And The Redemption Of Trayvon's Killer BeginsIn Earnest

Retuers gives us this story where supports and friends of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin last month, say Zimmerman is now hiding because he's afraid for his life.

George Zimmerman, who has claimed he shot Trayvon Martin on February 26 in self-defense, is staying in an undisclosed location after widely circulated death threats and word of a $10,000 bounty to find him, said legal adviser Craig Sonner, who said he would represent Zimmerman if charges are filed.

Widely circulated death threats? A bounty on his life?  From whom? 

Members of the New Black Panther Party are offering a $10,000 reward for the "capture" of George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot Trayvon Martin.

New Black Panther leader Mikhail Muhammad announced the reward during a protest in Sanford Saturday. And when asked whether he was inciting violence, Muhammad replied defiantly: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Oh, of course.  So, we have to worry about all black people now turning into feral killers on short fuses.  How silly of me to miss the obvious.  I forgot the New Black Panther Party represents every black person everywhere under the Transitive Properties Of Blackness.  Just like Stormfront and the militia movement represents all white folks, right?

This is going to get far worse before it gets better.

StupidiNews!

• As President Obama visits South Korea for a summit on securing the world's nuclear material, North Korea is preparing another long-range rocket test.
• An Iraqi woman living in California who was brutally beaten in her home and left with a note to "go back to your own country" has died over the weekend.
• Pope Benedict XVI will visit the island of Cuba today, but he'll find an island increasingly dominated by the reformist politics of Raul Castro.
• Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is warning that Spain's debt crisis could reignite the European debt time bomb.
• Researchers say logging into Facebook and Google from other sites may pose a security risk for such "single sign-on" applications.

Last Call

And Colonel Mustard goes there on the Trayvon Martin shooting.

With the evidence not seeming to be as conclusive as public opinion in the Martin case, this is being set up for a major blow-up, in which expectations and agitation confront the legal rights of the accused.

We know what happens when there is no outlet, when a case has been so used for racial politics that a portion of the public will not accept anything less than a conviction, and where tempers have been so inflamed that flames are the result.

We may not be there yet, but if we allow the narrative to continue as it has, with the racial agitators leading the way, we may get there.

Responsible Democratic and Republican leaders should — as many have done – demand a thorough investigation in which the outcome is not prejudged, and should have the guts to stand up to the Al Sharptons of the world.

Because in the end, us darkies are nothing more than thuggish, grunting beasts who will destroy the country and kill your loved ones, folks.  Best we sweep Trayvon's body under the rug before Obama and his race-hate merchants raise an army against the God-fearing whites of this great nation.

You know Jacobson here was firmly in the blowhard overpaid "legal expert" comic relief section of the Wingersphere up until now, but this is pretty much a foray into outright racist asshole territory, and he deserves to be called out on it.  If an unarmed white teenager had been shot by an older black man and then claimed "Stand Your Ground" and wasn't arrested for it, it would still be an awful, senseless death, the Stand Your Ground law in Florida would still be completely ludicrous, and the crime would still be tragic in the extreme.

The difference would be that Jacobson and his buddies would be calling for the death penalty, and that the dead white teenager should have been allowed to carry his own gun, because what we really need to introduce here is easier deadly force in America.

For a man worried about rioting, that seems an odd position to take.  Unless of course Jacobson is suggesting that white America needs to arm themselves more than ever.

Meanwhile, I offer this segment of Sunday's Melissa Harris-Perry Show on Stand Your Ground.



This is what we should be talking about.  Not riots.  Ass.  And please, show where Rev. Al here is fomenting racial violence, please.

Splitting The Coalition

"Blacks and Latinos killed same-sex marriage in California" is one of the nastiest lies out of 2008, and it's been held against those groups by some in the left now for years.  It's still being held against blacks in particular when it comes to President Obama's "refusal" to fully embrace same-sex marriage as a right.  It's one of the most egregious wedges being driven into the Obama coalition, and the mistruths surrounding that are still on display today, as National Journal's Josh Kraushaar goes after the President's "evolution" by saying "black voters won't support him" is the reason he won't come out for same-sex marriage.  This black voter disagrees.

