* of a conflict.  Immediately lefties began screaming that it was Very Suspicious that he had stepped down, and wondering about the mysterious conflict that forced him to do so.

Whatever. The Times may fix this one day.

JUST ONE MORE: The Times can't let go of the notion that slack gun control and Stand Your Ground is the problem:

What appears unchanged since the beginning, however, is that investigators say they do not know who started the fight. Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, which has come to shadow a number of homicide cases since it was adopted in 2005, justifies the use of deadly force in certain threatening situations but does not require a person to retreat. The law became the framework within which the police and prosecutors had to work after Mr. Zimmerman claimed that Mr. Martin confronted and pounced on him.

Stand Your Ground is not in play when the victim is lying on the ground. New York is a 'duty to retreat' state, but no one (with the possible exception of Chuck Norris) has a duty to execute a blinding Ninja back-flip and roll while the assailant is on their chest.

WELL, YES, THIS BOTHERS ME: I think this error has gone unreported:

The vehicle that Mr. Zimmerman was driving when he first spotted Mr. Martin was mistakenly not secured by officers as part of the crime scene. The vehicle was an important link in the fatal encounter because it was where Mr. Zimmerman called the police to report a suspicious teenager in a hooded sweatshirt roaming through the Retreat. Mr. Zimmerman also said he was walking back to the vehicle when he was confronted by Mr. Martin before shooting him.

Yike! I wrote this in late March when I was attempting to sort through the basic geography of the encounter:

However, a perusal of the basic geography says two things: *IF* Zimmerman left his SUV as I have placed it, the idea that Zimmerman cornered Martin is hard to picture.  There are lots of open spaces, lots of ways from A to B, lots of places that are accessible by foot but not so much by car - running away with commitment and purpose should have been a fool-proof strategy.  If, that is, calling 911 or screaming for help was for some reason off the board.  The idea that Zimmerman overtook a scared kid in flight is hard to sustain.

That said, what if Zimmerman parked a bit down Twin Trees Lane towards the informal, unmarked cut through.  Now after he sees Martin run and gets out of his car, maybe he heads up the commons area while Martin was headed down it.  I score that as 'hmmm', because the police surely know where they recovered his car and the revised location doesn't jibe with the 911 call (he couldn't see the club house from down on Twin Trees, and the mailboxes he mentioned are central for the complex and near the clubhouse).  Still, cars can roll - we hope the police have thought this through.

Well, maybe the police haven't thought this through. From the Times story it seems as if the wife recovered the SUV before the police realized its presence or posssible significance. That said this post reassured me as to the SUV placement.

AUTOPISIES AND BULLET WOUNDS: From CBS:

Details from Trayvon Martin's autopsy show the bullet entered the left side of his chest, and shattered the ventrical, one of his heart's two large chambers but the round did not leave his body.

The reports also noted the fatal wound's surrounded by a two-by-two inch pattern called stippling, caused by gunpower burns. It suggests Zimmerman fired inches away from the teenager.

NBC:

Florida teenager Trayvon Martin died from a single gunshot wound to the chest fired from “intermediate range,” according to an autopsy report reviewed Wednesday by NBC News.

The official report, prepared by the medical examiner in Volusia County, Fla., also found that the 17-year-old Martin had one other fresh injury – a small abrasion, no more than a quarter-inch  in size –  on his left ring finger below the knuckle.

"Intermediate range" is described here (gunshot pictures not for the squeamish); the omniscient 'cboldt' advises us it is roughly a few inches to a few feet, presumably depending in part on whether clothing had an effect. Various references and graphic pics here, thanks to 'paulo'.

Intermediate Range Definition: Hot powder grains accompany bullet to wound site & are driven into skin, leaving small red marks on skin - stippling/tattooing

Short & Close Range Definition: Bullet hole, stippling & soot present

Contact Range Definition: Bullet hole, muzzle burn mark & impression of firearm present; loose fit - near contact; cornea of soot may be present where weapon not placed directly against skin

Assuming Zimmerman is right-handed, if Martin was facing him Zimmerman would probably shoot him on the left side, as described.

