JayC

DaveS,   Again you're confusing the facts...  The onlooker who saw GZ after the shooting is NOT witness #6, I'm not exactly sure which witness # is assigned to that witness, but it's 2 different people.   I quoted you the statement witness #6 John gave to the police on the night of the shooting...  That he came out and saw two men fighting, the one wearing the red sweater was on the ground yelling help, while the other man was on top of him swinging punches.  GZ was wearing a red sweater that night.  Witness #6 then turned and went back into his house to call E911.   Then I took the time to find the RAW video of GZ's statement to the police, in which he describes witness #6 coming out of his house, and GZ pleading for help from witness #6.  We go to the E911 'help' call and this confirms both of the statements given by witness #6 and GZ...  that clearly somebody is screaming desperately for help, GZ and witness $6 statements clearly link these screams for help to GZ.   So ignoring all of those facts, because they don't fit your narrative, you jump to another witness statement from AFTER the shooting...  Which has ZERO bearing on if the shooting was justified or not...     Did GZ have a legal obligation to provide medical care to TM after shooting him?  No.  So what does that have to do with whether the shooting was justified or not?  Absolutely nothing.   DaveS, I honestly don't know if you're just trolling for kicks, or if you just don't believe in logic, reason, and facts as a cornerstone of debate but either way back on ignore you go.  

Yes, because two sound experts listening to a recording that was made through a handset from a significant distance are better witnesses than the man (witness #6) who walked outside and saw TM and GZ on the ground...  With TM on top of GZ swinging punches, and GZ yelling help, help.   Dave, lets me honest you just want to pick and choose the facts you want to believe...  And no amount of evidence is going to change your mind...   An eyewitness places TM on top of GZ throwing punches...  Now why exactly would TM be screaming help at that exact point in time?  That 'theory' doesn't match the witness statements, or basic logic that the guy getting on the bottom receiving the punches would most likely be the one screaming for help.   But since these witness statements (and GZ's own video statement to the police) doesn't fit the narrative in your head, you just ignore it?  

The constitution (state and federal) limits the laws that can be written to a small list of enumerated powers...  The scope of laws is limited by those restrictions...  So my peers can't make up laws and punishments for those laws out of thin air, without being granted those powers in the constitution. It's the entire reasoning behind our form of government....   "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."   No government can morally or legally take away those rights without the consent of the governed...  We did just that by passing both a state and federal constitution, which granted the federal government, and the state governments very limited powers...  now an argument can be made that we haven't held those governments (or subdivisions of those governments) in the proper check...  but it doesn't change the fact that we have natural rights that stand above any form of government, and among those rights is the right to own property - referenced in the Declaration of Independence as 'pursuit of Happiness' because some were concerned that saying property would have recognized the right to own slaves as a natural right.   You're right, run afoul of little petty despots "laws" and they'll send an armed gang to your house to take you by force, but that doesn't give them the moral or ethical authority to violate your rights, just because 9 men in black robes says it's ok.   And finally, you're not incorrect all levels of government can take property via eminent domain, but they must provide just compensation.  Where is the compensation for the landowners when the government passes new zoning laws that prohibit land owners from exercising their property rights.   BTW, this taking clause was meant to keep the government in check...  by limiting the amount of control that a government could have over private property only if they would provide just compensation for that 'taking' or control they attempted to exert over that property.   I know, it's only a little radical to suggest we force the federal government to operate within the confines of the constitution...  people have grown so accustomed to them violating those limits...  but we should also hold the state and the subdivisions of the state to that same standard as well...  which I understand is a lot more radical thought process for most people to grasp, but the real tyranny in our day to day lives is from petty despots who live next door and want to force their view of a perfect society on others.     And trust me I try and keep my my radical views off the forums so I don't have to watch statism "conservative'" heads explode...  but the real radical notion is how can I be held to a contractual agreement reached by men who haven't been alive for over a 150 years, where they agreed to give up some of our natural rights in perpetuity without ever giving me a choice?  Wrap your statist conservative head around that one :)   And no I haven't lost touch with reality...  I know full well how our current 'system' works today...  and it's working so well that we shouldn't strive to change it back to one of liberty and natural rights  :)  

Ok, I'll bite...  First lets watch the RAW video from the police interview of George Zimmerman with the Police Department at the site of the shooting:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55l2Dj6AeFY   At 3:00 minutes into this video, Zimmerman references a person, coming out of their home and him yelling help me help me to that person.   That person is witness #6 "John", and this is from his sworn statement to the police shortly after the shooting:     So you have a statement from an eyewitness who Zimmerman didn't know, nor did Zimmerman know about the contents of witness #6's statement, yet his video statements to the police match the eye witness's statement almost exactly.    Combine that will the "help 911 call" which we've all heard...  Witness #6 and Zimmerman both separately claim that it was Zimmerman yelling for help... and in my opinion those screams are of somebody who is clearly in fear...  they seem desperate to me... and just the possibility that those screams come from Zimmerman gives me reasonable doubt as to the murder charges.    

