The Grand Jury Decision: Something That Means Nothing

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I wasn’t going to write anything about the decision to not take the Martin-Zimmerman case to a grand jury, because it doesn’t mean anything. But yesterday I kept running into people on the Web who were wailing that it meant the prosecutor will let Zimmerman walk. No, it just means she’s not going to seek a death penalty.

But then this morning I read this, by Tim F. at Balloon Juice:

It seems likely that George Zimmerman will walk for shooting an unarmed teenager. The special prosecutor has more or less thrown up her hands and I can hardly blame her, caught between that stupid law and the absolute hash that Sanford PD made of their initial response. That, at least, might go punished. I have some hope that the Federal investigation into their department will at least shame the Sanford PD into doing a better job next time

I would have just left a comment at Balloon Juice, but I seem to be on the twit filter there as none of my comments ever show up on the threads. So here goes — grand juries are only required in Florida in capital murder cases. The prosecutor doesn’t need a grand jury to charge Zimmerman with second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter. Further, I’ve read this particular prosecutor, Angela Corey, has a history of not bothering with grand juries when the law does not require them. Her decision to not use a grand jury doesn’t tell us anything about where she might be headed, one way or another.

But a grand jury outcome would have been unpredictable, and it’s also my understanding that Trayvon Martin’s family had preferred the case not go to a grand jury.

My understanding is that the original prosecutor — the one who was trying to sweep it all under the rug — scheduled a grand jury after the public outcry began. No doubt he thought dumping the case on a grand jury would take the heat off him. No doubt it didn’t work.

In other Zimmerman news, it appears the Zimmerman family has put up a website soliciting donations for Zimmerman’s defense and featuring a photograph of the vandalized black cultural center at Ohio State University (click to enlarge):

click to enlarge

Charles Johnson asks, “Could Zimmerman really be this dumb?” That would be my guess, yes.

Speaking of dumb, alleged pastor Terry “Islam Is of the Devil” Jones, who likes to draw attention to himself by pulling stupid Koran-burning stunts to get U.S. troops killed, led a rally in support of Zimmerman. (“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” — Matthew 7:20, King James Bible)

More War on Women News

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I don’t know how I missed this — Katha Pollitt describes a bill currently in the Wisconsin legislature:

Co-sponsored by two GOP state legislators, Senator Glenn Grothman and Representative Don Pridemore, it directs the state to prepare educational materials that blame “nonmarital parenthood” for child abuse and neglect and “emphasize the role of fathers in the primary prevention” of same. Don’t be fooled by that gender-neutral abstraction “parenthood.” This bill is clearly aimed at shaming and blaming single mothers. “Fathers” after all prevent harm to children, so logically the only parents left to cause it are… yes, those unmentionable women who have the babies without a wedding ring to show for it. You might think that even in Wisconsin it takes two to tango down the aisle, but not according to Senator Grothman, who says, “There’s been a huge change over the last 30 years, and a lot of that change has been the choice of the women.”

Today’s Must Reads

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Krugman, “The Gullible Center.” All hail Krugman.

Motoko Rich, “Federal Funds to Train the Jobless Are Drying Up.” It begins:

With the economy slowly reviving, an executive from Atlas Van Lines recently visited Louisville, Ky., with good news: the company wanted to hire more than 100 truck drivers ahead of the summer moving season.

But a usually reliable source of workers, the local government-financed job center, could offer little help, because the federal money that local officials had designated to help train drivers was already exhausted. Without the government assistance, many of the people who would be interested in applying for the driving jobs could not afford the $4,000 classes to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Now Atlas is struggling to find eligible drivers.

I want some libertarian to tell me why the glorious Free Market (blessings upon It) isn’t finding a way to train workers. However, I’m sure we’ll be told that as soon as government is “out of the way” with its dependency-creating job training programs, the free markets will take over and everything will be fine. Sigh. See also Zandar.

Alex Pareene, “The Coming War on Mormon Jokes.” Now that Mittens is almost certainly the nominee, righties are closing ranks in support of Mormonism and accusing lefties of anti-Mormon bigotry. Next headline news: “Sun to Set in the West.”

Charles Pierce, God of Snark

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I am in awe —

… if there’s one thing that Chuck Grassley is noted for, it is that he is the most spectacular box of rocks, the most bulging bag of hammers, in the history of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. If brains were atom bombs, he couldn’t blow his nose. If his IQ was one point lower, they’d have to water him. As the great Dan Jenkins once put it in another context, if the man had a brain, he’d be out in the yard playing with it.

It’s almost poetry.

Wonders on the Web

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I was going to give a “Well, Aren’t We Just Too Precious” Clueless Self-Absorption Award to Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times, but Jonathan Chait found another emotionally stunted wonder who may deserve it even more.

The blogosphere is all a-twitter today about this blatantly racist screed by NRO’s John Derbyshire. Here’s an abridged version if you don’t have the stomach to wade through the whole thing. “The talk” somebody should have had with Derbyshire is that if you can’t rid yourself of your bigotry, at least have the grace to not pass it on to your children.

Republicans vs. Women

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Joan Walsh:

Just as Mitt Romney was making the case to Newsmax, that paragon of journalistic integrity, that the so-called Republican war on women is entirely concocted by Democrats, Republican Scott Walker was quietly signing a law that repealed Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Enforcement law, which made it easier for women to seek damages in discrimination cases. Driven by state business lobbies, the repeal passed the GOP-dominated Legislature on a strict party line vote, and Walker signed it, with no comment, Thursday afternoon.

