Back to Basics

The activists all flocked to the cameras … positive that George Zimmerman was a racist gun-toting wanna-be policeman white guy looking for trouble …

As details leaked out, the story changed, but not the attitude. Zimmerman was Hispanic, with a history of helping fellow citizens who happened to be black. Doing nothing more than protecting his community. Not drawing or firing his legally-permitted weapon only when in extremis – head being bashed against the ground as he was allegedly being straddled by Trayvon Martin. Martin’s family, even in their grief, urged the activists to allow the law to take its course, peacefully and without agitation or violence. Not that it did not stop one major media outlet from editing a tape to portray Zimmerman as a racist. Nor did it stop the death threats and harassment.

When the story does not rise to the level of agitation required by the activists, somehow they have a way of stoking the fires of hell to create chaos and self-serving situations.

Hiding the gangsta?

One might ask if the gun control activists and race-baiters are pressuring prosecutors to demonize Zimmerman and evangelize Martin as an innocent victim of a crazed racist.

State prosecutors in the case against George Zimmerman are pushing to keep Zimmerman’s attorneys from bringing testimony about Trayvon Martin’s past during the trial.

The state said in motions filed on Friday they want to prevent Zimmerman’s attorneys from bringing up Martin’s personal life, including his school records, previous suspension from school, fights, text messages sent prior to his death unless related to case and his social media use. The motion also says the state wants to prevent the defense from using Martin’s toxicology report, which showed the level of marijuana in Martin’s blood the night he was shot and killed.

The state’s filings suggest they fear the defense may try to attack Martin’s character, instead of focusing on whether Zimmerman murdered Martin. Assistant prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda argued that Martin’s past is irrelevant and would clearly be designed only to prejudice the jury. Read more at: State pushes to keep Trayvon Martin’s past out of George Zimmerman trial | News – Home

Waiting for the trial …

I am hoping that justice prevails – either way. But, from the information that has been exposed to-date, it looks like Zimmerman is innocent of murder and manslaughter and that the real trial is to keep the jury from becoming an OJ-like jury where facts are replaced by feelings and justice must mean that the black man prevails over everything else. Where the threat of race-based riots color the outcome of the trial.

– steve

PHOTOS.COM

There is no end to the lunacy that can come from a government functionary when he has newfound money and a desire to keep the folks “safe.” Take Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw who now has $1 million burning a hole in his pocket, thanks to the Florida Legislature.

The money will be used for a new violence prevention unit ostensibly to prevent shootings like the ones in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.

Bradshaw said plans are to use specially trained deputies, mental health professionals and caseworkers to respond to calls made to a 24-hour citizen hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services, if needed. The goal won’t be to arrest troubled people but to get them help before there’s violence, Bradshaw said. As a side benefit, law enforcement will have needed information to keep a close eye on things.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’”

What does it hurt? You might ask that question of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., were he still alive. Or maybe you could ask Lisa Messina, who called police because her son was suicidal and who watched as a sniper shot and killed him while his back was turned. Or you could talk to Daniel Jensen. Police used a Taser on him rather than help him try to save his house, which was about to catch fire from the house fire next door.

My guess is Bradshaw’s unit is going to be quite busy. There are a lot of people who hate what governments — from local to State to Federal — are doing, and they’re expressing their displeasure on websites like this one and on social media and in public. Add to these the calls from neighbors with an ax to grind and jilted lovers looking for some sort of revenge, and Bradshaw’s unit is going to run through that $1 million pretty quickly. After all, here’s how police respond to emergencies:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFlcpYdZcPA

Both houses of the Florida legislature passed a bill on Wednesday prohibiting the expanded use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, by law enforcement agencies in the Sunshine State, due to enormous opposition by groups and individuals concerned with the lack of privacy from the Obama administration’s drone surveillance program, according to GOP lawmakers.

Florida’s House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill, which also passed the Florida State Senate at the start of April. Republican Governor Rick Scott said he plans to sign the bill it into law and enforce its provisions. Once signed, Florida will be added to Idaho and Virginia as states that have approved laws to limit the use of UAVs.

During a U.S. Senate hearing, titled, “The Future of Drones in America: Law Enforcement and Privacy Considerations,” legal experts told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that within the next ten years thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, will be used to gather information from civilians by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Legal experts, including Amie Stepanovich, director of the Domestic Surveillance Project, Electronic Privacy Information Center, claimed that new privacy laws are required to protect Americans from public and private use of UAVs.

