"The Islamic State released a new recruitment video today with deaf fighters using sign language asking other deaf followers to join them."

"While one message is that being being deaf is not an excuse not to come and fight, I think there's a more subtle and deeper one...." writes Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft.

This isn't a blood and gore video designed for adrenaline junkies. It's a video aimed at those seeking acceptance and a family. Its message is "You have a home with us, we will welcome you and accept you and you will be one of us."

It's too bad the video is for ISIS. Otherwise it would be a great public service announcement for the hearing impaired, showing prospective employers that being deaf doesn't hold them back and they can do a job just as well as the non-hearing impaired, while at the same time showing fellow deaf citizens and the rest of us that the inability to hear or speak doesn't stand in the way of leading a fulfilling and joyful life.

"The Hipster terrorists are attacking!"

Comment at a Facebook post linking to an article with the headline "NYPD Fatally Shoots Man Attacking Cops with Hatchet; Possible Terrorist Link."

UPDATE: The comment at the Facebook post disappeared. I assure you it was there. I don't remember the name of the Facebooker who wrote it. The post was put up by my son John, but the comment wasn't his.

AND: Jeralyn Merritt goes looking for the real story of Zale Thompson. Excerpt:

Zale Thompson is a big fan of Malcolm X. He believes the time has come for violent aggression against the oppressors of African Americans in the U.S....

The Arabic graphic on his FB page is one that appears on many non-jihadist Arabic forums. I don't think his attack was motivated by ISIS. The manner of attack (a hatchet rather than a gun) may have been, but he is not a religious zealot. His cause is racial oppression....

"Here we are... Super Bowl, in New Jersey... Christie can appear on the scene... look like he’s got all this behind..."

"... him, and the lawyer releases the letter precisely on the eve of the big day in order to ruin it."

ADDED: TalkLeft — who's no Christie fan — says:

The lawyer's letter, which was carefully and ambiguously worded, didn't prove anything, let alone that what Christie said at the news conference was false....

She's looking closely at the text of the letter and the transcript of the press conference.

The letter doesn't even allege to whom the Administration Order was communicated. If the lawyer meant it was communicated to Christie, why didn't he say so? And alleging evidence exists "tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge" isn't a claim there's evidence Christie did have knowledge. Why the word play?

More at the link. 

"By the President comparing himself to Martin 35 years ago, is he saying he would have responded as Martin did, and physically attacked someone for following him?"

Asks TalkLeft.

I hope not because our laws do not allow such conduct. It is not illegal for a private citizen to follow someone. It is illegal to physically assault another person who has not threatened him with the imminent use of force.

I am very disappointed that the President has chosen to endorse those who have turned a case of assault and self-defense into a referendum on race and civil rights. And that he is using it to support those with an agenda of restricting gun rights.

The Zimmerman case "has been miscast as a civil rights issue since the day the Martin family's lawyers came on the scene."

Says TalkLeft.

If the public wants to... believe them, that's their right. If they want to bring civil lawsuits against George Zimmerman or law enforcement or public entities, that's their choice. But when it comes to those lawyers and their public relations team using their bully pulpit to inflame passions and exert undue influence on the actions of law enforcement and public officials, including elected prosecutors, who have a duty not to bring charges without a good faith belief they can prove those charges beyond a reasonable doubt, all the while having a financial stake in the outcome of related civil litigation, I object.

Much more at the link.

"O'Mara, who has no burden of proof says he will prove that his client is 100% innocent."

"Pretty risky tactic," says TalkLeft.

The closing argument is in progress right now, and even though George Zimmerman's lawyer said that, I can safely predict that when he gets to the end of his 3-hour lecture, he will assert that he has proved that his client is 100% innocent and yet your task as jurors is not to determine whether he's absolutely 100% innocent or even probably innocent or even probably guilty but only whether you have a reasonable doubt that he's guilty.

Surely, once you accept what the burden of proof is, the case becomes easy. I watched most of the prosecutor's closing argument yesterday, and he was acting like a defense lawyer punching holes in Zimmerman's version of the story. He created — in my mind — a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman acted in self-defense.

O'Mara can say: I've just obliterated any doubt Mr. de la Rionda might have created in your minds, and that would be enough for me to win now if I had the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There isn't even a reasonable doubt that my client acted in self-defense. And yet the prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in self-defense.

