DOJ Won't Charge Zimmerman, More Americans Support Troops Against ISIS, Push in California to Seize More Stuff: P.M. Links

-
Booking photo As everybody pretty much predicted, George Zimmerman will not face federal charges for killing Trayvon Martin.
- Also predictable: President Barack Obama has vetoed the KeystoneXL pipeline legislation.
- A new poll shows increasing support by Americans for using ground troops to fight ISIS, but it's still below 50 percent.
- In the wake of all this controversy about the abuse of asset forfeiture rules by law enforcement, California legislators and Attorney General Kamala Harris want to make it easier to snatch people's money and property.
- New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said today that "many of the worst parts of black history would have been impossible without police," including slavery. Maybe he should keep that in mind before lobbying to have the heavily misapplied charge of resisting arrest reclassified as a felony.
- A New Jersey judge has ordered that Gov. Chris Christie must budget the full amount he had promised to add to the state employees' pension funds. He had tried to chop $1.5 billion off of what he had already agreed to pay in exchange for employees contributing more of their own wages into their pensions.
- Leonard Nimoy, known best for his voiceover work for the strategy game Civilization, as well as some other television and film roles, has been hospitalized with chest pains. (Hat tip to Almanian)
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...George Zimmerman will not face federal charges for killing Trayvon Martin.
But at least we're talking about him again.
About time! I miss being called a racist for defending people's right to self defense.
Alternatively, you can just say something negative about the president.
I like a plethora of options to be called a racist.
He said the President's near.
That there's some authentic frontier gibberish!
Hello.
Zimmerman?
You mean the white Hispanic with the German-Jewish sounding name?
So, does the away goal kill Juve? Dortmund is pretty bad this year though.
"If killing someone isn't depriving them of their civil rights then what the hell is?!"
Appropriate in Trayvon's case.
And as always keep watching the skis.
How is killing the President's son not a Federal crime?
Leonard Nimoy, known best for his voiceover work for the strategy game Civilization, as well as some other television and film roles, has been hospitalized with chest pains.
Bones doesn't even know his anatomy.
Why, you green blooded, inhuman...
Hobgoblin?
The cosmic ballet goes on.
How illogical.
Obligatory
Wait, the guy from that episode of the Simpsons? With the monorail, right?
MONORAIL! MONORAIL! MONORAIL!
MONO - doh!
But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Sorry, Raven, the mob has spoken.
Please, a child could do it. A child could do it.
It's Abe Vigoda's birthday today.
Also predictable: President Barack Obama has vetoed the KeystoneXL pipeline legislation.
Symbolic gesture is symbolic.
A New Jersey judge has ordered that Gov. Chris Christie must budget the full amount he had promised to add to the state employees' pension funds.
Sounds like someone is going to have to again beg Congress for money.
Hat tip to Almanian
Way to go, Almanian!
...California legislators and Attorney General Kamala Harris want to make it easier to snatch people's money and property.
THE GOLDEN STATE NEEDS MONEY.
I was unaware that the Attorney General was part of the legislative branch. Crazy CA!
Leonary Nimoy was once the successful director in Hollywood for a brief period of time.
Star Trek 4 was the 5th highest grossing movie of 1986.
Three Men and a Baby was the #1 highest grossing movie of 1987.
That's a pretty dawgone successful two year period for an actor-turned-director.
Feds raid Texas secessionist meeting
Oh man. Good to see the RoT is still populated by idiots. At leadt they didn't try to detain the judge b
I hadn't heard of them until now. This is going to make for some interesting toilet reading.
You Sugar-Freed the link, Slammer.
The link doesn't work for me.
Wow they are out there. But this ought to have a nice Streisand Effect all the same.
Here. Apologies.
I like their sentiments.
Containing this wonderful nugget from commenter Anse2: If Texas were to secede, life would suck big time for everybody who isn't Christian, male, and white. We'd have a pogrom against Hispanics within a decade. Probably a few death camps around San Antonio for the ones too weak to work in the fields.
yes, because that's what Texas was like as a republic... I'm sure Anse2 has never been here or is from Austin.
Back when Texas was a Republic, it wasn't run by Rethuglicans.
As everyone knows, the only way for a state to truly be racist is to elect Republicans.
Being white and male sucked pretty bad at Goliad if you were pubescent or adult.
Altthough the East Texas RoT is populated by a lot of white male racists.
Yes, but if someone thinks we're letting those assholes be in charge...
At least we get to see how the state actually operates. Try to start playing their game and they immediately send in the guns.