President Obama, meanwhile, was hosting a White House summit on women and the economy Thursday. Predictably, Republicans howled that the president is merely courting another “interest group” and playing politics. There was no doubt some politics at play during the summit; at one point participants chanted, “Four more years!”

But really, when Republicans are repealing equal pay laws and proposing federal budgets that disproportionately hurt women, as well as restricting funding for contraception, who’s playing politics with women’s issues?

I read about what the leaders of Fitzwalkerstan did to Wisconsin’s women yesterday, and once again I was astonished at how tone deaf these jerks are. It isn’t just that they dissed women; it was that they couldn’t restrain themselves from dissing women at a time when the dissing of women by Republicans is headline news. They couldn’t even wait until all those caterpillars were distracted by something else.

And as for women being an “interest group” — yes, it’s the default norm syndrome. In their heads white maledome is the default norm, and any part of the population that deviates from the default norm exemplifies some kind of exceptional circumstance that doesn’t require serious consideration.

If you understand that’s how righties think, that they view the world through “default norm” syndrome, then you might see how they could see women as an interest group and the President’s recognition of women’s issues as nothing but “playing politics.” Walsh continues,

We know that most women who use the pill, for instance, use it for a health reason other than contraception only. Republicans are the ones fetishizing birth control and putting it outside the boundaries of women’s health care.

Mitt Romney and the GOP just don’t get it. Everything about the way they’re approaching these issues is backfiring.

Of the tone-deaf wonders who influence conservatives, possibly the most clueless of all is Rushbo himself. He honestly seems to have no idea why women would not want to vote for Republicans.

Women like being free, don’t they? Women love liberty. See, we’re being asked to accept the notion that women are monolithic. That all you have to do is approach every one of them with a lie that Republicans want to take away their birth control pills and just like the independents who don’t like confrontation, women, when they hear Republicans want to take away their birth control pills, make a mad dash to the Democrat Party and looky here, we got a poll to prove it.

Closing Planned Parenthood clinics really does amount to taking birth control away from a great many women. That’s not a scare story; it’s happening. The Blunt Amendment threatened to put contraception out of reach for many other women.

Yes, women do like being free. But for women, if we don’t have control over our own reproduction, none of the rest of the freedoms are going to do us much good. There’s a reason the phrase “barefoot and pregnant” stands for the subjugation of women. IMO it takes a particularly pernicious level of narcissism for a man not to be able to see this at all.

Polls show that most of the independent women who are running from Republicans and toward President Obama are college educated, says Steve Kornacki. These women are primarily concerned about reproduction rights. Might stunts like Walker’s raise the consciousness of blue collar women? If they hear about it, maybe.

See also Ed.

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Police and Cover-ups

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What can one say but … Charles Pierce. This happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina:

One of the things that the country looked at briefly, and then determined that it would look upon it no longer, because what it meant was that the country’s anesthetic lies had lost their potency, occurred on September 4, 2005 on the Danziger Bridge, which carries US-90 (Thanks commenter Bobby Dupont.) across the city’s Industrial Canal. That night, a group of lawless New Orleans Police, all pretense of maintaining civic order literally thrown to the winds, rolled up in a Budget rental truck on a group of citizens who had taken shelter behind some concrete barriers near the bridge and committed an act of unimaginable official terrorism. The cops leaped from the truck and opened fire. Officer Robert Faulcon blew away with a shotgun blast one Ronald Madison, Jr., a 40-year old mentally-challenged man. Faulcon shot Madison in the back. Sgt. Kenneth Bowen jumped out of the front seat of the truck and sprayed the area with an AK-47. Sgt. Robert Gisevius, Jr. jumped out of the back of the truck and opened up with an M-4, while Anthony Villavaso II let go with his own AK. Somewhere in the storm of bullets, another man named James Brissette was killed, too. Four others were wounded.

After the shooting, the cops concocted a plan to cover up what they did. A sergeant named Archie Kaufman, the lead police investigator into the events at the bridge, helped them do it. Evidence was faked. Fraudulent reports were filed. Most of this barbering was done to further the notion that the police had been under fire, in deadly danger, and that the fusillade was unleashed in self-defense against a mob from a city that had become barbarous.

But the Trayvon Martin shooting was an anomaly! And hoodies!

The NOLA police involved were all found guilty, eventually, and this week they were sentenced. Almost seven years later.

Going back and reading earlier stories of the incident, there really is a resemblance to the aftermath of the Trayvn Martin shooting. There was a claim the shooting was in self-defense (later found to be bogus); little care was taken to collect or or preserve evidence properly; the local police seemed to have no interest in investigating or prosecuting anyone.

A state grand jury brought indictments two years after the shooting. The FBI was called in and were still investigating five years after the shooting.

I certainly don’t think all police are capable of this, but … anomaly, my ass. This shows us why it is not at all unreasonable to suspect a police cover up whenever white on black violence goes unprosecuted.

This is from last year’s trial testimony, btw:

After the barrage of bullets stopped, while Susan Bartholomew was lying on a concrete walkway of the Danziger Bridge, the men shooting at Bartholomew’s family ordered her to raise her hands.

But Bartholomew recalled realizing that would be impossible.

“I couldn’t do it, because my arm was shot off,” she said softly. “I raised the only hand I had.”

The good news is that most of the perps got long prison sentences. The bad news s we haven’t seemed to learn anything.