Back to Basics

The news is as important for what it says as what it doesn’t say.  Martin had broken skin on his knuckles, but note that there was no mention about Zimmerman having similar bruises on his knuckles. What does that tell you?  It means that Martin was hitting Zimmerman sufficiently hard and often to break the skin on his knuckles, but that Zimmerman didn’t hit Martin back.  That means Zimmerman didn’t throw the first punch.  That means that it is that much harder to believe that Zimmerman started the fight.  And that is extremely important.  It looks as if Zimmerman stopped following Martin when it was suggested, but even if he didn’t, even if he asked Martin what he was doing, that doesn’t justify Martin attacking him. From ABC News:

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. . . .

WFTV in Florida reports on Martin’s injuries, but again it is what injuries aren’t reported that is also important.

WFTV has learned that the medical examiner found two injuries on Martin’s body: The fatal gunshot wound and broken skin on his knuckles.
When you compare Trayvon’s non-fatal injury with Zimmerman’s bloody head wounds, the autopsy evidence is better for the defense, Sheaffer said. . . .

So despite already facing being overcharged, the Obama administration continues to go after Zimmerman:

WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said federal prosecutors would have to prove the hate crime to charge Zimmerman, though.
“What the government would have to prove is that Mr. Zimmerman acted out of hatred toward African-Americans. That’s why he came into contact with him. That’s why he shot and killed him,” Sheaffer said.
Sheaffer said a federal hate crime murder charge could bring more serious consequences than the second-degree murder charge Zimmerman faces now.
“Mr. Zimmerman could be punished by up to life in prison or even the death penalty,” said Sheaffer. . . .

Hate crime?  Against a person who donated his time to mentor black kids?  Against someone who is part black himself?  Against a guy who tried to help his neighbors, some of whom are black, by volunteering to be the community watch leader.

Enough already!  Leave the guy alone!

I suppose that 20 years ago if the daughter and her boyfriend were on the telephone, the same thing would have happened, though the fact that the boyfriend actually saw some of the event makes the evidence even stronger.  From ABC News:

A Massachusetts man accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death as their daughter’s friend watched via an iPad video chat is being held in jail without bond today.
Christopher Piantedosi, 39, allegedly showed up at the Burlington, Mass., home of his longtime girlfriend Kristen Pulisciano’s on Thursday and got into a raging argument with her in the kitchen.
The couple’s 15-year-old daughter was in her bedroom video chatting with a friend on her iPad. She heard the commotion and went to check on her parents, according to authorities.
The girl found her father holding a knife and her mother fled to the girl’s bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
“The defendant then kicked in the door, threw the victim on the bed and began stabbing her with a butcher knife and it was visible to the daughter’s friend,” Middlesex assistant district attorney Nicole Allain said in court.
The daughter’s male friend witnessed the attack on video. . . .

Between not going to the Grand Jury and the affidavit that failed to mention any exculpatory evidence, this is setting a very bad trend.  From Channel 6 in Orlando:

The special prosecutor’s office on Friday refused to make that evidence public — even though an attorney fighting for the public’s access insists Friday was when Florida law required Corey to share the evidence with the millions of people following the case.

The reason the deadline for Corey’s evidence to become public was Friday, according to Scott Ponce, the attorney representing media organizations seeking access, is because that was 15 days after Zimmerman’s attorney served Corey with an April 12 demand for evidence. This process of the state sharing evidence with both the defendant and public at large is known as discovery.

When denying requests from the public for the Zimmerman discovery records Friday, Corey’s office told Local 6 Florida law allowed her to keep the records secret using a criminal investigative exemption because “no records have been provided to the defendant.”

But Ponce, who specializes in public record law, believes that Corey can no longer use that reason to withhold records from the public, now that the 15 day discovery deadline has passed. That’s because Florida law specifically excludes documents “required” to be given to the defendant from the type of records that can be withheld as criminal investigative information.

When Local 6 emailed Corey and her public records attorney, Lisa DiFranza, asking for an explanation as to how they concluded the records were still exempt criminal investigative information, even though Ponce advised the information was required to be given to Zimmerman Friday, the two attorneys did not respond. Neither did Corey’s spokesperson, Jackelyn Barnard, even though Florida’s public record law requires an agency denying records to give a written response explaining the reasons it concluded records are exempt, when requested. . . .