At the bond hearing CNN missed it in their transcript but a live blogger had thisL:

10:46 - [Lead investigator] Gilbreath says evidence says the gunshot was in close proximity due to powder burns on the sweatshirt and stippling.

CNN recapped that:

And then the judge - right to the heart of it -- asked about the stippling of the gun and how close and about the gun shot. Well, what does that show? It shows that there was not a shooting at a distance, but that there was apparently mutual combat where the two of them were engaged within immediate proximity to each other, which suggests that one really doesn't know what happened because it wasn't from a distance which would show a depraved mind, but, in fact, right there during regional combat.

"Regional"?

Memes Immortal

Some bad "facts" are too good to bury - here is Taylor Marsh commenting on the latest medical news in the Zimmerman case, with a focus on his Adderall use:

The Orlando Sentinel reported in March that George Zimmerman “called 911 dozens of times in the months that led to the fatal shooting.” He would report “suspicious persons” who also happened to be black four times, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

So, you have an unarmed teenage African American male being followed by a man who thinks Trayvon Martin is “a real suspicious guy,” who also sounds paranoid.

My goodness - was it really over a month ago we pried a correction out of the NY Times on the 911 call question? Rod Dreher was citing the 46 calls in fourteen months as evidence of Zimmerman's paranoia, and eventually the Paper of Record nodded to reality - the 46 calls dated from 2004, not January 2011.

That won't change the narrative for some, but it would be nice if the delegates from the Reality-Based Community could come to agreement on some basic facts.

And while on that topic of Memes Immortal, New York Magazine delivers this:

The relative size of the men has been debated, with Martin described as 6 feet tall and between 140 and 160 pounds, while Zimmerman is about 5 feet, 9 inches and 200 pounds.

Interesting. A 2005 booking sheet had Zimmerman at 250 lbs, so that was widely reported for a while. When the first ABC video of Zimmerman at the police station was released, folks realized he could only weigh 250 if he had an adamantium skeleton, so new guesses, such as 200 (Miami Herald, in a now-dead link), were offered.

The NY Times chimed in with 170 on April 1, presumably based on Zimmerman's friend Joe Oliver; Zimmerman's current arrest sheet shows 185.

The New Yorker is resisting reality and making Zimmerman a bigger threat than he is. My surprise can only be imagined.

FWIW: If I could have figured out Ms. Marsh's comment registration this post would never have been written. I tried to log on to her site with Facebok and, although I was struck by the scope and achievement of her many friends, I never did find an opportunity to leave a comment.

Now Sugar Eats Your Brain

Rats do it, people do it... consume too much sugar, that is. Also, run through mazes.

Rats consuming a high fructose diet had impaired memory, based on their performance in a maze test.  Adding omega 3 fatty acids back to their diet helped mitigate the fructose problem. However the rats with the best memory function were those who had no (minimal*) fructose and an adequate amount of omega 3s.

This summary leaves the impression that only two groups of rats were tested (high fructose with or without omega 3).

The paper makes it clear that two other groups with no fructose were also tested. The no fructose/deficient omega 3 group did worse on the memory tests than the no fructose/adequate omega 3 group, but not as badly as the high fructose/adequate omega 3 group. The high fructose/deficient omega 3 group brought up the rear, but no, that was not because they had become too obese to waddle thrugh the maze.

The takeaway (assuming this holds up in people, which it will) - Americans eat too much sugar, which contributes to obesity, diabetes, Alzheimers, and other mental deterioration. Fish oil supplementation can help; cutting way, way back on sugar can help more.

All of this is addressed in a new-ish book, "The Blood Sugar Solution" by Dr. Hyman.

