Free Republic

Native American elder Nathan Phillips, in his own words Native American elder Nathan Phillips, who has made headlines everywhere after a video showed him in a face-off with a Catholic school student in front of the Lincoln Memorial, spoke at length with CNN the day after the incident. Phillips described what he felt was hatred coming from the young people in the crowd, who are pupils at Covington Catholic School in Kentucky and who had traveled to the nation's capital to attend the March for Life rally, also held Friday. The interview was conducted Saturday after the video went viral....

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. --snip-- To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good....

Special prosecutor Angela Corey just released more than 120 recorded phone calls that murder suspect George Zimmerman made from the Seminole County Jail... Also released is the statement of "Witness 9," a woman who says Zimmerman is prejudiced against blacks and that he molested her when she was a child.

Unnerved by an unspoken mix of political bias and racial queasiness, the major media have chosen to know as little about Trayvon Martin as they know about Barack Obama. As a case in point, consider this boy vs. man fable spun by the New York Times' Charles Blow: A boy's blood had been spilled on a rain-soaked patch of grass behind a row of mustard-colored condominiums by a man who had pursued him against the advice of 911 dispatchers. That man carried a 9-millimeter handgun. The boy carried a bag of candy. Blow was writing seven weeks after Trayvon's death....

Records released last week show little evidence that George Zimmerman acted with malice when he shot Trayvon Martin. That could pose a problem for prosecutors.And, while we are not privy to all the evidence against George Zimmerman, it’s certainly fair to note that the evidence we have seen has come by way of the Main Stream Media, though at times their delivery of the truth has been questionable at best. “The [latest] evidence released [by the prosecution] Thursday … is notable, legal experts say, for what’s not in it: firm evidence that Zimmerman acted with malice when he shot 17-year-old...

Fight over public's right to know intensifies as lawyers disagree about record lawSANFORD, Fla. - As controversy over the $200,000 George Zimmerman raised on PayPal took center stage Friday, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey's decision to ignore legal questions raised over whether she's obeying Florida's public record law went largely unnoticed. But the issue of whether Corey has the legal right to continue preventing the public from seeing the evidence she says proves Zimmerman committed the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin seems to be coming to a head. The special prosecutor's office on Friday refused to make that evidence public...

When the Trayvon Martin case first started garnering national attention, there were many that thought they knew who George Zimmerman was: an overzealous racist with a vendetta against young black men who was on a mission to assert power with his gun. But then little details started emerging, such as pictures of Zimmerman’s bloody head that could bolster his self-defense claim; CNN even backtracked and said the tape it once suggested showed Zimmerman uttering a racist slur was actually him most likely saying it was “cold.” And now, Reuters has put together a detailed profile of Zimmerman that seems to...

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice. An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking — and lack of thinking — that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated. One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a...

Last week, media outlets filed motions to unseal the records concerning the arrest of George Zimmerman in connection with the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Sooner than later, the public will see what evidence special prosecutor Angela Corey has that warranted the filing of second-degree murder charges. Absent something new in Corey's file, one of America's best-known lawyers feels the case against Zimmerman is doomed. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz believes that the murder charges will be thrown out. In a recent interview with me, Dershowitz acknowledged the low evidentiary bar necessary at this juncture but still opined that Corey...

Statistics show a deep divide in opinions along racial lines regarding the killing of a black Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman, who is of mixed ethnicity, white and Hispanic. Zimmerman has claimed self-defense, invoking the Sunshine State’s “Stand Your Ground” law which has also come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the incident. Reuters news service reported last week, 91% of blacks believe Martin was unjustly killed, while only 35% of whites concurred. Hispanics were in between at 59% according to polling numbers Reuters gathered by querying nearly 2,000 Americans. The disparity of views over Martin’s death...

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would be world-famous for 15 minutes. What he neglected to mention was that they were just as likely to be infamous. Zimmerman had decorated his flyers and website with the famous quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing." His activities reveal a man who took those words to heart, who put his time, money and safety on the line to become one of those good men who do something. But the problem was that Zimmerman had been reading Burke,...

Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball where fill-in host Michel Smerconish asked him his opinions of the arrest warrant issued and carried out for alleged Trayvon Martin murderer, George Zimmerman. Dershowitz called the affidavit justifying Zimmerman’s arrest “not only thin, it’s irresponsible.” He went on to criticize the decision to charge Zimmerman for second degree murder by special prosecutor Angela Cory as being politically motivated. “You’ve seen the affidavit of probable cause. What do you make of it,” Smerconish asked. “It won’t suffice,” Dershowitz replied without hesitation. “Most affidavits of probable cause are very thin. This...

(Reuters) - An internal NBC News probe has determined a "seasoned" producer was to blame for a misleading clip of a 911 call that the network broadcast during its coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to two sources at the network. NBC News brass interviewed more than half a dozen staffers during its investigation of the misleadingly edited 911 call placed by George Zimmerman just before he shot the unarmed Florida teenager, said the sources, one of whom is an executive at the network. The clip aired on the network's flagship "Today" morning show last week. The edit made...

Critics say the "Today" show attempted to incite racial anger when it cut crucial seconds from audio of a phone call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed the teenager. In Interview With Piers Morgan, George Zimmerman's NBC News is being excoriated in some circles – with competitor Fox News Channel leading the charge – for selectively editing audio of the 911 call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed Trayvon Martin. The NBC segment in question featured anchor Ron Allen and ran on the Today show on Tuesday. On Thursday, Sean Hannity and guest Brent Bozell played...

Reporting that it has had the video "clarified" by a forensics company, ABC News is now saying that a police surveillance recording of George Zimmerman "shows the neighborhood watch captain with an injury to the back of his head." Last Wednesday, when it broke the news of the video's existence and broadcast it, ABC News said "no abrasions or blood can be seen in the video." We posted about that report, while noting that "it is possible that paramedics cleaned any blood before Zimmerman arrived at the police station." Now, ABC News says, Forensic Protection Inc. has digitally improved the...

NBC has launched an internal probe after running an edited version of the 911 call from George Zimmerman -- the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin -- that made Zimmerman sound racist. "We have launched an internal investigation into the editorial process surrounding this particular story," the network said in a statement to the Washington Post on Monday. NBC's "Today" show ran the edited audio of George Zimmerman's phone call to a police dispatcher in which Zimmerman says: "'This guy looks like he's up to no good … he looks black." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/02/nbc-launches-internal-probe-over-edited-11-call-in-trayvon-martin-shooting/#ixzz1qucONwQ4

An "outraged" Florida prosecutor fired back on Monday at the family of Trayvon Martin, describing as "outright lies" their account that he and a local police chief met and decided not to follow a detective's advice and arrest the teenager's killer. ... In the letter delivered Monday, the Martin family said that a Sanford police detective "filed an affidavit stating that he did not find Zimmerman's statements credible in light of the circumstances and facts surrounding the shooting." The family said Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee and State Attorney Norm Wolfinger met the night of the shooting and disregarded the...

On March 13 the Orlando Sentinel published a map of the Twin Lakes community where Trayvon Martin was shot, but no one else seems to have reproduced it. Yet it's impossible to reconstruct the incident without referring to it. George Zimmerman reports at the beginning of his 911 call that he's on Retreat View Circle, at 111, near the clubhouse, a block from the main entrance to the community, which is off Oregon Avenue. According to the Sentinel's map, the home Trayvon Martin was staying in was further down on Retreat View Circle. (You'll need to check maps.google to get...

But just two days later, a national poll from Wilson Perkins Allen (WPA) Opinion Research determined that just 48 percent of Americans said police should arrest Zimmerman - a decrease of 25 percent. ... In the WPA poll, 39 percent said they believe Trayvon Martin was "minding his own business" when he was attacked. Just 18 percent said they thought "Zimmerman was attacked" by the teen.

A school-cafeteria lunch lady and her husband have received hate mail, unwanted visits from reporters and fearful inquiries from neighbors — all because their Sanford-area address is being disseminated on Twitter as belonging to Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, her son said late Tuesday. The woman, 70, who has a heart condition, and her husband, 72, have temporarily moved to a hotel to avoid the spotlight and possible danger, said son Chip Humble of Longwood. The woman has another son named William George Zimmerman who lived with her in 1995 and still lives in Central Florida. He is no relation...