Drone construction and implementation is considered a “growth industry” in the U.S. with research continuing on production of a “stealth drone.” Unmanned aerial vehicles will be programed to monitor crops, national parks, animal preserves and to assist police SWAT teams. As a result, federal and state privacy laws have been rendered anachronistic by advances in drone technology, experts said at the Senate hearing.

The testifying experts said:

“Current privacy protections from aerial surveillance are based on court decisions from the 1980s, the Judiciary Committee was told, before the widespread drone use was anticipated. In general, manned helicopters and planes already have the potential to do the same kinds of surveillance and intrusive information gathering as drones, but drones can be flown more cheaply, for longer periods of time and at less risk to human life. That makes it likely that surveillance and information-gathering will become much more widespread.”

Meanwhile, Federal Aviation Administration officials claimed that upwards of 7,000 civilian drones will be in use within the next five years once the FAA grants them greater access to U.S. skies.

Congress had directed the FAA to provide drones with widespread access to domestic airspace by 2015, but the agency is behind in its development of safety regulations and isn’t expected to meet that deadline even though the FAA has granted more than two hundred permits to state and local governments, police departments, universities and others to experiment with using small drones.

The majority of police and civilian drones will be much smaller than those used by the military. The U.S. military uses everything from unarmed, hand-launched drones to UAS’s (unmanned aerial systems) that can fire Hellfire missiles and guided bombs.

As a result of sequestration — across-the-board budget cuts to the military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement departments — Unmanned Aerial Systems may become more and more useful in maintaining a certain degree of security, according to former police commander Charles Nettinger, now a security consultant.

“Two or three unmanned aerial vehicles will be able to monitor entire cities even during the darkest nights.

What has become of our law enforcement officials when they overlook common sense and fire police officers for inappropriate and stupid actions that harmed nobody – but were conflated by race-baiting activists. If zero tolerance applied to public officials and law enforcement agencies, there would be no employees to protect law-abiding citizens.

Officer accused of having Trayvon Martin targets fired

Port Canaveral, Fla. Interim Chief Executive Officer John Walsh told WFTV on Saturday that Sgt. Ron King was leading a target practice with two other officers and a civilian when he pulled out the targets [resembling dead teenager Trayvon Martin] April 4. Walsh says King asked the group if they wanted to use the targets, and they said no.

“It is absolutely reprehensible that a high-ranking member of the Port Canaveral Police, sworn to protect and serve Floridians, would use the image of a dead child as target practice,” said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon Martin’s parents. “Such a deliberate and depraved indifference to this grieving family is unacceptable. The citizens of Port Canaveral deserve better.” Source: Officer accused of having Trayvon Martin targets

 Police snitches … 

Port Canaveral Port Authority CEO John Walsh said that on April 4, when two fellow cops discovered King intended to use the Trayvon Martin shooting targets in their weapons exercise, they told the sergeant “they didn’t think it was appropriate.” The next day, Walsh said, the officers informed the Port Authority police chief, who called in internal affairs.

If anyone should be fired, it should be the Chief of Police who showed a stunning lack of command authority in elevating this to a media event and firing the officer. The appropriate penalty for non-lethal, no-harm stupidity and poor judgement should be an official sanction and a few days off without pay. No more and no less. Even though I am anti-union, I must question why they are not fighting for one of their own?

The fired officer claims that these were “no shoot” training targets  …

Bottom line …

It may have been in bad taste and inappropriate, but the use of these targets suggests a reprimand – not a firing. In fact, one could make the case that the officer’s First Amendment rights were violated. So reinstate the officer with an official charge of “conduct unbecoming” and get on with it.

It appears that the activists who profit from the media attention use anything they can to further their own political agenda. In this case, killing the career of a highly-trained police officer over nothing more than insensitivity and bad judgement. He did not commit a crime.

The race-baiting activists are using political correctness, multi-culturalism, moral equivalency, and our own laws to shred the United States Constitution and destroy our infrastructure from within. These race-baiters have so scared public officials that they can no longer perform their sworn duties without pandering to some activist group.

I hope the officer lawyers-up and seeks reinstatement.

– steve

The North Carolina State Board of Elections intends to prosecute five suspects who allegedly voted in both Florida and North Carolina during the November 2012 election cycle, according the leader from the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Eric Shawn on Sunday morning.