And I had a post last February about the inevitable taxation and regulation of sugar. The increase in Western consumption over the last two centuries is astonishing, and apparently beyond our metabolism:

Author Robert Lustig is a YouTube hero for his long lecture on the evils of sugar.  Gary Taubes described Dr. Lustig's thinking in a NY Times magazine article, "Is Sugar Toxic?". The gist of the gist - fructose, half of the common sucrose molecule, is metabolized differently from glucose, the normal constituent of other starchy foods.  Our bodies just weren't designed to process the amounts of fructose people routinely consume these days, and the results are visible everywhere.

A bit of British history:

Britain's annual per capita consumption of sugar was 4lbs in 1704, 18lbs in 1800, 90lbs in 1901 - a 22-fold increase to the point where Britons had the highest sugar intake in Europe.

Here in the US we are up to about 150 lbs per person per year, up about 50% from 1950.  Set against that is the Australian Paradox - since 1980 obesity Down Under has tripled while sugar consumption has fallen.  Hmm... is anyone going to let a bit of science come between them and a new batch of regulations and taxes?

Treats used to be, well, a treat. Now its a breakfast bar. Also, a lunch bar and dessert after dinner. And a snack or two.

As to what is happening Down Under with sugar and obesity, I would love an explanation. A short summary of the original study is here; a rebuttal is here, and the vigorous dissent by Rory Robertson is continued here (Mr. Robertson is another "I dropped sugar and twenty pounds" guy; we are everwhere!). His gist - bad data led to a bad conclusion. Bonus gist - the 'Paradox' authors favor a low glycemic index approach. Since the glycemic index measures glucose in the bloodstream, fructose always scores well.

From the news account:

Professor Swinburn, who is the director of the World Health Organisation collaborating centre for obesity prevention at Deakin University, says the study's summary of the data as showing ''a consistent and substantial decline in total refined or added sugar by Australians over the past 30 years'' belies the facts ''and is a serious over-call in my opinion''.

His conclusion is that ''the ecological trends of sugar and obesity are pretty well matched and I do not believe there is any paradox to explain''.

MINIMAL FRUCTOSE: From the paper:

The two custom diets used were based on the composition of the American Institute of Nutrition diet and prepared commercially (Dyet s, Bethlehem, PA, USA) as previously described (Greiner et al. 2003). Both diets had the same basal macronutrients, vitamins, minerals and basal fats (hydrogenated coconut and safflower oils). For the casein source, vitamin-free casein Alacid 710 (NZMP North America Inc., CA, USA) was used. Dextrose, maltose-dextrin, cornstarch and sucrose were used as carbohydrate sources.

There will be fructose and glucose in the sucrose, so the "no fructose" diet is my misnomer.

It's The Tomahawk Chop For Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Senate and the Cherokee tribe, is fading in at least one of those efforts, but she is delivering great material for Saturday Night Live:

Society: ‘We have no proof’ of Liz Warren’s claim

By Hillary Chabot

Elizabeth Warren’s embattled campaign faced another setback yesterday after the New England Historic Genealogical Society said there is no proof of her Native American heritage, forcing the novice candidate back to square one in the ongoing scandal, according to pundits.

Wild Bill Jacobson gets results!

But it ain't over 'til it's over, and Ms. Warren has another arrow in her quiver:

Another claim of Warren’s Native American lineage had come from her campaign, which had sent the Herald an undated Muskogee Sunday Phoenix article saying Warren’s cousin had “been involved” in the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Oklahoma.

The cousin, Janyne “Candy” Rowsey, is listed in the article as judging a student art show at the museum. Her obituary shows she also edited “Pow Wow Chow,” a Native American cookbook produced by the museum. A spokeswoman at the museum said yesterday that she recognized the Rowsey name but she could not detail the cousin’s involvement at the tribal art museum.

This is a candidate for the US Senate? Wow. Just, wow. OK, just 'pow wow'. Wasn't there a sequel for dog lovers (NO, not Barack!) titled "Bow Wow Chow"? Darn this Amazon...

Waves of nostalgia are washing over me as I have a Nineties flashback. The best thing - actually the only good thing - about seeing the Atlanta Braves in the baseball playoffs each year was watching the painfully PC Jane Fonda doing the Tomahawk Chop.

