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The family rescued by George Zimmerman when they were trapped in an overturned SUV canceled a scheduled news conference today and is pleading for privacy.

In an emotional, fiery post on his blog, The Audacity of Despair, Simon denounced the verdict, saying he was "ashamed to call himself an American."

The system failed him when everyone in the courtroom raised racial bias in roundabout ways, but almost never directly — for example, when the defense held up a picture of a shirtless Martin and told the jurors that this was the person Zimmerman encountered the night he shot him. But in fact it was not the way Zimmerman had seen Martin. Consciously or subconsciously, the defense played on an old racial trope: asking the all-female jury — mostly white — to fear the image of the glistening black buck, as Zimmerman had.

I just want you to know: I am so proud of you. In you I see a fierce resistance that reminds me of ancestors past. Each time you open your mouth, look down, clench your cheeks in a fresh wave of pain, I see Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Fannie Lou Hamer joining their spirits and bonding their strength to yours. I see a survivor, a woman who has miraculously kept her mind and nurtured her sanity enough that she can sit, for hours, and recount such horror. You have a brilliance that flares out, only to be quickly veiled...

Which brings us to the curious point that even though OFA tweet in the name of the leader of the Democratic Party, they are legally a non-partisan organization. Figure out how that works. The arms-length relationship between Obama and Organizing For Action is based on its legal status as a non-partisan organization. As Politico reported in February, the organization updated its guidelines to make that point clearly. [The Atlantic Wire] “The organization on Wednesday quietly posted new guidelines on its website formally declaring its intention to stay out of campaign politics. “Neither OFA nor its chapters will be involved in...

.... I was duly attacked for my remarks and offered an immediate and unqualified apology. But this did not suffice for some critics, who insisted that I was guilty not just of stupidity but also of homophobia. I have no doubt that at least some students were influenced by these allegations. Nobody would want to study with a bigot. I therefore owe it to students—former and prospective—to make it unambiguously clear that I am no such thing.....

Two days after Plotnikov's death, Tsarnaev flew to Moscow on July 16 last year, and the next day to the US. "It seems that Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to Dagestan with the aim of joining the insurgents," said the source. "It didn't work out. First you need to contact an intermediary, then there is a period of 'quarantine' – before they take someone, the insurgents check him out over several months. "After Nidal and Plotnikov were destroyed and he lost his contacts, Tsarnaev got frightened and fled."

This is just breaking on CNN so no article yet -- CNN reporting sources say legal talks are underway for the Boston Bomber to avoid death penalty in exchange for information!!

Investigators spoke with the man in Rhode Island, the source said, after reports surfaced suggesting members of the suspected bombers' family blame a "Misha" for radicalizing alleged bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The man, whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov, denies ever encouraging a violent take on Islam, and says he was not Tamerlan's teacher, according to a New York Review of Books writer who says he interviewed "Misha."

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

Waltham police have stepped up their investigation of a 2011 triple homicide where a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was brutally murdered, according to a relative of one of the victims who was interviewed by the Globe. The relative said Sunday that police have renewed the investigation at the request of victims’ relatives who believe Tamerlan, and perhaps his younger brother, Dzhokhar, played a role in the homicides. Authorities have said the victims all had their throats slit.

7:02 p.m. | Updated The New York Times mistakenly sent an e-mail on Wednesday to more than eight million people who had shared their information with the company, erroneously informing them that they had canceled home delivery of the newspaper. The Times Company, which initially mischaracterized the mishap as spam, apologized for sending the e-mail.

Travelers seemed to get a chuckle out of the holiday levity. But Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officials weren't amused and initially said the dispatcher could be strongly disciplined.

Obama’s two major foreign-policy initiatives have utterly failed. .... For his exertions, Obama earned (a) continued lethal Iranian assistance to guerrillas killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, (b) a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up a Washington restaurant, (c) the announcement just this week by a member of parliament of Iranian naval exercises to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, (d) undoubted Chinese and Russian access to a captured U.S. drone for the copying and countering of its high-tech secrets.

...The Times Co gave no explanation for Robinson's sudden departure, which caught analysts as well as company insiders by surprise. Speculation among industry observers and the analyst community centered on the company's faltering stock price, which has declined more than 80 percent since Robinson was appointed CEO in December 2004....

HOPATCONG, N.J. (AP) — A cable TV repairman got quite a surprise when he walked into the basement of a New Jersey home. There was a 500-pound bear sound asleep on the floor.

A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western. Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”

This must be a difficult time for New Jersey. You see, in addition to finding out that they’re harboring the second most dangerous city in America (for the second year in a row), they’ve now got a traitor in their midst. His name is Joe Steinfield, and he is hilarious. Well, I guess that depends on whether or not you live in one of his satirical regions of New Jersey and/or take offense to being lumped in with “Canadians and Philly Trash” (aka Wildwood according to Steinfield’s map).

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A snafu marred the critical moment of silence Wednesday at the Pearl Harbor ceremony observing the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack.... ...But on Wednesday, emcee Leslie Wilcox was still speaking at 7:55 a.m., even as the Hawaii Air National Guard's F-22's roared overhead on schedule 42 seconds later.

Actor Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight leaving Los Angeles for New York on Tuesday when he was apparently too engrossed in a game of Zynga's "Words With Friends" to power down his iPad.... The incident caused a one-hour delay in the flight and kicked off a flurry of Internet chatter.