Public opinion on gay marriage is pretty straightforward.  There's a huge generational divide - with older voters solidly opposed, and younger voters solidly supportive.  Over time, support for gay marriage should increase.  And if Obama came out in support of gay marriage, he would probably excite and inspire many college-aged Democrats to show up at the polls and support him -- not to mention winning back some socially-moderate independents who have been disenchanted with the president over the economy.

But college-aged voters are only part of the president's coalition.  The bigger element consists of African-American voters, who are solidly opposed to gay marriage. California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage passed in 2008 thanks to overwhelming black support; 70 percent backed it, according to exit polls.  Recent gay marriage legislation in Maryland drew opposition from leading Democratic African-American legislators in the state.  The same ministers organizing get-out-the-vote efforts in black churches for Obama are also railing against gay marriage.

Obama can't afford to even risk losing the deep enthusiasm black voters have towards him.  They gave Obama a whopping 95 percent of the vote against John McCain last year and turned out at historic levels.  He should get similar levels of support this year, but with the down economy disproportionately affecting the black community, he's not at all assured that they'll turn out at the same level as 2008.  Backing gay marriage would virtually guarantee that some would stay home - perhaps enough to tip the balance in states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.

My main problem with this is the assumption that African-Americans are being singled out for this, because according to Krausharr, we're homophobic bigots.  That "70% of black voters backing Prop 8" in California has been thrown at blacks relentlessly over the last three years as well.  The reality is more complex and more detailed.

Since the passage of Proposition 8, much has been said about the supposed dramatic opposition to marriage equality among African Americans, fueled by National Election Pool (NEP) figures based on sampling in only a few precincts that erroneously indicated 70 percent of California’s African Americans supported Proposition 8. The study found that when religious service attendance was factored out, however, there was no significant difference between African Americans and other groups.

In other words, people of all races and ethnicities who worship at least once a week overwhelmingly supported Proposition 8, with support among white, Asian and Latino frequent churchgoers actually being greater than among African Americans. 

There's also the rather inconvenient fact that anti gay marriage votes in states with tiny black populations also passed, states like Kentucky, Montana, Oregon, and South Dakota.  It certainly wasn't black voters who made the difference there.  And note what the unifying factor is in opposition to same-sex marriage among all races seems to be:  religion.  Specifically, devout evangelical Christianity in the Southern US.  Where do the majority of African-Americans live in the United States?  The Southern US.  Yes, black pastors in Maryland did oppose same-sex marriage.  So did white pastors.  And the bill passed anyway.

The problem with singling out African-Americans as people who will jump ship as opposed to whites, evangelicals, or older Americans if President Obama comes out for gay marriage is that it isn't completely fair to do so.  We know what it's like to be second-class citizens.  This one in particular backs gay marriage as a right.

I'm hoping that President Obama will do the right thing sooner rather than later.  But let's not dump the entirely of the political cost he'll pay for doing so -- and there will be a political cost -- on African-Americans alone.  That's unfair and incorrect.

I Thought That Bucked Of Blood Looked Familiar...

So, they are remaking Carrie (the Stephen King classic).  It is still being cast, but it's a good time for this story to come back out to a fresh generation.  The theme of bullying, redemption, and some good old ass-kicking for being mean never goes out of style.  If they stay true to the story, the religious craziness was always the part that disturbed me the most.  Especially if you read the book and get full exposure to her mother's insanity.

Carrie always amazed me, that a young man could get into the head of a teenage girl and paint such a realistic person.  In his book On Writing, King admits he never liked Carrie White, he found himself as disgusted as the girls did.  I can understand.  The entire time I was hoping for better, I was still grossed out deeply by her, and through no fault of her own.  I actually felt guilty for not liking her, which was his purpose.

Burden Of Backing Up Data Is On The Owner

SEATTLE — When Faron Butler wanted to hear his daughter's voice, he went to the voice mails she left him before she died of cancer at the age of 14.

"If I had a bad day or week, I'd listen to her voice. I'd listen to it a couple of times a week," Butler said Friday from his home in Elma, Wash., holding back tears. "She'd be there, saying, `Daddy, I love you and I miss you.'"

But the voice mails are gone, erased in February when Butler joined a free trial of a messaging service offered by his cellphone carrier, T-Mobile, and he doesn't believe company officials when they say the company can't retrieve them.