And now Elizabeth Warren is talking up "Pow Wow Chow" as her entree into Cherokee Nation. SNL should save their scriptwriters some time and just read the Warren press releases.

Zimmerman Medical Evidence

Two new stories on medical evidence in the Zimmerman case:

ABC:

ABC News Exclusive: Zimmerman Medical Report Shows Broken Nose, Lacerations After Trayvon Martin Shooting

A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a "closed fracture" of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation.

Unsurprising, considering neighbors had reported a bandaged-up Zimmerman weeks ago.

WFTV9:

Autopsy results show Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles

SANFORD, Fla. —

WFTV has confirmed that autopsy results show 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles when he died.

The information could support George Zimmerman's claim that Martin beat him up before Zimmerman shot and killed him.

Richard Kurtz, a black (IIRC) mortician who serves the black community, had the good sense to see nothing unusual about Martin when he prepared him for the funeral. Anyone who took that seriously is surprised by the current report. Since you ask, I expressed reservations about the mortician at the end of this old post.

MORE: The all-news WCBS 880 in New York provides this narrative-shifting coverage:

George Zimmerman's head wounds after Trayvon Martin shooting likely bolster self-defense claims

(CBS News) Medical records showing that George Zimmerman was treated for a fractured nose and cuts to the back of his head after fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin will likely bolster Zimmerman's argument that Martin attacked him, CBS News legal analyst Jack Ford said on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday.

...

"This now allows the defense to show up in the courtroom, let George Zimmerman tell his story and bring in a medical expert that says, 'Black and blue under the eyes, broken nose, cut on the back of the head,'" said Ford, "and the defense can argue that's consistent with George Zimmerman being attacked by Trayvon Martin, and then the Stand Your Ground defense comes into play."

Well, Stand Your Ground doesn't apply when you are lying on the ground, but we get his drift.

They have some pushback a bit later in the story:

Ford, a former prosecutor, said that the medical report's revelations, while not good for the prosecution, don't exactly torpedo their case.

"Here's what you're going to get: I'm sure the prosecution is going to say, 'Hey, you know what this shows? This shows that Trayvon Martin was fighting for his life because he was attacked by George Zimmerman here,'" said Ford, "and the defense is going to say, 'That's not so at all, and we've got the medical testimony to show it.'"

Hmm. Just how are they going to contradict Zimmerman's story? From the Zimmerman bond hearing when O'Mara, the defense counsel, was grilling Gilbreath, the lead investigator for the state:

O'MARA: [Do you have] Any evidence that conflicts any eyewitnesses, anything that conflicts with the contention that Mr. Martin assaulted first?

GILBREATH: That contention that was given to us by him, other than filling in the figures being one following or chasing the other one, as to who threw the first blow, no.

The state can certainly speculate but at some point their story needs to explain these injuries to Zimmerman and Martin. How they establish beyond a reasonable doubt their theory of Zimmerman as a depraved aggressor without actual evidence remains a bit of a puzzle. Jeralyn Merritt offers a well-informed guess as to the state's theory but doesn't think it will fly.

Obama In History, But Not Michelle!

Just when you worried that the wells of self-parody would one day go dry, Team Obama delivers. Now it is Obama In History, with little adendums to each Presidential biography (ex Ford) going back to Coolidge. You don't really want to be reading about, for example, Harry Truman when you could be reading about a truly important figure?

In a 1946 letter to the National Urban League, President Truman wrote that the government has "an obligation to see that the civil rights of every citizen are fully and equally protected.” He ended racial segregation in civil service and the armed forces in 1948. Today the Obama Administration continues to strive toward upholding the civil rights of its citizens, repealing  Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, allowing people of all sexual orientations to serve openly in our armed forces.

And you might like Ike, but honestly...

President Dwight Eisenhower established the President's Council on Youth Fitness on July 16, 1956 (now known as The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports) after learning from a study that American youth were less fit than European youth. Today the Council is still going strong—with Olympians and professional athletes on board—working in conjunction with the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiativeto help promote healthier lifestyles.