? 32.48. SIMULATING LEGAL PROCESS. (a) A person commits
an offense if the person recklessly causes to be delivered to
another any document that simulates a summons, complaint, judgment,
or other court process with the intent to:
(1) induce payment of a claim from another person; or
(2) cause another to:
(A) submit to the putative authority of the
document; or
(B) take any action or refrain from taking any
action in response to the document, in compliance with the
document, or on the basis of the document.
(b) Proof that the document was mailed to any person with
the intent that it be forwarded to the intended recipient is a
sufficient showing that the document was delivered.
(c) It is not a defense to prosecution under this section
that the simulating document:
(1) states that it is not legal process; or
(2) purports to have been issued or authorized by a
person or entity who did not have lawful authority to issue or
authorize the document.
Added by Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 189, ? 3, eff. May 21, 1997.
WOW...
Obviously targeted at the RoT and similar folks. But I wonder if this section:
purports to have been issued or authorized by a person or entity who did not have lawful authority to issue or authorize the document
could be used against government officials.
Rhetorical question, right?
Is it open mic comedy night at the H&R?
Leonard Nimoy, known best for his voiceover work for the strategy game Civilization, as well as some other television and film roles, has been hospitalized with chest pains. (Hat tip to Almanian)
And let me say, May the Force Be With You!
Na noo, na noo!
What do you want?
He was a great as the jedi in harry potter.
Fucking shite. Next you'll tell me that the DHS isn't going to be shut down.
If Kamala Harris wins the election, she should be called Senator Snatch.
The election to fill Barbara Boxer that is.
Rats! I meant to say "fill Barbara Boxer's seat".
But it was a funny slip of tongue. (yes, yes. You can't talk of tongues in the above context.)
Heh. You said "slip".
Eeeeeew!
"Barbara's Boxer"
No. Just no.
What do we call an election that nobody wants to win? A draft?
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A.....B008SM8VIU
Robert Heinlein biography for $8.00 on Kindle.
I'll wait until it appears on Dark Leaks.
I ate a bowl of 5 alarm chili last night, and when I woke up this morning I had the dark leaks real bad.
I had a 5 hour energy drink yesterday. I had the leaks, but they were greenish blonde.
Fast and loose with the hat tips today, eh Reason?
Two in one afternoon! Obviously they're feeling good about something. Probably in Alaska getting high off legal marijuana.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....08096.html
"Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth"
Sometime in the next 5 billion years? We must do something!
It says 3.34 Gyr, which is about 800 million earth years, by which time earth will be uninhabitable anyways. If the small chance of it happening actually happens.
Er, I mean.... DOOM!
I think Gyr is billion earth years, not galactic years.
Yes, think giga-year.
That's what I was thinking.
Yeah, if we haven't figured out how colonize another planet by then, it just ain't happening.
"Earth Colonizes Alpha Centauri I - Women, Minorities Hardest Hit"
-NNYT
Duck Duck "Trust Us" Go founder and CEO endorses government regulation to hamstring wealthy competitors protect online privacy.
Of course most of the idiots on Hacker News were fine with it.
Give us your keys and we'll let you lock the door.
Dammit. Been using DDG as my primary search engine. What the hell do I use now?
The main other search engine that claims not to track you is StartPage, which is the default for the Tor Browser Bundle. DDG uses Yandex results whereas StartPage uses Google results.
Personally I just use Bing because they give me Amazon gift cards through Bing Rewards. So whatever.
You better check that hat tip you got today. It probably has a tracking device in it!
You don't say!
Well that's disappointing. But I tried DDG and couldn't stick with it. It wasn't good enough for my work needs.
Also predictable: President Barack Obama has vetoed the KeystoneXL pipeline legislation.
Quietly and without any fanfare. Even he acknowledges how unpopular this is with the American people.
Fuck him and let the Democrats pay for his ignorance. There has never been a bigger narcissistic piece of shit elected to the office of President.
Even Wilson?
Ahh, Wilson...
I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men, private statement on Mexico, November, 1913.
No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation,, public speech, April, 1915
I think good ol' fashioned hypocrisy is the least of Wilson's sins...
Not even "The Muskrat"?
either of the Roosevelts?
Herbert Hoover? John Adams?
Don't forget LBJ. Oh yeah, and Nixon.
No. Obama is actually worse than Nixon. Nixon got impeached for shit that Obama is getting away with.
Were his next words something to the effect of "and god bless them for it"?
Seriously, though, I hope this triggers another temper tantrum/work stoppage from the NYPD rank and file.
Common-sense preparations for the war against "civilians" that he knows is coming.
Man wants Browns pallbearers so team 'can let him down one last time'
I mean...