The bad news is, I can confirm they cannot be retrieved. While I am not certain of the reason (besides an instant memory flush) I do know T-Mobile has made it clear to sales and support teams that once something like this happens, it's gone for good. It is a bit weird that a change that small would affect it, but it could. It always could.

Public service announcement #1: Any time you have information hosted with someone else, any account change can cause that to be reset. Changing rate plans, taking a promotion, changing billing information, all of those can cause information to be lost or altered. Even employees may not be aware that the requested actions will result in the reset.  As more information is moved to cloud-style storage, this will only become a bigger problem.

Which brings us to Public service announcement #2: If anything precious only exists in one place, find a way to make a backup.  Through speakerphone, recorders, MP3 converters, some visual voicemail apps, there are ways to have backed up this precious voicemail.  After my mother died, I found a draft of an email she was trying to send me on her old computer, and the content was extremely sentimental.  That email exists on dozens of different accounts, in case Yahoo! shuts down or Gmail decides to lose data.  It's important to understand that it is not fair to put a burden of eternal storage on a business, unless that business is data  storage.  Even in the digital world you have to operate on the assumption that shit happens, and think ahead.

I don't want to diminish this man's pain, but to encourage people to help loved ones think ahead and prevent unnecessary repeats of this misery.  There are enough geek forums and tech support choices to back up things we can't live without, please take full advantage of them.

The Big GOP Primary Thread: The Big Sleazy

Rick Santorum easily won the Louisiana GOP primary Saturday, with exit polls showing such a clear win that the race was called by all the major networks as soon as polls closed at 9 PM EDT.  By 11 PM he had about 50% of the vote and Romney was in danger of not even getting the 25% he needed to capture any delegates.

But it was the exit polls that showed the most interesting parts of the story.  75% of primary voters were 45 and older, 94% white.

The troubling news for Romney in the state:  Santorum won self-described conservatives as well as moderates and liberals.  Santorum won voters who said the economy was the most important issue by 13 points (and deficit voters by one point).  Romney did win by 23 points among those who said that a candidate who could defeat President Obama was the most important, but overall that was just 38% of the voters.  Santorum won overwhelmingly among those who were looking for moral or conservative candidates.  Romney didn't even get 10% of either category, and Santorum got 70% of them.  Combined, they made up 46% of the voters.

Here's the real shocker:  44% said Mitt Romney was the most likely candidate who could win.  27% of those folks voted for Santorum anyway, whereas of the third of the voters who said Santorum was the most likely candidate who could win in November, 94% of them indeed put their vote where their opinion was.

More people thought Newt Gingrich understood their problems better than Romney, 26-21%.  42% thought Santorum did.  Most important question, if only Romney and Santorum were on the ballot, Santorum would have won 59-37%.

Now, does any of this matter?  Will Gingrich finally get the hint?  Who knows?  Anyhow, a week from Tuesday brings us to Maryland and Wisconsin.  Will anything have changed by then?  Probably not.

We'll see.

Last Call

How do I know President Obama's nomination of Dr. Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank is an inspired and awesome choice?  Two reasons.  One, all the smart Puritopian money was depressingly convinced that President Obama was going to fail progressives again because he had to choose Larry Summers for the job.

Second, the right is having a small series of heart attacks.

What will be interesting is how a left-wing physician will run the only aid organization with a decent smattering of free market economists, who have tried, sometimes successfully, to help nations build private insurance-based healthcare systems. My suspicion is that more and more of the competent staff will leave, and the Bank will endorse more centralized medical systems development. I guess it has symmetry that as Obamacare is about to be challenged in the Supreme Court, the president doubles down on his intent to move the rest of the world away from private healthcare.

Now go figure, Fred Hiatt is in love, and Noam Scheiber is convinced that Kim's views will be neutered, and therefore President Obama deserves no credit for his selection:

In Kim’s case, it’s not hard to see how that might put him at odds with the Obama administration, at least when it comes to global health, his area of expertise. Kim’s formative professional experience was co-founding and running the group Partners in Health (PIH), which was dedicated to battling expensive, hard-to-treat diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis in the most forsaken places on the planet. To realize that goal, as Ezra Klein points out, Kim and his more famous PIH co-founder, Paul Farmer, had to wage a years-long battle against the global health establishment, which was generally skeptical of the approach. Suffice it to say, he believes in it pretty deeply.

