I’m bowling for reproductive rights because contrary to apparently-popular belief, sex is not evil, birth control is not abortion, pregnancy is not compulsory, parenthood is not a walk in the park, medicine should be science-based, everyone should be taught how to be healthy and responsible, and everyone has the right to make the best decisions and take the right actions for themselves, their bodies, their families, their beliefs, and their lives.
Sometimes in America, if you’re not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Straight Male, you deserve all the human rights violations you experience.
Sheriff’s Office releases more 911 calls made by George Zimmerman
This afternoon six of the calls made by George Zimmerman were released by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
In four of the recordings Zimmerman called police to report “suspicious” persons — all of whom were black — in or near the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood.…Many of the calls start the same way — Zimmerman mentions the recent rash of burglaries in the area and identifies himself as a member of the neighborhood watch.
“We’ve had a lot of break-ins in our neighborhood recently and I’m on the neighborhood watch,” Zimmerman said during one call. ”There’s two suspicious characters at the gate of my neighborhood, I’ve never seen them before. I don’t know what they are doing. They are hanging out…loitering.”
That day, the “characters” are two black men in a white sedan, Zimmerman tells the dispatchers. An officer is sent to check out the call, but it’s unclear if anything suspicious was uncovered.
Another time he calls two report two black teens who match the description of suspects in recent break-in, who his wife saw and identified for police…On Feb. 26, Zimmerman called the non-emergency line to report a suspicious person — Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman mentioned the break-ins, reported a young black male in his neighborhood who he didn’t recognize and thought was acting suspiciously.
Minutes after that call, while officers were in route, Trayvon was shot and killed. Zimmerman said he acted in self defense. Officers have not arrested or charged him. Records show Zimmerman, 28, called the cops 46 times between January 2011 and Feb. 26.
Many of the calls appear related to his crime-watch volunteer role. The most frequent reason for his calls — nine times — was to report a suspicious person, according to Sanford Police Department records released last week.
People he doesn’t recognize in his neighborhood, who are black, appear to be instant suspicious persons. How about a white person in his neighborhood Zimmerman doesn’t recognize? Is that suspicious?
Tell me he didn’t shoot Trayvon Martin because he was black. Zimmerman said, “These assholes always get away” when giving chase. He reports young black men as suspicious to police.
Zimmerman wasn’t even “standing his ground” — he went out looking for a fight, chased down a young black man, and came home a murderer. One less “suspicious person” in the neighborhood.
A self-appointed neighborhood watchman who pursued and then shot dead an unarmed 17-year-old boy outside his stepmother’s home last month in Sanford, Fla., reportedly wanted to be a police officer and had called 9-1-1 50 times in the last year.
Trayvon Martin, a black high-school junior, was making his way home with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea on Feb. 26 when Zimmerman spotted him, called a non-emergency dispatch number to report Martin looked intoxicated, followed him, and then minutes later after an altercation, shot him.
Zimmerman, 28, who is white, claimed self defense. He was never arrested and has been charged with no crime, sparking national outrage.
ABC News has learned police seemed to accept Zimmerman’s account at face value that night and that he was not tested for drugs or alcohol on the night of the shooting, even though it is standard procedure in most homicide investigations.
The night of Feb. 26, Zimmerman made a non-emergency call to police before fatally shooting Martin, in which he told a dispatcher, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something.”
But law enforcement expert Rod Wheeler who listened to the tapes tells ABC News that Zimmerman, not Martin, sounded intoxicated in the police recordings of the 911 calls.
“When I listened to the 911 tape the first thing that came to my mind is this guy sounds intoxicated. Notice how he’s slurring his words. We as trained law enforcement officers, we know how to listen for that right away and I think that’s going to be an important element of this entire investigation,” Wheeler said.
But Zimmerman was not tested.
Martin’s family is now calling on the FBI to take over what they say is a botched investigation.
“We’ve got a fair investigation, it was the best we can do, it’s in states attorney hands now,” Sanford Police Department spokesman Dave Morgenstern said.
Series of Calls to Police Record Events Leading Up to Shooting
The series of calls to police, which depict the apparent progression of events that led to Zimmerman allegedly shooting Martin, sent the boy’s mother screaming from the room and prompted his father to declare, “He killed my son,” according to a family representative.
The contents of the calls and the family’s reaction to them were recounted to ABC News by a representative of the boy’s family, Ryan Julison, and ABC News affiliate WFTV published excerpts from the 911 calls.
On one call to a non-emergency dispatch number, according to Julison, Zimmerman says, “He’s checking me out,” and then, “This guy looks like he’s on drugs, he’s definitely messed up.”
“These a**holes always get away,” he adds.
The dispatcher is heard trying to discourage Zimmerman, asking, “Are you following him?.. Okay, we don’t need you to do that.”
Within minutes, however, 911 calls are being made to police reporting the two are fighting.
“They’re wrestling right in the back of my porch,” one frantic caller says. “The guy’s yelling help and I’m not going out.”
On a second call someone’s screams for help can be heard and what sounds like two gunshots.
The caller’s boyfriend shouts, “Get down,” and after the second apparent gunshot, the shouts for help cease, Julison told ABC News.
“There’s gun shots. Uh, I’m pretty sure the guy is dead out here, holy sh**,” a caller says into the phone.