Browns get more orange.
The orange is brighter and richer and matches the passion of our fans and city.
The brown is unchanged.
It's Bengals orange. They worked out a deal with Mike Brown so both teams could get bulk discounts on paint.
So they're literally polishing a turd?
But shriek assured me that California is a classical liberal paradise! If you can't trust an authoritarian cokehead, who can you trust?
As everybody pretty much predicted, George Zimmerman will not face federal charges for killing Trayvon Martin.
I heard Holder telegrammed him the good news.
o.k. I laughed.
so this is how the war with mexico starts...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....63677.html
Jeb Bush polls at 14% nationally. Anyone who thinks his campaign has a snow balls chance in hell is kidding themselves. Everyone knows who he is, and he still is at 14%.
Yeah but he has a college degree. That automatically moves him to the front of the pack.
I think the point may be less to get Jeb elected than it is to stymie the budding libertarian/non-interventionist wing of the GOP.
So the company I'm working for started a surcharge of 50% for smokers. You had to sign a form that you were a smoker or not.
Well today they decided to also implement random testing, via a piss test to see if anyone is lying. And on top of that decided to throw in marijuana/drug use.
I no longer smoke and I don't partake of any sort of recreational drugs so I can easily pass the test. But I am highly, highly annoyed...
What the fuck...
But hey, the government is the only real threat to your privacy or freedom.
They can only fire him, not throw him in jail. There IS a difference.
And he can quit.
Yeah, it is just your livelihood.
Because choosing to quit one job means never finding another.
Yeah because losing your job is no big deal. I mean if the choice is give up all of your freedom and privacy or have no job prospects, what is the big deal?
Just because the government is a biggest threat, doesn't mean it is the only threat.
It's my employer's job, not mine. We're both free to say "fuck you, bye!" whenever either of us want.
I mean, if that scares my boss, he's free to offer me a long-term contract, I suppose.
That doesn't mean that LH's bosses aren't tremendous assholes.
He could unionize and negotiate the tests away.
Or, sign a contract where he isn't required to take it.
Or refuse to take the tests and sue his employer for wrongful discharge.
But would it be "wrongful" or just mean?
What if you chew nicorette? Will that show on the piss test?
I would think so... no vaping either.
"It's second-hand smoke. The science *is* settled, correct?"
That seems like a misguided incentive.
*insurance surcharge per Obamacare that is
That answered my question below.
It's the gift that keeps on giving it to you!
Maybe time to start the job search.
yeah... pretty much this. I'm thinking of refusing the test - if I'm selected - which means an automatic dismissal from the company. I've been there for over twelve years and they don't trust meeven though I have control of millions of dollars worth of software/hardware.
I have control of millions of dollars worth of software/hardware.
BWAHAHAHAA!!
Changing jobs sucks. I made a move last year. I'm much happier now.
The only reason I'm still at this place is to help my wife's law practice. I've been working at this company long enough that I have tons of freedom to come and go - I can leave early to meet my son's bus, or stay at home if he's sick, or go out and run errands. It's certainly cheaper and less of a hassle than daycare.
Sux. Might be best to swallow your pride and ride it out until your wife is set.
How much would it cost them in training and lost productivity to replace you? Might want to have that number handy when you decide to refuse the test.
It's interesting working for a construction company. Dipping snuff in meetings is accepted, smoking is tolerated, and as long as you aren't at a client site, failing a drug test only generates an action item for the firm's attorneys to give an opinion on the advisability of hiring for the position. (Drug and alcohol tests for field employees are pretty standard for hiring.
Some companies just love to shoot themselves in the foot. If my employer ever decided to test and I refused, they'd probably do more harm to themselves than to me. Even with all the time I spend dicking around on H&R.
Thank you Obamacare?
I suggest you start drinking heavily.
Will take that advice.
*goes and mixes a gin & tonic*
*raddles empty glass of ice*
*refills glass*
That's what I'm talkin' about.
Much obliged.
You should shit in the cup if they make you take a piss test.
I bet they aren't testing for alcohol use.
Obviously, most people need their jobs, so it is a lot to ask. But I wish more people who don't do any drugs would get pissed about this shit and refuse on principle.
I have never been asked to take an kind of drug test, but I hope that if I ever am I will be in a position where I can tell them to get fucked.
I took a drug test for a job once. At the time, I was smoking weed, and snorting crystal meth daily, and dabbling regularly with ecstasy, LSD, crack, and anything else I could get my hands on. I figured I was toast and wouldn't get the job. Somehow, I got the job. I suspect that a lot of firms don't want to pay the lab costs of the test, and hope that drug-using applicants will just avoid the test.