All the uproar about race is overwhelmed by the more mundane criminal process matter of burden of proof. I hope the general public understands that to acquit Zimmerman is not to say that Trayvon Martin is guilty — or even that he did anything wrong. It could be that each man misperceived the other and felt that his life was threatened. I understand the feeling that since Martin paid with his life for that mistake that Zimmerman should also pay, just to square it up. But that feeling can't rule the criminal process.

I hope the media help people to understand that and to calm the turmoil that this case has caused.

Zimmerman judge excludes testimony from voice experts.

The prosecution wanted witnesses who analyzed the background screaming on the 911 calls.

The low quality of these supposed experts was discussed here, last May. Quoting TalkLeft, who found this statement "laugh-out-loud funny":

[A]pproximately one second after the start of CALL3, Mr. Zimmerman makes a seemingly religious proclamation, "These shall be." His speech is characterized by the low pitch and exaggerated pitch contour reminiscent of an evangelical preacher or carnival barker....

"The Government has agreed to let Facebook and other web companies publish some details about the number of surveillance requests it has received."

"Facebook has already posted their numbers. For the last six months of 2012, it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data pertaining to 18,000 to 19,000 of user accounts. This includes requests from all government entities in the U.S. (local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests)...."

"There's been a spate of new pleadings in the George Zimmerman case."

TalkLeft explains it better than anyone else, as far as I know.

ALSO: "Slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin's cellphone texts and photos show him chatting with friends about marijuana, fighting and guns, new potential evidence shows."

When the lawyer testifies against his client...

... and the client is O.J. Simpson.

[Yale] Galanter hesitated and spoke only after he paused, breathed deeply and was reminded that Simpson had waived attorney-client privilege.

"I'm very uncomfortable doing this," Galanter said.

Via TalkLeft, who says "Things aren't looking good for O.J., even though other lawyers involved in the case have supported O.J.'s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel...").

"'Expert' Reports in George Zimmerman Case Disclosed."

And TalkLeft is skeptical:

In the first report, despite the cries on the 911 call being deemed 'minimum-to-marginal material for identification purposes'... The report seems worthless. But even if one accepts it, since [Trayvon] Martin is excluded as the person screaming in three of the last four screams the logical conclusion is he wasn't the one crying out for help. The inference I take from this is that Martin may have yelled as he started hitting Zimmerman (the first two cries) but Zimmerman was the one crying out in the rest of the screams, which fits with him being punched in the nose and having his head slammed into the ground.

The second report is so absurd I'm wondering if it wasn't a joke. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny.

[A]pproximately one second after the start of CALL3, Mr. Zimmerman makes a seemingly religious proclamation, "These shall be." His speech is characterized by the low pitch and exaggerated pitch contour reminiscent of an evangelical preacher or carnival barker....

... The first state report is equivocal and a guesstimate. The second is a joke. The court should exclude these expert reports.

"Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell agreed today to two life sentences and waive his appeal rights..."

"... in exchange for the state taking the death penalty off the table.... Seeking the death penalty was overkill...."

"Are gun owners now going to be stigmatized like sex offenders?"

Asks TalkLeft.

I think it's an attempt at intimidation. I wonder if any of those whose addresses were published are immediate family members of federal officials or employees, and covered by 18 USC Section 119, which prohibits publishing home addresses for intimidation. Or if the internet publication of home addresses of gun owners can be considered cyber stalking, cyber-bullying, harassment or invasion of privacy under state laws? Just because the information is available under a FOIA request, does that mean it can be publicly disseminated? I'm sure they checked with their lawyers and felt like they were on safe ground, but I hope somebody sues them.

This incident reminds me of the mailings that went out last spring showing the names and addresses of residents in one's neighborhood and whether they'd voted in recent elections. At the time, I called it "incredibly creepy":

This is an effort to shame and pressure people about voting, and it is truly despicable. Your vote is private, you have a right not to vote, and anyone who tries to shame and harass you about it is violating your privacy, and the assumption that I will become active in shaming and pressuring my neighbors is repugnant. 

In a second post on that topic, a commenter, The Drill SGT, pointed to some social science research on the effectiveness of manipulating social pressure with this sort of information about what neighbors are doing. Apparently, if this sort of thing works, they'll be plenty more of it.

Get ready.