Keep an eye on this one. I am:

Columbia, SC (WLTX) – State Law Enforcement Division agents have arrested a man they say transferred thousands of confidential state Medicaid records to his personal email account.

Christopher Lykes, 36, of Swansea is charged with five counts of medically indigent act confidentiality violation and one count of disclosure of confidential information.

Agents say their investigation began on April 10, when the Department of Health and Human Services contacted them. The agency revealed Thursday that 228,435 Medicaid records were taken since January.

The documents included names, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates, Medicaid ID numbers and in some cases Social Security numbers.

According to SLED, at least one other party received this data from Lykes. It has not been made public yet who this third party was.

Note: Lykes “served as an executive committeeman of the Lexington County Democratic Party.”

Question: Who received the filched data?

Inquiring minds want to know…and are inquiring. Stay tuned.

***

Can you spell Democratic Party cover-up?

The arrest of former state Department of Health and Human Services employee Christopher Lykes for allegedly releasing the personal information of over 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries has led to an unexpected he-said-she-said brouhaha between the S.C. Republican Party and the state Democratic Party.

Yesterday, the SCGOP fired a press-release salvo claiming that Lykes was not a former member of the Lexington County Democratic Party Executive Committee. According to the Republican Party, Dick Harpootlian and his liberal minions “scrubbed” the official S.C. Democratic Party website of Lykes’ name. An April 18 screencapture shows Lykes as a Lexington Democratic Party Executive Committee contact, but his name is missing from an April 19 screencapture. Lykes was arrested on April 18.

“The South Carolina Democratic Party thinks they can pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Dick Harpootlian and his cronies need to immediately condemn Chris Lykes’ behavior and apologize to honest, hard-working South Carolinians,” says Matt Moore, SCGOP executive director.

But according to SCDP Executive Director Amanda Loveday, Lykes was not re-elected to his position as a member of the Lexington County Democratic Party Executive Committee during the county convention in March.

Meanwhile, Lexington County Democratic Party chair Kathryn Hensley notes that Lykes had been an active member of the Lexington County Dems. Lykes previously served as a precinct officer, but Hensley says he no longer holds that position. “For the past three months, I’ve been updating our records with new information and sending it along to our state party so they can update their records,” Hensley says.

This seems to be a smaller scale sequel of sorts to the “Obama money” chaos in Detroit in 2009.

Some people in the Bronx have given out their Social Security and driver’s license numbers in return for… nothing apparently:

This time, people in NYC are lining up because they heard that people were getting a debit card loaded with as much as $1,000 of stimulus money. However, based on the latest information, there is no money to be given away. And yet people continue to line up and turn over their sensitive, personal information.

E & M Multi-Services is a tax preparation service that operates out of the back of a “dollar store” in the Fordham section of the Bronx. The company is reportedly collecting copies of Social Security cards, state ID cards and in exchange people are given a debit card from First California Bank. One small problem with this program — the cards are not loaded with $1,000 — not from Obama or anyone. Although, at least one person on the scene believed that the card would contain funds from President Obama: “They said it was money from Obama.”

The story from WABC:

So where were the authorities? If the people running this operation had been handing out cigarettes and corn dogs, a rapid response team from Mayor Bloomberg’s health department would have had them shut down before WABC would have been able to start recording.

The bank is telling people trying to use the cards that they’ve been frozen due to a fraud investigation. Shocker.

There’s a chance that if these folks go to vote in November, they’ll discover they already have done so. In that case all they’d have to do is go to Washington DC — I hear it’s pretty easy to get somebody else’s ballot down there.

My new piece at NRO starts this way:

The charges brought against George Zimmerman sure look like prosecutorial misconduct. The case as put forward by the prosecutor in the “affidavit of probable cause” is startlingly weak. As a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, I have read a number of such affidavits, and cannot recall one lacking so much relevant information. The prosecutor has most likely deliberately overcharged, hoping to intimidate Zimmerman into agreeing to a plea bargain. If this case goes to trial, Zimmerman will almost definitely be found “not guilty” on the charge of second-degree murder. The prosecutor wasn’t required to go to the grand jury for the indictment, but the fact that she didn’t in such a high-profile case is troubling. Everyone knows how easy it is for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to indict, because only the prosecutor presents evidence. A grand-jury indictment would have provided political cover; that charges were brought without one means that the prosecutor was worried that a grand jury would not give her the indictment. . . .

Just in from the Washington Post:

Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey plans to announce as early as Wednesday afternoon that she is charging neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation.