I was sort of expecting something pithier. Maybe:

As Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces Generl Eisenhower led Allied troops into battle against Nazi Germany. Later, Barack Obama led a team of concerned neighbors that removed a lot of the asbestos from Altgeld Gardens.

That is sort of off-topic. How about...

President Dwight Eisenhower established the President's Council on Youth Fitness on July 16, 1956 (now known as The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports) after learning from a study that American youth were less fit than European youth. Today, Barack Obama looks wicked buff in a bathing suit and has finally quit smoking, probably.

I may not really have found the spirit. Let's help with the Gerald Ford entry, or any other great achievements that help put Obama in a soft, flattering light (I have dibs on Mariano's 600th save...).

And what about the ladies? What sort of a war on women is the White House waging that none of the First Lady bios have been updated to reflect Michelle's many contributions to our health, happiness and hilarity? What kind of role modeling is this? How do Sasha and Malia sob themselves to sleep at ight knowing their mom is overlooked and underappreciated?

UNEXPECTED: I love the punchy, pithy Richard Nixon entry:

Richard Nixon vetoed the War Powers Act. Barack Oabma ignored it.

Oh, I wish. Well, I would love it if it were the entry...

Zimmerman Case - Hints About Witnesses And Evidence

The Orlando Sentinel got a peek at the prosecutor's list of evidence and witnesses in the Zimmerman case [and a more comprehensive leak]:

George Zimmerman prosecutors file list of witnesses, evidence in Trayvon Martin shooting

By Rene Stutzman and Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel

SANFORD — As many eagerly awaited the release of never-before-seen evidence in the case against George Zimmerman, members of Special Prosecutor Angela Corey's office provided a preview on Monday in the form of an eight-page document.

The paperwork, filed with the Seminole County clerk as closing time approached, included a list of witnesses the state plans to call and identified several pieces of the evidence prosecutors expect to use to support a second-degree-murder charge in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

...

The list includes new video evidence from the night of the shooting — both from the 7-Eleven store where Trayvon reportedly purchased Skittles and Arizona iced tea and from a clubhouse in Retreat at Twin Lakes, the townhouse complex where the teen was killed.

I have read (Jeff Lipkes, American Thinker) that the 7-Eleven tape runs from 6 PM to 6:30 PM, which means Martin took a looong walk home.

I sense a head fake here:

Also listed are two employees with the Volusia County medical examiner's office and a pair of Federal Bureau of Investigation audio experts. The list also includes Tom Owen and Ed Primeau, two audio analysts who told the Sentinel they believe the screams heard in one 911 call were those of Trayvon, not Zimmerman.

At Zimmerman's bond hearing the lead investigator talked down the audio experts:

O'MARA: Witnesses heard people arguing, sounded like a struggle. During this time, witnesses heard numerous calls for help. Some of this was recorded. Trayvon's mom reviewed the 911 calls and identified the cry for help and Trayvon Martin's voice. Did you do any forensic analysis on that voice tape?

GILBREATH: Did I?

O'MARA: Did you or are you aware of anything?

GILBREATH: The "Orlando Sentinel" had someone do it and the FBI has had someone do it.

O'MARA: Is that part of your investigation?

GILBREATH: Yes.

O'MARA: Has that given any insight as to the voice?

GILBREATH: No.

Yet now they are on the witness list? Interesting. I have been a broken record saying this sort of audio match can only be made in heaven. On the other hand, the prosecutor won't be putting these people on the stand to explain their limitations and inconclusive results. So, are they there to force a bit of wheel spinning by the defense?

I am waiting to see this at the court website, bit so far, no good.

SPOT THE WITNESS: OK, who are we is W6?

One of the 911 callers, identified as "W6," gave four statements to authorities about the shooting, two to Sanford police, one to FDLE and one to the prosecution's lead trial attorney, Bernie de la Rionda.