One witness describes Zimmerman after the shooting.
“He’s out there with a flashlight. The guy is raising his hands up saying he shot the person,” the caller said.
Martin’s family listened to eight tapes, Julison said. At one point, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, ran out of the room screaming and crying, barely lasting through half the tapes.
The boy’s father, Tracey Martin, stoic and measured until then, erupted, Julison said.
“He killed my son,” Martin said, according to Julison. “He killed my son. He couldn’t control himself.”
The Sanford, Fla., Police Department, relenting to massive public pressure, plans to release parts of the 911 tapes pertaining to the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News, but wanted the boy’s family to hear the tapes before they were released to the public, according to a family source.
A week after ABC News uncovered questionable police conduct in the investigation of the fatal shooting, including the alleged “correction” of at least one eyewitness’ account, outrage that the shooter remains free is intensifying.
“It’s surprising. It’s shocking,” said Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father. “It lets me know that justice is just not being served here. All we want is justice for our son. We’re not asking for anything out of the ordinary.”
In an interview with ABC News, Martin’s mother, Fulton, tearfully said she only seeks an arrest.
“Let a judge and jury decide the rest,” she added.
In the meantime, outrage is spreading across the Internet.
The Seminole County State Attorney’s Office was so bombarded by emails demanding that it prosecute Zimmerman that its website had to be taken down for 45 minutes, according to a spokeswoman for the office.
One of several petitions for Zimmerman’s arrest has garnered more than 250,000 signatures on a change.org site, and at one point signatures were pouring in at the rate of 10,000 an hour, according to the website.
The outrage has been partly buoyed by calls for non-violent action by hip-hop luminaries, including Russell Simmons, who has been tweeting about the tragedy and warning against its possible vigilante violence.
“Trayvon Martin didn’t die so we can create a race war he died so we can promote better understanding. We must start honest dialogue,” Simmons wrote.
GOP presidential challenger Rick Santorum faced three tough questions from high school students Friday afternoon on his education, health care and economic policies.
The questions he faced afterward from reporters at an Italian restaurant in suburban Chicago about the year he lived in Illinois seemed almost gentle by comparison.
[…]
Seventeen minutes into his speech, the faculty advisor interrupted him.
“Excuse me — I know we’re on a tight schedule here. We have some students who would like to ask some questions if you’re ready to entertain those,” the faculty member said. Santorum nodded.
The 3 questions students got to ask:
1.
“You recently commented on how you don’t believe everyone should go to college,” Becky Pauwels, 17, told Santorum. “Yet countries such as Germany and Japan, whose governments offer college to any motivated student, experience high rates of socio-economic mobility, which, by your own admission and all academic studies, is lagging in the United States.”
Since President Barack Obama proposes expanded access to college and training programs, how do his proposals differ from Obama’s, she asked.
2
“Your main competitor, Mitt Romney, donated 16.3 percent of his income to charity and you donated only 1.7 percent of your $923,000 salary to charity,” Vucicevic said. “Your explanation was that you have to provide for seven children, one of which has special needs. … How do you expect middle-class Americans who are in similar situations to pay for it? Isn’t your situation the exact reason why we need a universal health care system like most other nations have?”
The auditorium erupted in applause at the question.
3
Hannah Johnstone asked if Santorum’s economic policies weren’t “just giving the upper 1 percent more of the advantages they had under George Bush’s lower tax rates and deregulatory policies which is very similar to what you are proposing?”
So we know that the cop who investigated the Trayvon Martin murder has a history of racial problems. We know that one of the cops changed a witness’s testimony. We know that Zimmerman fired a warning shot and Martin begged for his life. We know that the police lied about Zimmerman’s criminal record. We know that Zimmerman has a history of being a self-appointed vigilante. And most importantly, we know that Martin was unarmed and could never pose a credible threat to a man who had 100 pounds and a gun on him.
And yet, the police think it was self-defense.
This is not an isolated case; this is what institutionalized racism looks like.
In the past six months, the government has killed Troy Davis and now it’s letting a private citizen get away with murdering Trayvon Martin.
Does this sound like a post-racial society?
A thoughtful, sensitive male Wisconsin legislator has proclaimed that he is against divorce under all circumstances — even spousal abuse. And he’s got a message to all those ladies out there getting the shit beaten out of them by their husbands: remember the good times, back before things took an abusive turn, and maybe you’ll fall in love again. There, isn’t that better? Now, chin up, and go back out into that awful marriage of yours like a champ.
The obtuse anti divorce champion is Republican Don Pridemore. And this isn’t the first time the Heartless Cheesehead has acted in a manner most unbecoming.
Remember earlier this month when another Wisconsin lawmaker thoughtfully suggested that maybe single parenthood should be considered a factor that may be indicative of child abuse? Pridemore was a co-sponsor of the bill that would’ve made it a crime for a person to dare try to raise a child on their own outside of the pillowy soft Magic Zone of marriage. But what about women who are being abused by their husbands? Shouldn’t they have the option to extract themselves from an unhealthy situation? Nope, says Pridemore. And he’s got some expert abused spouse marital advice as well: “If they can refind those reasons and get back to why they got married in the first place it might help.”
So, the solution to divorce and spousal abuse is just remembering why you love your abuser? Did he learn about love, relationships, and psychology from tragic early country songs?