Problem is, the Obama administration has taken a very different (and, in the post-PIH world, equally controversial) position on global health aid: It has slowed the rate of growth in the money the U.S. government spends fighting AIDS and TB abroad, and instead spent a good deal of money on equally deadly but far easier-to-treat illnesses like pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria (especially for children).

I doubt a Wolfensohn or Zoellick type would have challenged this approach—such a person probably wouldn’t have spent much time thinking it through before ascending to the World Bank presidency. But in Kim’s case, opposition to the Obama approach is, you know, the foundational principle of his career. Will he dissent from the Obama administration line or pull his punches?

Just...really?   So, President Obama gets pretty much no credit for doing what the left begged him to do, which is "Please pick anyone but Larry Summers!".  They can't even give him credit for that, it was served to him on a short list by others of course, and now Scheiber is wondering if Kim is going to actually be any better than Summers or if Obama will make him "pull his punches."  Christ.

Yeah, and you wonder why I'm mad at the "professional" Left all the damn time.  They got an inspired choice, Obama surprised them pleasantly and the first thing they ask is "Will Obama just ignore him anyway and keep being the worst administration ever?"

Assholes.

Presented For The Assembled

Glenn Greenwald this morning after being on Real Time With Bill Maher last night:

I was on Real Time with Bill Maher last night and the most contentious debate occurred over the claimed power of the Obama administration to target assassinations of American citizens, such as Anwar Awlaki, without due process. Below is the clip of that discussion. One irony is that is was preceded by a discussion of hate crimes prosecutions (in the context of the Trayvon Martin and Tyler Clementi cases) in which both Maher and Andrew Sullivan insisted that Americans have the inviolable right to express even the most hateful and repellent opinions without being punished for it by the state, yet were both supportive of the Awlaki killing.

Yes.  Greenwald went there.  Obama is no better than Zimmerman.



We're done here.

The Order In The Court

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick makes the argument that the conservatives on the Supreme Court may very well be willing and able to strike down the entire health care reform law...but that they won't do it and for an obvious reason:

So that brings us to the really interesting question: Will the Court’s five conservatives strike it down regardless? That’s what we’re really talking about next week and that has almost nothing to do with law and everything to do with optics, politics, and public opinion. That means that Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the Raich medicinal marijuana case, and Chief Justice John Roberts’ and Anthony Kennedy’s opinions in Comstock only get us so far. Despite the fact that reading the entrails of those opinions suggest that they’d contribute to an easy fifth, sixth, and seventh vote to uphold the individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of Congressional power, the real question isn’t whether those Justices will be bound by 70 years of precedent or their own prior writings on federal power. The only question is whether they will ignore it all to deprive the Obama of one of his signature accomplishments.

But here's the thing:  Lithwick is betting they won't do it, and the reason is if they do, the court loses the Washington Sensible Centrist tag for good.  And John Roberts expects to be Chief Justice for a long, long time.

On the other hand, I’d suggest that there is an equally powerful countervailing force at work on the justices. Because, as it happens, the current court is almost fanatically worried about its legitimacy and declining public confidence in the institution. For over a decade now, the justices have been united in signaling that they are moderate, temperate, and minimalist in their duties. From Chief Justice Robert’s description of himself as just an “umpire” and his speeches about humility and the need for unanimity, to Stephen Breyer’s latest book Making Our Democracy Work—a meditation on all the ways the courts depend on public confidence. Roberts even nodded at that court-wide anxiety by devoting most of his 2011 State of the Judiciary report to issues of recusal and judicial integrity, and by reversing his own policy on same-day audio release, in order to allow the American public to listen in on the health care cases next week (albeit on a two-hour delay). That means that the court goes into this case knowing that the public is desperately interested in the case, desperately divided about the odds, and deeply worried about the neutrality of the court. (Greenhouse points to a Bloomberg News national poll showing that 75 percent of Americans expect the decision to be influenced by the justices’ personal politics.) To hand down a 5-4, ideologically divided opinion just before the Republican and Democratic Party conventions, would—simply put—prove that 75 percent correct, and erode further the public esteem for the court. Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t worry much about things like that. I suspect Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy worry quite a lot.

And with all the cases heading to SCOTUS this year, losing that oh so valuable Sensible Centrist designation and becoming a dreaded Partisan Institution is not something that's going to make Roberts really popular at parties.  His fee-fees would be hurt.  He won't risk it.