I had to take a drug test and a breathalyzer. When taking the breathalyzer I asked if they ever had anyone stupid enough to show up drunk to the pre-screening physical. They had not. I still think it was the weirdest thing I've ever had to do.
stupid enough to show up drunk
Happened recently in a Phila. suburb: guy showed up drunk for his DUI hearing.
Was he charged with defending under the influence? Other than poor judgement, I'm at a loss to think of what crime that falls under.
For positions where government or insurance companies don't require the testing, I bet that's the case a lot of the time. They just want to make sure you at least have some balls and motivation.
Eat a shit ton of asparagus and beets in the days leading up to test day, then have bad aim when you fill the cup.
Whipped cream has a larger carbon footprint than coffee for @Starbucks, says Jim Hanna, director of environmental impact #TheCLC #emissions
Lattepogenic Global Warming!
Next time I see a hipster at a Starbucks ordering a grande mocha, I will CO2-shame him.
Is this yet another article about cow farts?
Or Fifty Shades?
It's the N2O they use as a propellant in cans of whipped cream. N2O has a warming potential of something like 350 times CO2.
Aren't large amounts of nitrous produced in the soil or something?
http://www.annualreviews.org/d.....910-140506
"Equalities and Inequalities: Irreversibility and the Second Law of Thermodynamics at the Nanoscale"
Skimmed it. The premise makes sense. It reminds me, loosely, of the way the brain noises its perceptual information, because the random fluctuations in the noise pull out additional structure.
Fuck these guys.
"ISIS Burns 8000 Rare Books and Manuscripts in Mosul."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/.....00856.html
You have no right to judge their culture, whitey.
Indeed. And if they were rare they couldn't have been popular.
Yes. I'm sure they didn't get all the copies of DaVinci Code or Twilight.
You have my permission to drop a small tactical nuke on their headquarters (if you can find it).
Neutron bomb. There are many archaeological sites over there that shouldn't be damaged and many artifacts that belong in a museum.
I stand corrected.
Is that you, Junior?
🙂
Neutron bombs are still big fucking explosions. Dr. Jones.
Can I suggest an FAE?
http://youtu.be/lO2-YxWkRxk?li.....959q8O1YcQ
"In the wake of all this controversy about the abuse of asset forfeiture rules by law enforcement, California legislators and Attorney General Kamala Harris want to make it easier to snatch people's money and property."
Pardon me while I state the obvious, but California legislators and Attorney General Kamala Harris don't love America.
They are genuinely hostile the Constitution. It isn't just that they don't care about the unconstitutionality of some proposal; "because it's unconstitutional" is one of the best reasons they can think of to do it!
New MLB commissioner would consider shorter season.
About time!
"I don't think length of season is a topic that can't ever be discussed," Manfred told ESPN.com. "I don't think it would be impossible to go back to 154."
Oh, only 8 games.
I want all the MLB I can get- no shrink.
Commissioner CPA would easily cut a month off.
Reduce the regular season but increase the playoffs to eight teams from each league. Seriously, who cares about a shitty team that's 22 games under .500 playing in September? Wipe the September schedule out and start the playoffs where we can watch good teams.
What about a true commitment to excellence?
In the old days, i.e., pre-1969, the determination of MLB's champion was far more reflective of a true commitment to excellence.
Playoffs in North American team sports are nothing more than do-overs.
Baseball- yes. Very random. Football- less random, but still a fair amount of randomness. NBA- not very random. Out of any sport*, the NBA playoffs do the best job of identifying the best team.
*Not qualified to give an opinion on hickley.
Air Coryell or Walsh's West Coast Offense?
I vote Martz's St. Louis Rams Air Coryell from 1999-2001.
Give me the triple option any day.
Nebraska in the mid 90s.
The triple option is great. With the right coaching, the run element is nearly unstoppable.
But try keeping up with a team that can score in under 10 plays or less. Teams like Navy and Army just can't keep up.
I think there is still a place for option offenses, but I think the time has come for those teams to go play-action more often.
Meh, GT is doing just fine. Army and Navy done have the talent to keep up.
We (I'm an alum) have won plenty of shootouts.
Czech gunman kills eight, then himself:
No comment on a story I haven't read yet other than to say..
The prosecutor's name is Kafka?!? Really?!?!? Talk about a humorous coincidence!
http://link.springer.com/artic.....BF01405203
"Some consequences of the Riemann hypothesis for varieties over finite fields"
"reasonable"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....hypothesis
There is still a prize out there for anyone who can prove Riemann's hypothesis that all nontrivial zeroes of the analytical continuation of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of 1/2.
