Reasonable Beliefs: Prejudice, Myth and Reality in the Trayvon Martin Shooting (Or “Why Han Solo Had the Right to Shoot Greedo First”)

Strap yourself in because this is a long one.

So here we go again, a local criminal incident becomes national news, for some reason and thus all of the world pretends to know something that it cannot know.

We saw this before in the Duke non-rape case.  Those Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping that woman and somehow people just knew that they were guilty.  I remembered wondering immediately why they were so sure.  Hopefully they at least read a few newspaper accounts, but they didn’t look in the alleged victim’s eyes as she described what happened to her, or in the eyes of the accused as they denied it.  So for me the only logical position was to be agnostic—maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, we’ll have to wait and see.  But these people were somehow sure.  There was no word for it but prejudice.  As I wrote in a different context:

To pre-judge a person is to literally “judge before.”  Before what?  Before it is appropriate, before you have all the facts.  Of course normally we think of prejudice as being based on specific traits.  Racial prejudice is to judge a man by his skin color, rather than getting enough facts to judge him as an individual.  But it can be based on anything.

And there was definitely some kind of premature judgment in that case because eventually it was revealed that one of the accused was on video at an ATM at the time he was supposedly committing rape.  And after that the entire case fell apart.

What was the prejudice there?  Well, besides the Hatfield and McCoy feud between alumni of Duke and Carolina, you have to think there was leftover jock resentment, and also part of the calculus is that it fit the sad historical pattern of black women being victimized by white men, and the historical concern that her rights would not be vindicated because she was black.  These are valid to an extent, but just because historically African American women have been victimized by white men, didn’t mean that those particular white men did so; and not only did the local authorities take her claims of rape seriously, but Nifong was so zealous in his prosecution that he ended up violating ethical rules and being disbarred.

And we see this in other instances, where reporters sitting there with the bare text of transcripts decide that a person convicted by a jury of their peers twenty years ago was absolutely definitely innocent, even though an appropriately skeptical person standing from afar wonders how they can be so sure when they never looked the witnesses in the eye.  And certainly the chronic failure by reporters to understand the law itself only compounds the error.

So we have another case of a racially charged incident and everyone pretends to know what happened.  I have looked at the news reports and at this point in time, if you cut through all the clutter one simple truth emerges: at the crucial moment where the law decides whether George Zimmerman committed unlawful murder or justifiable homicide under the principle of self-defense, there is only one living witness: George Zimmerman.

For instance, there are numerous 911 recordings aggregated at this post over at Mother Jones.  It and the reportage generally puts certain facts beyond dispute.  George Zimmerman was doing some unofficial “neighborhood watch” work when he became concerned that Trayvon Martin might have been engaged in criminal conduct.  I will assume his family is correct in insisting that he wasn’t engaged in criminal conduct—and to do so would be out of his character.  And there is certainly no dispute that Martin was unarmed, although he had a bag of skittles and an Ice Tea on him.  So Mr. Zimmerman called the police and as he called them pursued Mr. Martin.  Then at some point the call ended and... some kind of confrontation happened and Mr. Martin ended up dead.  So it seems an innocent man died.  And thus we get this push across the country for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.

But let’s clear out some myths, first.  First, people always seem to take it as a given that it is self-evidently murder to kill an unarmed man.  That is not the case.  The lawfulness of your conduct is not determined by whether the defendant is actually in danger, but whether the defendant is in reasonable fear.

[Please note this is not legal advice.  This is only a discussion of the law for the purpose of discussing the merits of the law so we as citizens can decide whether to change the law.  For legal advice, you need to hire your own lawyer.  I am a lawyer but I am not your lawyer.]

Stratfor Personnel Guess bin Laden Was Not Buried at Sea and Somehow This is News

Back in my Patterico days, both I and Patrick were very hard on Obama’s decision to have bin Laden buried at sea, supposedly out of respect for Islamic tradition (except it wasn’t) before there was any independent verification that we actually killed him.  We felt that doign it that way robbed the families of the 9-11 victims of closure, and gave fertile ground for conspiracy theories.  And so now today via Althouse we get this article from the Wikileaking of Stratfor’s databases:

Leaked: Bin Laden not buried at sea, body moved on CIA plane to US

The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks.