I say it is either the kid whose big sister called 911, or that blond woman who went on and on about how she couldn't see anything but Zimmerman looked guilty (Mary Cutcher!). I'll bet the blond in a pinch.

Junk Science And Liberal Porn

Andrew Ferguson writes in The Weekly Standard on

The New Phrenology

How liberal psychopundits understand the conservative brain.

His gist - lefty social scientists churn out "studies" proving that lefties are more thoughtful, more reflective, mor compassionate, and just all around better people; other lefties review their breakthrough stuff and it gets published and quoted. However, the studies are silly and, given the absurd sampling, only have the potential of offering insight into the values and thought processes of undergraduate Asian-American psych majors.

Just for fun (OK, "fun", but for some of us it is), here is pundit Thomas Edsall, writing in the NY Times and citing some of the same papers mocked and debunked by Ferguson.

TO BE FAIR: Ferguson makes much of the fact that the samples look nothing like America, or really, anywhere except maybe the psych department of a California university. However, the authors claim that their resutls show no sensitivity to race or gender. Maybe!

That still leaves us wondering whether twenty year old psych majors really have the same approach to life as, I don't know forty year old self-employed businessman. Or union workers.

 

Obama's Leadership And A Same-Sex Marriage Surprise

The NY Times has a new poll out; they lead with one bit of bad news for Obama and bury another.

Their lead:

Obama’s Switch on Same-Sex Marriage Stirs Skepticism

By PETER BAKER and DALIA SUSSMAN

WASHINGTON — Most Americans suspect that President Obama was motivated by politics, not policy, when he declared his support for same-sex marriage, according to a new poll released on Monday, suggesting that the unplanned way it was announced shaped public attitudes.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought that Mr. Obama had made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, with nearly half of Democrats agreeing.

The results reinforce the concerns of White House aides and Democratic strategists who worried that the sequence of events leading up to the announcement last week made it look calculated rather than principled.

It appears that Obama's re-election slogan - "Obama Killed Osama, That Notorious Gay Marriage Opponent" - may need to be reworked.

The Times is hilarious on the political motivation:

Mr. Obama’s team is counting on the notion that whatever he might lose in votes or intensity of support will be offset by increased excitement among young voters and his liberal base.

"Increased excitment"? What about increased donations? Ooops, can't get the Times to mention the corrupting power of big money in politics on this topic.

And this poll result will surprise everyone accustomed to reading about the newfound acceptance of gay marriage:

About 4 in 10, or 38 percent, of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent favor civil unions short of formal marriage. Thirty-three percent oppose any form of legal recognition. When civil unions are eliminated as an option, opposition to same-sex marriage rises to 51 percent, compared with 42 percent support.

So the 24 percent favoring civil unions by and large do not favor marriage as their second choice.

The NY Times has to be kidding with this expression of puzzlement about state's rights versus Federal involvement:

The situation remains so uncertain in part because, as the poll showed, the public is deeply conflicted on the issue. Consider the responses to two questions: Just 32 percent said the federal government should determine whether same-sex marriage is legal, rather than leaving it to the states. But 50 percent favored an amendment to the federal Constitution allowing marriage only between a man and a woman and overruling state laws to the contrary.

Just to survey a citizen at random, let me offer my opinion - I would be delighted to see this issue left to the states, so count me among the 68 percent who do not favor a new Federal law.

However, the gay rights activists have every intention of getting this issue to the Supreme Court, which will then discover a constitutional right to gay marriage. As James Taranto of the WSJ explained, Kennedy will lead the way.

Faced with that, many respondents might view a Constitutional amendment as a useful firewall against an energetic Supreme Court.

I may as well restate my current Official Editorial Position on the Supreme Court involvement:

My view on the judicial cram-down approach has evolved as well.  I still think it's coming, but it won't be as bad as the permanently divisive Roe v. Wade - experience will tell whether gay marriage strengthens, weakens or has no effect on marriage; experience with abortion hasn't, and won't, tell us whether life begins at conception.