At least, not for this.  Now striking down Roe...

T-Mobile Cuts 1,900 Jobs

T-Mobile is closing seven call centers, and increasing hiring at the remaining ones.  They are cutting 1,900 jobs but plan to add approximately 1,400 at the remaining centers.

I'm not surprised.  When the AT&T merger broke in the news, I watched carefully.  When it failed, people rejoiced but it only made sense to me that T-Mobile was going to make some mighty big changes.  I worked for T-Mobile even though I saw the end coming, but finally got out about a month ahead of the cuts.  Our particular location wasn't affected (this time) but I had no way of knowing, and neither did several others who saw the writing on the wall.

For the locations adding jobs, it's good news.  T-Mobile is an excellent place to work, and their benefits are outrageously awesome (though I expect that will be the next thing to go).  They have a structure that really works for the employees, and offsets the sometimes brutally high expectations. To give credit where it's due, they do seem to care about employees.  For example they are offering relocation assistance to those who would follow their job.  They are also offering career counseling to help those who stay find a job that will be a good match for them.

AT&T is crowing today, saying they told the FCC that not allowing the deal to go through would "force" T-Mobile to lay off employees.  Well, not quite.  T-Mobile has had issues in the past, and their investment into their network will inflate their selling price, and laying off employees will increase their profit margin.  More writing on the walls: T-Mobile looks like they are laying the early groundwork to get the hell out of Dodge.  In fact, if the details of the merger are ever released I bet you find TMO reached out to AT&T.

Also, think about this.  AT&T puts up earnest money, TMO keep it but invests it back into a network that AT&T will likely be making a future bid for.  TMO walks with a bit of padding, AT&T claimed its loss and still gets the benefit of how it was spent, and everyone still gets what they want. I'm just saying, it could happen.  It they ever make a second attempt to buy them again, you can bet people will be trying to connect the dots to prove this was just an elaborate plan B.

The Facebook Conundrum

Would you ever give a potential employer your Facebook password?  No freaking way, and no way should it be asked of anyone.

There are the obvious reasons, such as private correspondence and pictures that people have stored with reasonable expectation of privacy.  There are smaller but still important reasons, like its ability to give insight to political views, health issues, thousands of pieces of information that can profile people.  Information that courts have ruled private and in support of the information remaining within our control.  So if you're stupid enough to let those sloppy drunk Mardi Gras pictures get out, that's your problem.

Employers are taking advantage of the hungry and desperate by forcing people to share passwords and submit to other ridiculous invasions of privacy.  Competition is tight, and applicants know if they don't jump through the hoops, someone else will.

There's no question it's wrong.  The question is, why isn't anyone stopping it?

Skunked And Stumped

Deaniac83 over at The People's View notes that in the major Democratic primaries this year at the Congressional level, the "progressives" are getting their asses kicked.  And by "progressives" I mean Kucinich and Ilya Sheyman.

For all the Republican primary woes, a very strong current of positive news is coming out of the Democratic primaries this year - the Democratic Congressional primaries, specifically. Whenever ideological warriors on the Left flank of politics aim to beat down common sense pragmatism, our base is sending a message: we want good results, not just "good fights." Early this month, in Ohio, the least valuable Democrat in Congress, Dennis Kucinich, went down in flames in his Democratic primary. True to style, he chose to exit the stage as his usual bitter self. And last Tuesday, in Illinois' 10th Congressional District, the Professional Left's wonder kid, Ilya Sheyman, lost by a near double digit margin to progressive businessman Brad Schneider. To listen to the Internet's Lefty keyboard warriors, Sheyman's loss was a big tragedy for the progressives, and well, it's all the polling's fault.

Sheyman is the former Mobilization Director for MoveOn.org, and organizing manager at TrueMajority.org. Big names on the "netroot" Left - the PCCC (I find it amazing that people keep associating with them despite their open racism), MoveOn (duh) and Democracy for America all got behind Sheyman for a big push. If there is a personification of "netroots," - aka the keyboard warriors - Sheyman is it. The computer commandos attacked Schneider as a "Republican", based on the fact that over the past two decades, he'd donated to four Republicans, totaling less than 10% of his political donations. Local Democratic leaders condemned the tactics of these groups for reprehensible half-truths about a fellow Democrat.