Lt. Col. Jay DeLancy (U.S. Air Force-Ret.) noted that his group investigated and identified the voters to both states’ election offices earlier last month.

“Thanks to the relatively accessible election records in both Florida and North Carolina, this research was possible,” said Col. Jay DeLancy, who serves as executive director of VIP-NC, “but we have every reason to believe this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

The group thoroughly examined Florida’s election records to identify November 2012 voters who listed an alternate address in North Carolina and then compared that list with the N.C. voter history files. They found over 300 who appeared to be registered in both states and 33 who appeared to have voted in both state’s elections, which is a felony, DeLancy told FNC’s Shawn.

“We turned our list of 33 suspects over to both the Florida Secretary of State’s office and the North Carolina Board of Elections office and asked them to investigate,” said Delancy. “Don Wright, the chief counsel for N.C. State Board of Elections gave us the news that five of our suspects had matching signatures in both states and that his office would refer them [to the state's attorney general] for prosecution.”

Under N.C. law, the State Board of Elections can prosecute election finance crimes but not election fraud laws and the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina has asked the State Legislature to change that condition, according to the Fox interview.

“It is up [to] the respective District Attorneys if they intend to prosecute the cases,” wrote Don Wright in an email to the VIP-NC, dated March 5, 2013. The agency is yet to release the names or counties of the suspected felons.

Col. DeLancy attributes lack of prosecution authority at the state’s election as a key factor in the public claims by many groups that “no vote fraud happens in NC” and that “voter ID is a solution in search of a problem,” as many voter ID opponents have often repeated.

“Vote fraud deniers make nice poetry and they give good sound bites,” said DeLancy, “but the idea is as absurd as claiming that no speeding happens on I-40 unless the Highway Patrol writes tickets.”

The group also used their findings to press for NC to join a multi-state voter history database that was established by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

“The multi-state data base would bring transparency to cases of college students and snowbirds that live in two states and vote in both of them,” said DeLancy. “Except in open-information states like Florida and NC, this type crime has been very difficult if not impossible to detect.”

The group believes the data base would help bring “driver license type controls” to the public’s voter registrations.

I find it deeply disturbing that the FBI investigated the Treyvon Martin case as a civil rights violation and apparently found nothing … and now they are refusing to supply information, some of which could be exculpatory, after a Judge ordered them to turn over information to George Zimmerman’s counsel. Leading me to consider the possibility that the government might play the race card and go after Zimmerman federally if the State of Florida finds him innocent.

FBI to Zimmerman: We don’t have to give you our file, despite judge’s order

Lawyers for the FBI say the federal agency should not give George Zimmerman’s lawyers all the evidence from its case file, even though a Sanford judge has ordered it. The U.S. Department of Justice filed paperwork Monday, arguing that federal regulations trump a state court judge’s ruling. It’s asking that judge, Debra S. Nelson, to undo her Feb. 5 order. “This court has ‘no power or authority’ … to compel the FBI to produce the documents at issue here,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean P. Flynn.

In her order, Nelson agreed with a defense request and ordered the FBI to open its case file to Zimmerman’s attorneys. Zimmerman, 29, is the former Neighborhood Watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder for shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, one year ago in Sanford.

A few weeks after the slaying, following protest rallies across the country, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into the shooting to determine whether Trayvon’s civil rights were violated — whether he was killed because he was black.

It’s not clear what that investigation has turned up. The FBI, which has done much of the work in the federal case, has said the investigation is ongoing. Defense attorneys Mark O’Mara and Don West have argued that they’re entitled to all evidence gathered against their client, be it by local, state or federal authorities. They’ve received a limited amount of FBI evidence – interview summaries that say three dozen people who knew Zimmerman told agents they saw no signs he was a racist.

In the FBI paperwork filed with Nelson in Monday, Flynn wrote that O’Mara had been told about but had failed to follow the proper procedures that might convince the federal agency to release the information. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, Flynn wrote, makes it clear that federal regulations take precedence over a state judge’s order. <Source: FBI George Zimmerman: FBI to George Zimmerman: We don’t have to give you our file – OrlandoSentinel.com>

Media and activist interference …

It appears to me that the media continues to portray Zimmerman in a false light while portraying Treyvon Martin as someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the most egregious media actions is using an old picture – something that does not reveal what Martin may looked like at the time immediately prior to his death. Or that the activists continue to pursue their race-baiting pronouncements without knowing all of the facts.

