Mark Byron

Overcharge

I haven't seen anyone directly comment on the prospect that Florida officials may have gone a bit overboard with a 2nd-degree murder charge on Mr. Zimmerman. Here's the definition from the Florida code that will be a great aid to his defense team-italics added.

The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree...

That's going to be hard to prove. The fact that the guy was part of a neighborhood watch program points to something well short of the depraved psychopath the law is envisioning. To do that would require a major character assassination on the part of the prosecution, for it would only take one person our of twelve to say "whoa, isn't that a bit much for this scenario?"

If the prosecution is smart, they'll give the jury the option of a lower, manslaughter-type charge, which seems to better fit the case if self-defense isn't a good fit. However, that might not have been enough to keep the rhetorical lynch mob at bay who would want nothing short of a murder rap to be applied.

The Rodney King case comes to mind, where the first trial had the cops essentially up on attempted murder charges; when the jury was faced with the counter-argument that they were merely beating the crap out of King rather than trying to kill him, they took it and inadvertently set up some of the nastier rioting of my adult lifetime.

If a secondary charge isn't offered as an alternative, we're looking at a similar dynamic in the Treyvon case, where Zimmerman will be overcharged, acquitted and walking. That won't be pretty and will leave the White House of 2013 with the option of doing one of those "violate his civil rights" double-jeopardy end-runs to try him at the federal level as in the King case, assuming that the self-defense charge is weak enough to make a second trial hard to win for the feds.

Edifier du Jour: Psalm 12:1-4(NIV)

¹ Help, LORD, for no one is faithful anymore;

those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.

² Everyone lies to their neighbor;

they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts.

³ May the LORD silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue—

⁴ those who say, “By our tongues we will prevail;

our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

David was kveching about things that seem all too modern; people are quick to get full of themselves and think they are their own boss. Not quite true, even in a US culture that is quick to question all authority.

Midweek Musings

We're at a point where we're looking at a big anti-trust case in the e-book market; Apple and a number of publishers were trying to move away from price competition by letting the publishers pick the price and let Apple and other e-book sellers take a set cut of that list price. Amazon was the target of their wrath, as they were starting to try and do their own publishing and take the current publishers out of the loop when they weren't driving prices down.

I haven't gotten into the E-book realm as of yet, but Eileen very much likes the Kindle she got for Christmas. It seems crisp-screened and fairly user-friendly; Eileen has been able to dig into the public domain section to review some of the classic lit of the 1800s along with the occasional modern book. It is a bit of a head-scratcher that we're that far along on this digital economy where the market is big enough to be worth gaming.

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Sadly, Rick Santorum hung 'em up yesterday. There's quite a bit of missed-it-by-that-much frustration that can be put to bed now. It's hard for a non-establishment candidate to get traction when he gets super-PACed into the ground by establishment money either twisting your record (if you have one) or bemoaning your lack of a record (if you're a political novice).

The good news for Santorum fans is that Romney was in this spot last go-round; the runner-up in the GOP race is often the front-runner the next go round (Reagan 76, Dole 88 and McCain 2000 are three other cases in point). However, that's a bit of cold comfort for now.

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The diplomats are trying to talk Syria into a cease-fire, but I don't see that working. At this point, the Assad team is only going to respond to hard power; any sanctions would get Russian vetoes and not be overly effective if the Russians stood down, so the diplomats are left with taunting Assad a second time.

More Than a Show

This passage from Hebrews 10(NIV) came to mind as we move out of Holy Week-

²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

That encouragement part is often left out of the loop as we do church these days. A typical service, whether it be in a megachurch with a Grammy-nominated house praise band or a one-service small-town church, is a theological show, where the congregant sings along to the music, drops something in the offering plate (or not) and listens to a good sermon. The closest thing to encouragement you get is a greeting time between songs, which doesn't lend itself to true fellowship and more a perfunctory set of hand-shakes and howyadoins of the people around you.

Paul (or whoever penned Hebrews; we're not sure) is looking for some level of engagement when we get together above what we get in modern churchdom. The lack of such engagement can have people be comfortable with just the occasional trip to church, especially on Easter. You would seem to need some interactive part of the service if we were to meet what the writer was looking for; breaking up into small groups to pray or discuss things seems a bit trite within a service, but that is one way to move towards something more Pauline.

Sunday Night Musings

Interesting day in sports, where we had a slugfest in Detroit, with the Tigers sweeping Boston with a 13-12 win in 11 innings; strangely, Duane Below is now 2-0, backing into wins in relief two days in a row. The Tigers needed a three-run homer from Miguel Cabrera in the 9th to force extra innings and needed a two-run walk-off homer from Alex Avila to win it after Boston took a 12-10 lead in the top of the 11th.

One interesting feature of the 11th was Prince Fielder gaming the Williams Shift (for dead-pull lefties-the shortstop plays on the other side of second and the third baseman plays the shortstop's spot) they had on, poking a single through the unmanned third base position. That proved to be the tying run.

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While I was watching the Tiger game, I heard a hoot come from upstairs where my folks were watching the Masters- Louis Oosthuizen had holed out his second shot on the par-5 second for the first double-eagle at the Masters since 1935. That put him in the lead, but he wound up losing in a playoff to Bubba Watson.

Watson might not quite be up to Seve Ballesteros' fame as a shot-maker, but his second shot at 10 in the playoff will rank up with the Spaniard's best magic tricks. Then there was Phil Mickelson's fiasco at 4, where he found himself deep in the jungle and took four shots to get to the green, taking a triple-bogey.

A neat day of sports between the Tigers and the Masters.

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On a less edifing note, NRO's veteran curmudgeon John Derbyshire let loose with a black-bashing essay on a paleocon site; he's now their former veteran curmudgeon.

The sad part of the "Derb" essay is that there are germs of truth there buried in ex-Anglican cynicism. Yes, that's a counter-stereotypes, that ex-Anglicans are the most cynical folks on the planet, narrowly edging out ex-Catholics. However, when you take God out of the mix, the lesser angles of our nature have more room to thrive.

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I missed this while on vacation-it seems like Alberta will be going to the polls on the 23rd, the writ having dropped back on March 26th. The polls have the Wildrose Alliance leading the ruling Conservatives, putting the Tea Party-esque bunch in position to take over Canada's most conservative province.

 

Heart-Witnesses

We just got back from Easter service, and our sermon had an interesting thought towards the end; eye-witnesses are more effective then expert witnesses.

So often, commentary on-line leans towards the latter, as dueling theologians and heresy hunters go after small points of heterodoxy and heteropraxy. Such debate rarely brings outsiders to Christ or expands the Kingdom of God.

If I can borrow from that other King James, we believers are all witnesses... of God's love. As the old hymn goes, "You ask me how I know He lives; He lives within my heart." That's something that photochemical analysis of the Shroud of Turin can't do.