I have to say I am anticipating Reason's report salacious downfall of Rajendra Pachauri with some interest.
Will Ronald Bailey describe it as a regrettable blip in the existence of the IPCC?
Will Scott S cover it as an example of rape culture and the rush to condemn people without due process? Will Elizabeth Nolan Brown cover it as an example of straightforward workplace harassment?
Will I get my dream of the infamous Nobel Prize reception photo with the alt text pointing out both of the recipients had their careers ended because they couldn't restrain themselves from demeaning women?
Awesome, but probably not gonna happen
Won't it get assigned to Dalmia?
She had a monopoly on the India beat.
Pachauri should have been forced to resign years ago. The guy was an utterly incompetent and conflict-ridden UN bureaucrat, but it took a sexual harassment scandal to unseat him.
However, it could have been worse. James Hansen just barely lost out to Pachauri when the IPCC chairmanship was awarded in 2002.
Actually, it might have been better if it got Hansen out of NASA. And who's to say he wouldn't have done something similar?
Will Judge Napolitano hat tip you for all the rhetorical questions?
What's the difference between highway robbers and government? Government doesn't ask you "your life or your money" because it owns your life already.
He will regenerate.
Oh, wait... He's not a Time Lord.
Isn't Nimoy the guy that played Quinto's character in the good Star Trek movies?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s.....3303001326
"Metabolic correlates of hominid brain evolution."
Just a little note for CatoTheElder with respect to a comment he made yesterday but that I saw too late to reply to:
If appears on the website of the National Institutes of Health refers to it being on PubMed, note that PubMed is simply a medical journal aggregator. The fact that the article's abstract appears there means nothing other than that the journal it was published in is one of the ones PubMed indexes. It's not an endorsement by the NIH.
Though I use(d) Google Scholar, anyway...
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. This author able to publish a paper on the trapezoidal rule for numerical integration? Diabetes Care needs to be shut down and all the reviewers need their tenure revokes.
Yes
Oh god, the commentary and her response are excellent -- though I'm reluctant to post them here in case the PDFs are watermarked.
So she wrote a little numerical integration program, and 15 years later she thought to publish it with her name on it. Ridiculous.
What you call "trapezoidal rule for numerical integration" is known as Tai's Model in the Diabetes Care research.
According to the peer-reviewed literature, Dr. Tai discovered integral calculus about twenty years ago, and deserves recognition.
The only thing that surprises me is that she did not file for a process patent on her invention.
Point taken.
Scott, you're an asshole. (ref the Nimoy snark)
"A new poll shows increasing support by Americans for using ground troops to fight ISIS, but it's still below 50 percent."
I wonder how the 15 to 18 year olds poll.
Why does the President hate people who have to cross or live near railroad tracks?
Leftists like to throw the label "regressive" at anyone who opposes their definition of "progress".
And here you have an example of a real regressive standing in the way of economic development.
I'll wait here for the eminent release of Huffpo, Salon and NYT articles calling the President an obstructionist.
Highly recommend "The Gentleman Bastards" series. "The Icarus Hunt" is good too. "Redshirts" is meh.
The first 3 all suffer from the urban fantasy problem where at some point the protagonist has acquired so much power that they are Gods. Dresden Files were okay for a while, and the author tried to deal with the issue but it is now ridiculous. Which is why the new Laundry books by Charles Stross won't focus on Bob Howard anymore.
That "Song of Ice and Fire" book series is pretty good. You should check it out!
I haven't read a single one of them. I suppose I have to turn in my secret decoder ring now.
I'll bet there's not a single bolt thrower in the bunch.
Also, what's with all the damn vampires?
Thanks Tundra! I'll look into them. I was meh about the Dreseden Files, but I loved the Myth series.
The only ones that were sci-fi and not fantasy on the list were Redshirts and Dune (which is both).
For that matter, anything written by Correia. His MHI books are mostly just as good as his Grimnoir books (the first one isn't quite up to the same level as any in the Grimnoir series, since it was his first novel, but it's still pretty damn good).
I thought it was because the Democrats were in power again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnBEYNsSlEE
I've learned an important lesson today:
Always bitch until you get what you want.
Agree. Redshirts is too precious by half.
But building trains isn't regressive.
If you haven't read Dune, then yeah, leave the decoder ring at the door on your way out.
Does Dune Chronicles include the original books by Frank or just the trash put out by his hack son? That could change my answer.
Just don't get too attached to any of the characters.
I thought it was always hit on bitches until you get what you want.
Original 5.
+1 map of the world ... I guess.