Photo most often used by the media.	From Trayvon’s Facebook Page

Autopsy results list Martin’s height and weight at 5’11” and 158 pounds.

Twenty years ago, Nathan Dunlap walked into a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora, Colorado. Holmes, the future mass killer who would go on to make Aurora briefly famous after opening fire in a movie theater, was six years old at the time. Just old enough to patronize a Chuck E. Cheese.

Dunlap had been fired from the restaurant in the spring of that year and told a friend that he wanted to get even, go in and take all the money. One cold wintry evening he walked in, put a gun to the head of a 19-year-old girl at the salad bar and pulled the trigger. Then he killed three others and stole $1,591 before being arrested by the police.

Over the next twenty years, Dunlap and his lawyers did everything possible to get their client off. They claimed that his trial lawyers were incompetent, that he was abused as a child and that he had mental problems. That same claim is made by the defenders of nearly every murderer on death row.  There has yet to be an inmate on death row who isn’t a mentally ill child who was sexually abused by his incompetent lawyers.

Dunlap’s case went to the Colorado Supreme Court three times and once to the Supreme Court. And that means that after twenty years, he may finally be executed. The taxpayers of Colorado have spent millions fighting Dunlap’s lawyers. Aside from the usual attempts to keep Dunlap from facing the death penalty, the ACLU sued Colorado over exercise privileges for the Chuck E. Cheese killer.

“Depriving Mr. Dunlap of fresh air, sunshine, and outdoor exercise for 15 years is cruel and unusual punishment,”  the ACLU legal director said last year.

In Georgia, the murderer sympathy vote is swarming around Warren Lee Hill.

Like Dunlap, Hill is a multiple murderer. In 1986, Hill shot his girlfriend 11 times. Four years later he beat another inmate to death in prison with a nail-studded board. Hill was finally on the verge on being executed, but his defenders had one last gimmick arguing that Georgia can’t kill Hill, because he only has an IQ of 70.

America’s greatest mentally retarded president, Jimmy Carter, came out in Hill’s defense and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in a half hour before Hill would have faced justice. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is not supposed to handle death penalty cases, but activist judges know no boundaries and the court has stepped in to halt two of Georgia’s executions in two days.

Hill only began claiming that he was retarded in 1996, ten years after his original murder, at which point his IQ scores, formerly in the mid-70s, dropped down to a more appropriately low level. Despite supposedly being retarded, Hill had managed to serve in the military and hold down steady jobs, not to mention murder two people. But no one has established whether Hill is mentally retarded within a reasonable doubt.

Virginia’s Lt. Governor Bill Bolling is going to have to lose a considerable amount of weight and drastically increase his time on the tanning bed to physically resemble Charlie Crist, but Bolling’s ideological transformation is coming along nicely.

For those who don’t follow Florida politics, Charlie Crist is the former Republican governor who intended to be the state’s new US senator in 2010. When Crist announced he was well known and could raise money — music to establishment Republican ears. Crist was immediately endorsed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee in an effort intimidate potential primary competition.

Life was good! Crist had essentially been handed the nomination. Time to order some staffer to start measuring for new drapes in his senate office. Except Marco Rubio decided to enter the race. Rubio had everything going against him but the voters.

Crist wasn’t worried at first. But as the campaign continued, FL voters decided Crist was too cozy with Obama and lacked conservative commitment. Rubio won the primary and in a fit of pique, Crist changed his registration to Independent and ran as a spoiler.

Rubio beat him and the Democrat both.

Now really angry and wanting to “lash out” (thank goodness there weren’t any “assault rifles” handy!) Crist endorsed Obama in 2012. And he just made the news by changing his party affiliation to Democrat. Proving Republican voters were correct all along.

Bolling’s situation is quite similar. In 2009 he was in his first term and Bob McDonnell was the Attorney General. Both wanted to run for governor, but Bolling didn’t want a fight — something that appears to be characteristic. As Pope Alexander IV divided the world between the Spanish and the Portuguese — McDonnell divided the top Virginia offices between himself and Bolling. McDonnell ran for governor and promised to support Bolling in 2013.