"George Zimmerman has filed his defamation lawsuit against NBC and three reporters for their false editing..."

"... of his non-emergency call to police to report Trayvon Martin..."

The 24-page complaint alleges “NBC News saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.”

ADDED: More detail here.

"Is it surprising that the chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's office wouldn't know her comments would eventually be traced back to her?"

"With all the emphasis DOJ puts on its cybercrimes task force, and its use of subpoenas and court orders to get social media and email account information about those under investigation, why would federal prosecutors feel secure enough to post under a pseudonym?"

The arrogance... the stupidity... If you're going to be arrogant+stupid, watch out for the idiosyncratic punctuation:

[T]here were multiple instances in which the online comments and Mann's pleadings contained an extra space after a closing quotation mark and before the final punctuation period. Other similarities included the lack of spaces before and after the dots used to designate an ellipse.

"Judge Will Issue Subpoenas for Trayvon Martin's School Records and Social Media Accounts."

Jeralyn Merritt says this is "the correct ruling":

A defendant raising self-defense may introduce evidence regarding a victim's reputation for a particular character trait like violence to show that the defendant was not the initial aggressor, even if the defendant did not previously know about the victim's reputation. Here's the Munoz case the Judge cites from, which quotes the Dwyer case....

The judge is not saying the records are relevant or admissible at trial. Her ruling is in response to a discovery request, and the issue is whether the records could lead to relevant and admissible evidence.

From the Christian Science Monitor article on the ruling:

On Friday, Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, called Judge Nelson’s decision to allow the school and social media subpoenas a travesty, suggesting that by opening up Martin’s records it would allow defense attorneys to “make a dead child seem as if they’re the perpetrator.”

In other words, the defendant is allowed to defend himself. Obviously, his only defense is that the "dead child" was the perpetrator. But the parents aren't legal experts (as Merritt is) and what do you expect them to say?

"I listened to 2 minutes of [Zimmerman's] cousin's calls and didn't believe a word she said. She was tentative and her tears sounded phoney."

"That of course, is just my opinion," says TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt. "I'm pretty surprised Judge Lester ordered their release."

Go here for details and to listen to the calls.

TalkLeft says George Zimmerman "was not the aggressor" — "This is self-defense."

This opinion — by Jeralynn Merritt — is based on poring over the evidence.

Zimmerman... did nothing to provoke Trayvon Martin’s beating him, breaking his nose and slamming his head into concrete. He had every right to respond with deadly force to stop Trayvon’s physical attack on him and to prevent Trayvon from getting control of his weapon.

Much detail — Merritt's interpretation of Zimmerman's various statements — at the link. Excerpt:

George’s suspicion was aroused because he saw someone milling around between houses in the rain. He knew this person didn’t live at the house he was standing by because it had been burglarized before and he knew who lived there. The guy wasn’t exercising. He did nothing to get out of the rain. He thought to himself, who stands out in the rain and stares at houses?...

If the state has no evidence George initiated the verbal confrontation, then the affidavit for probable cause for second degree murder contained a lie....

Read the whole thing. I'm eliding a lot.

"Stand your ground is not a defense, but an immunity statute, providing immunity from criminal prosecution."

Jeralyn Merritt (at TalkLeft) explains the law:

A defendant charged with a crime who wants to raise Stand your Ground files a motion to dismiss claiming stand your ground immunizes him from prosecution....

A hearing is held before trial. The burden is on the defendant to prove by a preponderance of evidence that stand your ground immunity applies.

The judge weighs the facts. If the judge agrees the defendant has shown stand your ground immunity applies by a preponderance of evidence, the charges are dismissed. The defendant can't be prosecuted.

If the judge finds the defendant hasn't met his burden, (including if the disputed evidence is so equal on both sides the judge can't decide one way or the other) the case goes to trial to be decided by the jury. At trial, the defendant can still argue both self-defense and stand your ground immunity -- he only has to establish some evidence of his theory, which can be just his own testimony, that he acted in self-defense.

"NBC 6 Miami... writers are repeating false information from one story to the next, spreading it like a virus."

"Not just one writer, but several. Not just one time, but multiple times. Even after two weeks, and notwithstanding updates to the original articles, the three articles with the distorted, racially charged quote are still up on NBC 6 Miami's website. I think the responsibility for that lies with NBC 6 Miami's senior management. They need a jolt."