When election night rolled around, Sheyman lost. Big. He lost big despite the support of these groups, and despite outspending his chief opponent hugely.

And there's an important lesson there.  We need more and better Democrats.  There's honest debate as to which is more important, the "more" part or the "better" part.  I lean towards "more" first generating better later, but I can see the argument for "better" first to an extent.


But Sheyman and Kucinich are neither.

The IL-10 race was really a profile of the "Netroots" going all-in, tearing up their Democratic opponent, and... failing completely and utterly. It's perhaps the race that shows the biggest difference between the Republican base and the (actual) Democratic base: the Democratic base is looking for people who will stand up for what they believe in, and one of the things we believe in is the fierce urgency of governing effectively. Just as the Republican base is in the business of moving their candidates to the unrecognizable fringe, the Democratic base is rejecting ideological warfare in favor of pragmatism and solutions.

That's what the Democratic party stands for. That's what the Democratic base stands for. We stand for pragmatic governance with progressive goals. We stand for moving forward with what progress can be made, and always sticking around for more. We do not have a cow every time one of our own says something nice about someone in the opposing party. We believe that ideological warfare is harmful, and that to move our country forward, we must govern - and that governing entails compromises. We do not think that compromise is a dirty word. We are too smart to fall into a Tea Party trap of our own.

Most of us, anyway.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The European Union has leveled new sanctions directly against the assets of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and his family.
• New email evidence shows former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine transferred $200 million from a customer's account as the hedge fund firm collapsed.
• The IRS is going after the people with the money: 30% of multimillionaire tax returns were audited last year.
• US companies are now sitting on a record $3.6 trillion in cash, a new record, as record corporate profits continue.
• AT&T is scolding the FCC, saying its scuttled mega-merger with T-Mobile could have saved its rival thousands of jobs.

Last Call

On a day where President Obama spoke about Trayvon Martin's murder and said the following:

"All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen," President Obama said Friday morning following a White House Rose Garden ceremony when asked about the 17-year-old's death.
The president called the shooting a "tragedy" and says "every aspect" of the case should be investigated. Obama gave his condolences to the slain teenager's parents and said if he had a son, "he'd look like Trayvon."

We have this going on at a Rick Santorum event...

At a shooting range in Louisiana on Friday, an onlooker encouraged Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum to pretend the target he was firing at was President Barack Obama.
“Santorum is shooting a 1911 Colt,” Politico’s Juana Summers tweeted from the sheriff’s office shooting range in West Monroe. “Range master says ‘Well, it’s not your first rodeo.’ Someone here says ‘pretend its Obama.’”

...and this out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich....

In a radio interview on Thursday, Newt Gingrich returned to one of his favorite recent themes, what he calls the “elite media” and their conspiracy to aid and abet the Obama administration.

In an article at Huffington Post, the former Speaker of the House is quoted as saying to Sandy Rios of the American Family Association that the “elite media” are “in the tank for Obama” and will do everything they can to see him re-elected.

“It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are,” he said, “Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama is consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic church?”

...and I just shake my head.  I'm a black male who has survived to the ripe old age of 36 and is not incarcerated.  I'm an exception in this country, it seems.  I live in one of the 24 states that has a law that solely exists to justify the use of deadly force as the ultimate sanction against someone who is merely perceived to be a threat, without evidence, due process, or the right to face your accuser (because hey, you're effing dead.)  The legislative need to create laws like this is a symptom of a much more awful syndrome, and in every case these laws were passed by "pro-life" Republicans led by the gun lobbyists.

These laws are designed to allow vigilantism, period.  It's the worst impulse of the whole Glibertarian/Paulite/Somali Pirate anarcho-justice codified into "I get to decide who lives and who dies, and I reserve the right to exercise that impulse at any point."  We're all castles stomping around killing each other, and may the best, most heavily armed castle win.  And as far as Republicans are concerned, well that impulse extends to "We've decided that having a black President violates our right not to have one, so we're going to do something about it from the ground up."

Trayvon Martin's awful, pointless murder is just a symptom of a much uglier sickness.

[UPDATE]  Newt doubles down.

“What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful,” Gingrich said on the Hannity Radio show. “It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.

“Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him. That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Effing. Perfect.