It was not immediately clear what charge Zimmerman will face.

We’ll post an update later if they announce the specific charge(s) against Zimmerman today.

Update: Zimmerman is now in custody and been charged:

George Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

“It is the search for justice for Trayvon that has brought us to this moment,” state attorney Angela Corey said.

Corey also had a message for those who have been rushing to judgment on the case.

“You cannot know what it’s like to launch this type of investigation and come to this conclusion,” State Attorney Angela Corey said during the press conference. ”We don’t prosecute by public pressure or petition. We prosecute cases on the relevant facts of each case and on the laws of the state of Florida.”
[...]
Under Florida law, second degree murder is the unlawful killing of a person when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind, regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual. The maximum sentence for the crime is life in prison.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

More confirmation here of what happened in the Trayvon Martin case:

Host Sean Hannity asked the elder Zimmerman to relate the story of how his son ran into Trayvon Martin. “He had been texting his sister and said he was going to the grocery store,” Zimmerman narrated, “he saw somebody that did not live in the community wandering behind some town homes,” explaining that the town “has had a lot of problems with burglaries.” Zimmerman confirmed to Hannity that his son tutored minority children and had defended a minority child hit by a car in the neighborhood and accused Martin of following Zimmerman to a street corner. “Trayvon came from that area where the sidewalks meet, asked my son whether he had a problem… he said no, and Martin said, ‘well, you do now.’” Zimmerman also insisted the screamed on the 911 tape were his son, not Trayvon Martin. “George was there yelling for help for at least 40 seconds… there is absolutely no doubt it’s him on the tape,” he argued. “Neighbor said he was calling 911 and that’s what he went inside and did,” he told Hannity, adding that “me, my family, friends, everyone knows that’s absolutely George.” . . .

Neighborhood Watch celebrity George Zimmerman graduated from a high school not too far from where I live in Virginia. I certainly hope he made it to the 10–year reunion of the Osbourn Park Class of 2001, because it doesn’t look like he’s going to be attending many in the future.

Not that Zimmerman is necessarily guilty of anything, but after one has been processed by the MSM’s reputation shredder, the thought of appearing in public and defending yourself for the umpteenth time is not appealing.

Particularly when the President joins the race–baiters and says, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Well, Mr. President, if your mother had married a Mexican instead of a Kenyan you would have looked like George. So what?

If only Zimmerman — a Spanish speaker registered as a Democrat — had been marching in a La Raza protest or a Mexicans Without Borders demonstration. Then national Democrats, including the President, would be happy to claim him as their own. But when George made the mistake of getting a concealed carry permit and dabbled on the fringes of law enforcement, Zimmerman became a “white Hispanic” member of the conspiracy designed to keep the black man down.

Why couldn’t Zimmerman have been like those progressive employees at the Apple store in Bethesda, MD. When they heard a woman screaming in the yoga store next door, they had the decency to mind their own dang business. You didn’t see them barging in on what might have been a private matter. They didn’t even tie up valuable public resources by calling 9–1–1.

Wait, maybe that’s a bad example. Jayna Murray died after being stabbed 330 times.

In Zimmerman’s case, there actually was crime in the area he volunteered to patrol. Police records show there were eight burglaries, nine thefts and one shooting in the prior year. Cynthia Wibker, secretary of the homeowner’s association, observed, “He once caught a thief and an arrest was made. (Zimmerman) helped solve a lot of crimes.”

A rule of thumb to remember in these “white Hispanic” vs. black controversies is the first lawyer to get in front of a TV camera is lying. Benjamin Crump and Natalie Jackson, the Martin legal brain trust, prove my point.

Begin with the photo of an angelic Trayvon wearing a red shirt. It’s a great picture, but he was 14 when it was taken. Trayvon was 17 when he was shot, almost 6’ 3” tall and weighed about 150 lbs. He also boasted tattoos, a gold mouth grill and went by the Twitter ID of “@NO_LIMIT_NIGGA.”

Martin was in the neighborhood visiting his father because he was serving his third suspension from high school. This time for possession of a marijuana pipe and an empty baggie with traces of drugs. In October, Martin had been found with 12 pieces of women’s jewelry and a “burglary tool,” but was suspended for a graffiti offense.

Once this information came to light, Martin’s mother complained, “They killed my son and now their trying to kill his reputation.” Which means it’s okay to demonize Zimmerman, but Trayvon should remain beyond reproach.