Wow, holy crap, that means the Obama administration was not as dumb about this as I thought.  I take it back, I mean...

Except, um, wait a minute:

Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says.

(Emphasis added.)  Um, he believes?  As in he isn’t sure?

The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony.

"If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi's ashes," Burton commented in another email. Eichman was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. He was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and, tried in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea over the Mediterranean.

“Which I doubt” means he is speculating...

WaPo/AP Caught Revising the O’Donnell Story Without Issuing a Correction

How much did the left show its keister on O’Donnell’s alleged gaffe?  So much so that the AP/WaPo story on the subject was almost completely rewritten last night, and without an official correction.  After the break I will have screen caps and a cut and paste of the text of the article, but let’s start with just the first paragraph.

Before:

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

After:

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Republican Christine O'Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.

Literally I ran a document comparison in word between the original text and every other sentence is completely rewritten.

Oh, and how hard has the AP worked to correct this story?  Well, here’s a google search of the original version, which apparently the AP is disowning.  As of this writing, I got about 23K hits for that.  By comparison I got 4K hits for the corrected version.

More after the break.

Why the Wilson Wife-Beating Story is Probably Not Being Covered

In a follow up on a post yesterday about accusations that Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-generate) beat his wife, Geraghty asks why there is so little coverage of the allegations.  Well, one is always reasonable to suspect biased media coverage, but let me offer a potentially exculpatory explanation.  Maybe they don’t realize how credible the accusation is.

As I noted in my post yesterday, if the lawyer had misrepresented the contents of the deposition, he would have been subject to severe discipline, if not disbarment.  It was for this reason that his claim that Wilson admitted to beating his wife, with specific citations to the deposition, was so credible.  But many in the media might not know that.  So they might say, “well, let’s get verification.”  And even I wanted verification writing to people in Ohio who would be in a position to provide more information.  So far I haven’t heard back.  So who knows?  Maybe in the next 24 hours, copies of the deposition or formal findings of fact, might suddenly emerge all over the place.  That defense lasts, in my humble opinion, a week at most—because a lot of it might be in deep storage.  And after that, then, it is more than fair to conclude that the media is deliberately ignoring the story.

Also while I am quibbling with the man, Geraghty tries to distinguish this from the foibles of Jack Ryan.  I think he is making a valid argument, but I don’t agree.  To be blunt, if your senator is enough of a freak that he wants to have public sex with his wife in a swinger’s club, I think the public has a right to know and they can rightfully hold that against him.  Also, let’s remember who he was married to:

That is 7 of 9 folks, the body that launched a thousand puberties.  That’s right the man blew it with that woman by being a complete jackass.  I think the voters have every right to consider him too stupid to be their senator.  Even if his replacement was, well, this:

That’s right, Jack Ryan not only drove away that incredible hottie, but paved the way for the worst president in my lifetime.  Nice going, dick.

(Crowd) Size Doesn’t Matter, but MSNBC Still Flushes What Little Credibility It had Down the Toilet

Ed Schultz does the same, but I never gave him much credibility in the first place.

So Glenn Beck had his rally back in August, and last weekend Ed Schultz had his rally.  Fast Eddie bragged that he could match Beck’s rally and then the next day you saw an oddly defensive claim that his crowd was about the same size, via Newsbusters:

This Sunday the Washington Post reported, "More than 400 groups endorsed the Nation Working Together rally, which organizers said drew a crowd of 175,000 people - about what they expected."...

Now, conservatives want you to believe that Glenn Beck's phony religious revival was way bigger than the One Nation rally. Well, let me take you back to the day of the Beck rally on August 28th, 2010, at 6:32 P.M., CBS.com proved Beck's crowd was, as I said, no big shakes. "An estimated 87,000 people attended the rally organized by radio talk show host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck Saturday in Washington, according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News. The company, AirPhotosLive.com, based the attendance on aerial photos it took over the rally." Now to be fair, NBC News put the size of Beck's crowd at 300,000 people. So, somewhere in between all of this, 87,000, give or take 9 grand by that company, and 300,000 is reported by NBC. Pretty much, would you say that the size of the crowd is pretty much the same? I would. I was there. The people I saw, it was packed.

