Zimmerman rode with cops, ripped department

This Feb. 27, 2012 photo released by the State Attorney's
Office shows George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch
volunteer who shot Trayvon Martin. The photo and reports
were among evidence released by prosecutors that also
includes calls to police, video and numerous other documents.
The package was received by defense lawyers earlier this
week and released to the media on Thursday, May 17, 2012.

In a city hall forum in 2011, George Zimmerman criticized Sanford police as lazy, saying he knew because he had ridden along with cops.


A year before George Zimmerman killed a Miami Gardens teenager, he stood before a City Hall community forum with a grievance: Sanford cops are lazy, he told the then-mayor elect.


The community college criminal justice major said he knew because he went on ride-alongs with the Sanford Police.


“And what I saw was disgusting,” Zimmerman said, according to a clip of a recording of the January 2011 meeting obtained by The Miami Herald. “The officer showed me his favorite hiding spots for taking naps, explained to me that he doesn’t carry a long gun in his vehicle because, in his words, ‘anything that requires a long gun requires a lot of paperwork, and you’re going to find me as far away from it.’


“He took two lunch breaks and attended a going away party for one of his fellow officers.
  READ MORE

Woman Gets 20 Years for Claimed Warning Shot; Judge Rejected Stand-Your-Ground Immunity

Marissa Alexander

Posted May 23, 2012 9:01 AM CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The latest controversy over Florida’s stand-your-ground law concerns a defendant who argued without success that the defense should bar her prosecution.

Jurors deliberated only 12 minutes before convicting Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Fla., who says she fired a warning shot in an attempt to scare off her abusive husband, report the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and the Florida Times-Union. She was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced earlier this month to 20 years in prison.

A judge had refused to bar the prosecution based on Alexander’s claim she had immunity because of the state’s stand-your-ground law.

The case stems from an August 2010 incident. Alexander had gone to her former home to retrieve her belongings, and encountered her estranged husband there, Time magazine reports. He went into a rage after discovering texts to another man, she says, and threatened her. She went out to her truck, was unable to open the locked garage door, and got her gun from the vehicle, according to her account. She went back inside and fired. The bullet hit the wall.   READ MORE

Several George Zimmerman witnesses change their accounts

By Rene Stutzman and Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel
5:51 p.m. EST, May 22, 2012

 

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.

Here are the key ways in which their stories changed.   READ MORE

 

Evidence in Trayvon Martin Case Released to Public

Posted: May 17, 2012 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Crime

The prosecution evidence that was given to George Zimmerman’s defense last week was released by Special Prosecutor Angela Corey’s office this afternoon. You can read the documents here.
Before the release, someone managed to get out a bit more information favorable to Zimmerman, specifically the fact that Trayvon Martin had traces of THC in his blood and urine when he was killed. From CNN:

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.   READ MORE

 

Actions Speak Louder Than Words: How the Obama Administration Has Worked Behind the Scenes to Advance Marriage Equality

Photo Credit: ShutterStock.com

Ultimately, it's the courts that will ultimately make marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states.

May 18, 2012

The Obama administration has a pretty good record on LGBT issues, but it has also had a sometimes contentious relationship with gay rights activists.

Even in the wake of Obama's “evolution” on marriage last week, some critics seized on his statement that the states should decide whether to offer gay and lesbian Americans equal treatment under the law.

Yet it is only the courts – not the executive or legislative branches – that can require the states to honor same-sex marriages. And actions speak louder than words.

This week, Chris Geidner, senior political editor for the LGBT magazine Metro Weekly, appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour to highlight where the administration has missed opportunities to advance gay civil rights, and to explain how the administration has been working to advance marriage equality nationwide in the courts – out of the glare of the political press. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview (you can listen to the whole show here).   READ MORE

What the Mainstream Media Still Doesn't Get About Big Banks

JPMorgan Chase losing $2 billion on a risky trade has many pundits calling for more regulation. But they're still missing so much of the story.

May 16, 2012

Reading over the coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion fiasco, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the heady early days of the Lesser Depression. Not because the scale or risk is equivalent, but because the naked hubris, incompetence and greed on display have once again stirred up a regulatory fervor among large swaths of the media. 

All of a sudden pundits and editorial boards are sounding less like Paul Ryan and more like Paul Krugman. There are also the predictable right-wing hacks who claim this episode somehow makes the case against the Volcker Rule, the part of Dodd-Frank that bans commercial banks from engaging in speculative bets to increase their own profits, known as “proprietary trading.”

But unfortunately that’s usually where it ends. The issue remains framed through a partisan lens: you can either be in favor of implementing existing regulation or against it, but few voices move beyond those narrow confines. As a result, regulation gets discussed as an important but isolated issue, largely removed from more fundamental problems like income inequality and the power corporations exert over both parties.  READ MORE

A Night at the Vibrator Museum

Photo Credit: Miss Karen via Flick

Early vibrators were hand-cranked, two-person jobs -- and prescribed by doctors. How far we've come since then.

May 20, 2012

This story was originally published at Salon.

 I can now say that I’ve used a turn-of-the-century vibrator — on my hand, but still.

The silver, hand-cranked contraption is usually kept behind glass at Good Vibrations’ Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco — but staff sexologist Carol Queen made a rare exception. “This is very special,” she whispered, unlocking the case and carefully pulling out Dr. Johansen’s Auto Vibrator, a relic from 1904. The “auto” part is not so much: It was a two-person job, with her having to crank the device’s handle to get it thrumming. Pressing my finger tips to its inch-wide circular platform of pleasure, I was pleasantly surprised by its power.

As I was by the two other vintage vibrators that I got to try out — the White Cross Electric Vibrator from 1917, which has a pronged aperture that makes it seem like the ancestor of Jimmyjane’s Form 2, and the Beautysafe Vibrator from the 1940s, which is reminiscent in look, feel and sound to a car waxer.

  READ MORE