Gay marriage is a feel-good liberal experiment and I certainly hope it works out well. Yes, it would get off to an even better start if it were adopted by a legislative process or popular vote but that won't be the way it develops in most of the country.

FUTURE FUN: If Obama gets re-elected (shudder!) we can look to the day when the Supremes find in favor of gay marriage and our First Former Constitutional Law Lecturer can express his great surprise that it did not remain a state issue.

Of course, a President Romney couldn't stop this freight train either.

Native Pride

Elizabeth Warren is still proud of whatever her heritage is. Even the New Yorker, in the person of Amy Davidson, is troubled:

She put herself down as Native American for the lunch invitations, and stopped when none were forthcoming? Hearing that from a woman who knows how to be straightforward—and who would now surely be able to issue some invitations on her own—one can’t help but wince. She has since augmented that with talk of old family photographs and high cheekbones. One can be a strong, unequivocal supporter of affirmative action, and still be impatient with her on this one. The problem is that even if you accept Warren’s explanation entirely at face value—that this was all about a Native American woman looking for other Native Americans to talk to—it doesn’t sound good. She doesn’t appear to have looked very hard, for one thing. No one has an obligation to be a spokesman or advocate for any ethnic group, or to turn one’s life into a readable catalog. And yet what Warren is saying is that when she was a junior faculty member, and relatively powerless, she opened herself up, waiting to be asked; as a senior professor, and in a position to be the asker, or at least a resource, she took her name off the list.

That's her story and she is sticking to it. Proudly.

The Witching Hour Open Thread

Away we go.

Send Better Agitprop

By way of Sarah Hoyt, guest-blogging at the InstaPundit, I am sent to this post by Herbert London at Pajama Media about the differing treatment of Muslims, Catholics and Jews under ObamaCare.

He gets off to an interesting start:

ObamaCare uses the Social Security language of the Internal Revenue Code to determine who is eligible for “religious conscience” objection to the insurance mandate. Specifically, the law provides exemptions for adherents of “recognized religious sects” that are “conscientiously opposed” to accepting benefits from any insurance, public or private.

As a consequence of this provision, Muslims may claim a religious exemption that is denied Christians and Jews. Since Islam believes insurance is haraam (forbidden) and likens insurance to gambling, the religion is excluded from requirements, mandates, or penalties set forth in the bill. Others who fall into this category are the Amish, American Indians, and Christian Scientists. Although the U.S. Constitution grants all Americans equal protection of the law, some Americans are more equal than others.

Ok, I can go with the flow here. I recall Quakers and conscientous objectors being exempt from the draft into military service, so similar logic may apply here.

This, however, is when the red flags started waving (my emphasis):

In a curious way the privilege granted Muslims and denied to most others translates into what Muslims call “dhimmitude,” or the taxing of non-Muslims in exchange for the acceptance of their presence. Intentionally or not, ObamaCare allows for the establishment of this practice and Sharia dictates in the United States. Conversely, if a Christian refuses to pay for required health care insurance, liens can be placed against assets and hard prison time could accompany noncompliance. Non-Muslims are, in effect, paying a tax to subsidize Muslims.

Oh, now, back up - the individual mandate enforcement mechanisms in ObamaCare were famously and comically toothless.

Hard prison time will not be accompanying non-compliance; liens may technically arise (per one expert) but cannot be published or filed.

With my confidence cratered, I went back to check the primary claim of Muslim exemption, and guess what? Snopes has tackled this very topic.

Their short answer is FALSE.  Their gist is that exemptions from ObamaCare will parallel exemptions from paying the Social Security tax. Some religious groups, such as the Amish, have a long history of seeking and receiving such an exemption (as well as a loss of Social Security benefits), so they would probably receive a similar exemption from ObamaCare.

But per Snopes, Muslims in the US have no history of seeking exemption from Social Security. Absent that precedent their prospects of a successful waiver from the ObamaCare mandate are slim.

Send better agitprop.