The Principle of the Matter

I am sure as you read this you can agree that the charges that special prosecutor Corey has decided to bring against Mr Zimmerman are unsurprising, to say the least. One might even ask “what took so long?”, especially since she opted not to use the grand jury, and this would be an appropriate question given that Mr Zimmerman told the 911 operator that he was going to follow Martin down a dark street in the rain and then did so against the advice of said operator. The end result of this action was a dead young man and a nation on edge. Even if there was a struggle and even if Trayvon struck first, George is the one who pursued him. If the young man were alive and his killer dead, he may very well have had a solid self-defense case against Zimmerman. But that is not the case. Zimmerman killed the young man and has been charged, now it is for the courts to decide… this is where this post gets interesting.

In her statement to the public, the prosecutor (Angela Corey) said the following in questioning “So much information got released on this case that never should have been released. We have to protect this prosecution and this investigation for Trayvon, for George Zimmerman,” (click here for the Yahoo! news story) and this is where the problem is. Madame Corey should chose her words more closely when she argues that her prosecution must be protected. If there is no doubt that the charges are legitimate then there should be absolutely no way a prosecution could e damaged through the release of information. The only entity that could be impacted if the evidence is there for a conviction would be Zimmerman. Ms Corey should have only stressed the need to protect the rights of the accused and never the integrity of the prosecution. If release of evidence could hurt the prosecution then it could, by default, help the accused and if that is the case then the prosecution would be ethically and honor bound to release any such information.

If the prosecutor is not careful she may well reveal that she is in fact prosecuting “by petition” regardless of her assertions to the contrary.

Perhaps Angela Corey should pause for some introspection before she attempts to honestly prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Zimmerman was a depraved and enraged individual at the time of this tragedy. Justice requires honesty, integrity, and courage because it is not always popular, plain and simple.

TPOTM

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Click here for the source of this angst I feel.

Have you ever seen the t-shirt slogan that reads something like this?

“I hate what you have to say, but I would lay down my life to defend your right to say it.” – common t-shirt slogan

This is a quintessentially American thought pattern which I am afraid is dying out.  Everyday I read more stories about how people are afraid to speak up for themselves, or worse yet, others calling for what amounts to criminalization of types of speech.  The article that brought this issue to mind does not deal directly with that concept, however, the comments at the bottom of the article do. The comments reflect a woefully inadequate grasp of historical perspective which seems to be endemic in American society today.

Before I dive in to the part of this discussion which drives me to new levels of ennui lets get a couple of newsflashes out for the self imposed members of the mental proletariat.

1 The US is a young nation.  Not everything we know was the way we know it today from day one.  This includes things which are precious to us now such as the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem.  There was a time, not as long ago as people today would likely guess, that Francis Scott Key’s poem (the tune of a well liked British drinking song was added later) was just another piece of nascent American patriotic propagandizing drivel (at least that is what you would think if you were wearing red in the late 1700s to early 1820s.)  It was not until the Great Depression was in full swing that President hoover and congress came together to recognize the Star Spangled Banner as our nation’s anthem.  There were undoubtedly people who were unhappy with this choice, but time has erased the vast majority of those sentiments from our collective consciousness.  However, if you doubt that this could be the case, I encourage you to get a tape recorder and head to your nearest old-persons’ hot spot and fin someone who was born in about 1920 (yes that would make them about 90 so don’t wait, you might not get another chance to ask.) and get a first hand account of the sentiments of that bygone era… off you go, I’ll be here when you get back.

2 This newsflash is far less general in scope.  OUR PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME!  George Washington did not see a flag,place his right hand over his heart and say the sacred words (in every state but California) which now bind every citizen together.  Most people do not know that until the NAZIs adopted the stiff arm salute in the mid 1930′s it was the same salute often used by school children and average citizens alike here in the US when saluting the flag. don’t believe me? Google it.

Just as our salute to our flag has not always been a stiff arm, our pledge has not always included the words “under God”.  Let me repeat that, OUR PLEDGE HAS NOT ALWAYS INCLUDED “UNDER GOD” IN ITS HALLOWED REFRAIN.  That being said, the pledge was altered in response to Soviet-professed atheism after an incredibly long push from many sectors in the US.  This push ended in the successful amendment of the 1942 flag code on June 14, 1954 to incorporate “under God” into the pledge.

All of this leads me to my point: I do not like Harry Reid, but I am honor bound to defend his speech.  When he left out “under God” in his recitation of the oath that binds us to one another as a country, he was doing one of two things:  Remembering it as he learned it in his childhood, or making a statement about the impact of religion in our country.  Regardless of which he was doing he has the right to say the pledge as he sees fit.  For the record (and this pains me to do) we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that old habits die hard as he had been sating the pledge for quite a while before it was changed in ’54, the man is 72 at the time I write this post.  Let’s save the criticism for something with some merit because he provides real ammunition on a regular basis.

PS: If you are still in disbelief of the stiff arm salute, then please feel free to look it up, it originated in the US as the Bellamy Salute

~TPOTM

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/03/marine-faces-fifteen-years-behind-bars-for-unknowingly-violating-gun-law/ 

Check this out.  NY city gun laws were designed to protect the public but what they are doing is locking up the people who in trying to follow the laws according to what is reasonable.  There should be a common sense clause written into the law for every statute on the books.  People who run afoul of a law in an attempt to do the right thing should not be prosecuted if they are breaking no other law.  PERIOD

Please tell me why, in an era of sci-fi come reality, we have not learned the first lesson offered in almost all sci-fi? All cool high tech gadgets that could aid the enemy if captured should be outfitted with a self destruct mechanism. An independent globally accessible system of remotely detonatable high explosives.

So that this does not happen http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-drone-20111209,0,2615767.story