Yes, so what are you going to believe?  Fast Eddie or your lying eyes?  Here’s Fast Eddie’s crowd:

 And here is Beck’s:

And notice how Fast Eddie makes his argument.  He doesn’t show you these kinds of photos.  Instead he goes by estimates.  First he claims the Fast Eddie rally drew about 175K by relying on the organizers of the rally.  You know, because they are so trustworthy.  Then when it is time to estimate Beck’s rally, he he first cites the supposedly proven estimate of not his network, or its affiliates, but CBS news.  Then he eventually he mentions the 300K estimate of his network’s affiliate.

Of course I guess you could play a game of saying, sure a crowd that looks half the size is actually “about the same size” after all, how close does two things have to be to be “about” the same size?  About is inherently a vague term.  But MSNBC should not have allowed that to air without a correction.  I expect to hear of one soon.  As they say, Fast Eddie is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

And all of this is silly anyway.  Demonstration is the right of the people, but honestly I have been to like one demonstration in my whole life.  Oh, right, two.  I forgot about the time I participated in a walkout because my school eliminated spring break due to Hurricane Hugo.  How many of you ever protested anything, as in a demonstration?  Not many, I believe.  I mean let’s take the larger estimate of Beck’s crowd: 300K.  Okay well there are 300 million people in the United States, so basically Beck’s rally represented about 0.1% of the American population.  And Fast Eddie’s represented like 0.05% of it, probably less.

The important thing is not to show up at Beck’s rally.  The important thing is to show up at the voting booth.  Even if you are going to vote for the wrong people, vote.  I mean I hope you vote for all the people I want to win, but hope even more fervently that you vote.

But still, important or not, MSNBC has an obligation to the truth and letting Fast Eddie’s bullshit stand violates it.  I expect a correction soon.

Update: Weasel Zippers catches the official Fast Eddie rally page using a picture from MLK's I have a Dream speech, rather than a picture of the actual rally.  Heh.

Update II: I was curious about how Grayson was doing ever since his outrageous Taliban Dan ad, (answer: not good), when I ran across this bit.  Guess who loved the Talilban Dan ad?  Fast Eddie!  I wish I was shocked.

When Political Correctness Distorts the Story (Update X4: lots of interesting updates, just scroll down)

So by now you probably know about Meg Whitman having an illegal alien as a maid.  Mind you, no one has credibly proven that she knew she was an illegal alien.  And in fact if you listen to the maid’s story, instead of her lawyer, Gloria Allred the complete fame whore, you realize that she is only saying that when Whitman was told she was illegal, she first sought legal advice seeking to find a way to make her into a legal resident.  And when that failed, she then fired her.  So Whitman was as compassionate as she could be, and then when it was clear she couldn’t legally employ her by any means, she fired her.

But I want to point out to you this hilarious blog entry from the LA times: “Union ad to highlight Whitman’s undocumented former employee.”  Of course we all know that the left has taken to calling an illegal immigrant as an “undocumented immigrant” because it sounds better.  Only there is a problem.  As Whitman has shown, her maid was very well documented.  She had a social security card, and a driver’s license.  The problem was these documents were fraudulent.

So by using the euphemism “undocumented” they are implying that Whitman hired her without proof that she was here legally and eligible to work.  That is simply not true.  I am sure this implication is an oversight, but it shows you just what happens when you start using bullshit euphemisms, instead of just telling it like it is.  She is an illegal immigrant.  You might not like the laws that declare her to be one, but she broke the law by coming and working here.  And it is actually dishonest to call her anything else.

As Michelle Malkin has pointed out, these supposedly undocumented immigrants actually very often have tons of documents, only fraudulent.

And to get to the merits of the discussion, why exactly would anyone believe either this woman or Gloria Allred?

Stupidest Line in a Story Today

From a story informing us that Tiger Woods is getting a divorce:

The split comes as little surprise to those closest to the 34-year-old Woods.

Yeah, it’s not a surprise to anyone in the fucking Western Hemisphere.  Which actually I am pretty sure is about how many women he fucked—a whole fucking hemisphere’s worth.

Sheesh.

The Banality of Bias

The whole world is jumping about the cracking of the Journolist archives.   The Daily Caller should be praised for getting this and this promises to be the first of days to come.

So by now we all know how they tried to spike the story of Rev. Wright, the unreconstructed racist who served as Obama’s preacher for some twenty years.  Read it all if you haven’t already.