Unfortunately, the nomination is not McDonnell’s to confer. The wealthy may be able to hand political office from relative to relative in Massachusetts, hence the “Kennedy” senate seat, but Virginian’s don’t cotton to inheriting office.

Like the English in Pope Alexander’s time, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli ignored an agreement he was not party to and worked to secure the nomination. He packed the GOP central committee with his supporters. After Cuccinelli announced, the committee changed the nomination process from a primary election to a convention.

At which point Bolling avoided another fight and dropped out in the belief he could not win a convention in which strong grass–roots support is a crucial factor.

Cuccinelli is not without sin in this saga. Ken initially promised voters he would run for re–election, which I thought was an excellent idea. He broke that promise when he announced for governor, but as former Texas Gov. Bill Clements once said in connection with a lie he told, “Well, there never was a Bible in the room.”

Few Republicans are as popular with liberals and their media choir as establishment Republicans defeated by a conservative. All it took for Bolling to become a statesman was for Cuccinelli to run him out of the primary. Now he is another unfortunate establishment moderate who — according to the media — is the best general election candidate. Unfortunately he can’t win a primary dominated by the right wing.

As we go to press polls show America’s largest swing state in a dead head between Romney and Obama. Florida has 29 electoral votes and the third largest “Hispanic” population in America. Normally this means a cakewalk for any Democrat.

But whoops! Turns out that about a third of these Florida Hispanics (Cuban-Americans) are actually so—as in Americans whose ancestors hail almost exclusively from Europe’s Iberian Peninsula known as Hispania by the Romans. So as a broken clock is right twice a day, the term “Hispanic” as used by the mainstream media can actually be correct about 1/1000 of the time. (i.e. when it refers to Cuban-Americans.)

A poll last week of voters in Florida’s Miami-Dade county by the Miami Herald county found the following breakdown:

 

Obama     Romney    Undecided

White:    64%             30%             6%

Black:    95%               2%              3%

Hispanic 33%            62%              5%

Hey wait a minute! liberals wail. “But every poll on the planet shows Obama with at least 70% of the U.S. Hispanic vote”?! So what’s going on here?!”

Americans of Cuban heritage as usual, that’s what’s going on. The Miami Herald poll broke it down further:

 

Obama     Romney  Undecided

Cuban-American   19%              76%                5%

In brief: no ethnic group in the U.S. comes even close to matching Cuban-Americans in their level of disdain for President Barack Obama in particular and the Democratic Party in general.

Such is their nonconformity, that these insufferable Cuban-Americans drove an exasperated pollster to stop polling in areas they are known to infest, as in south Florida. “Eduardo Gamarra, a registered Democrat of Bolivian descent,” reports the Miami Herald about a pollster from Florida International University last week, “actually had to scale back the number of Cuban-American respondents in the poll, a process known as “weighting,”….Gamarra stopped polling in South Florida all together when he concluded the three-day survey last week in order to reach other Hispanics.”

“The difference (with polling) in Florida,” reads the Miami Herald story, “are Cuban voters. Without them, the FIU poll shows, Obama would handily win likely Florida Hispanic voters 65-32 percent. Not only are Cubans reliable Republican voters — they’re about 70 percent of Miami-Dade’s registered Republicans”

“You keep hearing about a liberalization of the vote with younger, second-generation Cubans.” wailed Democratic pollster Gamarra. “But the polls are not showing it. Young Cubans are starting to look more Republican than their parents.”

Which is saying a lot.

These insufferable political mavericks have often goaded the Democratic/Media axis to enraged sputterings against them. “Truly disgusting!” was how Bryant Gumbel characterized the Cuban-American demonstrating against shanghaiing Elian Gonzalez back to Castro. Five years ago Georgetown professor Norman Birnbaum, an advisor to three Democratic presidential candidates and today a columnist for The Daily Beast, labeled “Miami-Cubans” a “truly reprehensible!” group. In 2008 one of America’s most influential newspapers, the Washington Post, ran a cartoon celebrating Cuban-Americans’ expulsion from the U.S. en masse.

Study the cartoon and imagine the fire (literal, perhaps) if instead of fedoras (which are rarely worn by Cuban-Americans, BTW) the group had worn kuffiyehs, burkhas and chadors. What if the boat’s passengers had been labeled “nappy-headed” and were headed for Africa? Imagine the rallies in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Chicago if they’d worn sombreros!