But let me add my two cents to the issue.  I think what is truly shocking isn’t that people like Spencer Ackerman proposed smearing random conservatives as racist because they didn’t recognize how self-evidently awesome Obama is.  No, what is shocking is that no one is shocked by it.  No one speaks up and says, “are you insane?  That would be unethical as a journalist.”  No instead what we saw was the sheer banality of it, in their eyes.  Just as Hannah Arendt found it remarkable that the Nazis could talk about exterminating the Jews with all the fervor of your typical county zoning commission meeting, we should find it damning that nobody thought there was anything shocking in what Ackerman said.

And isn’t that an ethical breach?  I mean in law we are required to report when other lawyers do something unethical and it’s the same rule for doctors and nurses.  But aren’t journalists required to report when other reporters are behaving unethically?  Or are we prepared to say that journalists are not held to the same high standards as lawyers?

But let’s go on, because this seems to be a running theme these days.

Gotta Love Climate “Science” and the New York Times

By now you have probably heard that even hiding the decline was not considered unethical, supposedly.  Not only does the report whitewash the climategate scandal, but the NYT tries to as well.  The money quote:

The issue involved an effort to reconstruct the climate history of the past several thousand years using indirect indicators like the size of tree rings and the growth rate of corals. The C.R.U. researchers, leaders in that type of work, were trying in 1999 to produce a long-term temperature chart that could be used in a United Nations publication.

But they were dogged by a problem: Since around 1960, for mysterious reasons, trees have stopped responding to temperature increases in the same way they apparently did in previous centuries. If plotted on a chart, tree rings from 1960 forward appear to show declining temperatures, something that scientists know from thermometer readings is not accurate.

Most scientific papers have dealt with this problem by ending their charts in 1960 or by grafting modern thermometer measurements onto the historical reconstructions.

See, we don’t have any kind of temperature data going back before around 1850.  So in order to estimate the temperature, they studied tree rings and the like, on the theory that tree rings correspond roughly to temperature.

Meanwhile some evil, corporate, hack scientists said that tree rings didn’t correspond closely enough to real world temperatures to provide an accurate measure.

The problem, of course, for the good, pure scientists of the global warmonger movement is that, well, it turned out that during the 1960’s tree ring data and temperature diverged.  And they don’t know why.

But don’t worry, they are certain that the rest of the time there was no divergence, because...  um, why exactly?  I mean if it diverged in the 60’s, couldn’t it just as easily diverge in other times?

This is what passes for science these days.

If they were smart, they would have condemned the data, and then quickly cooked up new data to support their forgone conclusion.  But instead, they tried the “move along now, nothing to see here” routine and made their unscientific behavior plain to anyone with eyes and logic to see.  And the NYT is there to sell their little fairy tale.

By the way, exit question.  How many of the very same people who believe in a plot to assassinate JFK also simultaneously believe in global warming with slack-jawed credulity. 

Also I should totally create a shirt.  Just a citation to a website and the words, “Hide the Decline.”  Besides that specific meaning, it has a fun kind of irony to it.

My Send off for Helen Thomas

By now you know about Helen Thomas’ anti-Semitic flame out.  So let me give you my send off to her.  Its an apropos bit of dialogue from Clint Eastwood’s movie “White Hunter, Black Heart.” (note, this is the only awesome moment in the movie, but it is awesome.) Clint, some dude and a pretty woman were having dinner together, when she said pretty much Hitler had the right idea about the jews. The dude reveals he is Jewish and she keeps going saying anti-semitic stuff anyway. And then Clint pipes up (you can read it or watch it on video here and jump to the end):

How’s this for a Pornoriffic Headline?

Davos Virgin Margaret Brennan Unbuttons the Titans of Finance

And here is the picture:

The article itself is boring economic stuff, but wow, doesn’t that get the average male’s attention, at the thought of her unbuttoning her, ahem, titans?

Its both dirty and ingenious.  Well played.

Update: And looking through the comments, we have a collection of guys making horny comments and a few people criticizing it.  I think this commenter has a point, when s/he says “Good going, Gillian. Your headline is sexist and demeans women reporters, yourself included.” Gillian refers to the post’s author.

On one hand, the commenter is right.  On the other hand, it’s hard to summon any reaction more than amusement. Its too ham-handed to have any other reaction.