The TN Constitution only grants the state, and therefore the subdivisions of the state certain enumerated powers.  Show me where landscaping, or zoning commissions are listed in those enumerated powers.   The TN Constitution (and Federal Constitution) specifically limits the ability of the government to take property without just compensation...  Limiting the ability of a poverty owner to use the land as they see fit is a violation of the taking clause...  See Section 21 of our state constitution.   So yes a jury of my peer can convict me of a criminal act as long as the law that specifies that criminal act is within the enumerated powers of the government body charging me with a crime...  I contend that in a free state with natural rights to own property our current constitution prohibits such laws without just compensation.     Now that is criminally...  I do think that if somebody sets up a pig farm next door to your residence, and you're harmed by that pig farm, you do have a right to file a civil lawsuit and seek compensation for provable damages.  Just like if your neighbor has a pool that they allow to turn into a mosquito nest and you get sick with West Nile from mosquito's in that pool you should be able to file suit for provable damages from their negligence.   You don't need criminal laws...  to solve these types of problems.    

I'm sorry Robert but that is just plain wrong...  Their freedoms stops when they physically harm you, or steal from you...  If you don't want to have your property values  decline, buy a big enough place that it doesn't matter what your neighbors do...  or get together as a neighborhood and offer to help cut the grass of your next door neighbor...   Our country is not founded on a tyranny of the majority...  individuals have natural rights, the right to own property and use it without having that property taken (in part or in whole) by the government without just compensation.   This is what happens when you want to use the force of government to force people to live the way you want them to live...  Men with guns and badges show up at the persons front door and violate any number of civil rights in the name of the grass not being cut.    

It was an arrest warrant, for a 50 something male...  Yet they demanded to see the ID of what is clearly a much younger female...  How stupid do you have to be to think the women answering the door is the subject of your arrest warrant?      

Except an eye witness that saw TM on top of Zimmerman swinging punches... who went back inside his house to call the police...  The same eyewitness that Zimmerman mentioned screaming to to come help him...   But yeah no evidence at all :)    

It doesn't matter if he was up to something or not...  I'd argue that a reasonable person in that situation could believe he might be up to something, but even that doesn't matter...   It's not a crime to think somebody *might* be up to no good, it's not a crime to call the police because you think a person is acting suspicious, it's not a crime to follow in your vehicle a person you think my be up to no good while on the phone with E911, and it's also not illegal to follow somebody on foot who you believe is acting suspicious in your neighborhood.   We know for a fact that before hanging up with E911, Zimmerman had not committed a crime, and was legally in the commons area of his neighborhood.  We know this because of the E911 call that has been released in it's entirety to the public, and it's clear no criminal act on the part of Zimmerman had taken place up until that point in time.   I've listened to that call a number of time, and it appears to me that Zimmerman exited his vehicle to keep TM in sight so that the police who were being dispatched to his neighborhood could question the teen.  I never get the impression that at anytime was Zimmerman attempting to 'arrest' or physically come in contact with TM.  Also, it's clear that whatever his motive, he had stopped 'following' the teen before the E911 call had ended, and was focused on getting an address to help the police meet up with him.   So, the 'hand picked DA' would like us to believe that after doing nothing illegally up until the point the E911 call ended, that sudden Zimmerman went into 'criminal' mode and somehow started a physical altercation with TM, then when overwhelmed by TM's physical force needlessly shot the teen?   That 'line of thinking' doesn't match the fair solid interview that Zimmerman gave the police (without an attorney present) the next day on video at the scene.  Nor does it match any eye witness statements the police collected.   Don't get me wrong, Zimmerman made a ton of mistakes, and was a piss poor neighborhood watch captain...  He should have had a map of the neighborhood with street names and addresses listed so he could give a clear address to E911...  he should have stayed in his car, nothing that teen was going to do that night was worth placing himself in physical danger over.   But, none of that is criminal behavior...  at the end of the day, it appears as if Zimmerman was assaulted by TM, and during that assault he (and I believe any of us) felt threatened with serious injury or death by having their head smacked into the ground/concrete...  At the point TM had him on the ground, on top of Zimmerman, and was beating his head against the ground, TM had lost any self defense status he might have had under any crazy theories anybody can come up with...  So on the face of it, it appears to be a justified shooting.   BTW, lets all be honest here...  Zimmerman isn't the sharpest knife in the draw...  how does he bumble into a fight with a teen and ends up on the ground getting his head bashed it...  yet somehow is smart enough to come up with a story that completely matches the physical evidence and all other eyewitness accounts...  You can't have it both ways, he can't be an idiot who got himself in over his head, yet a genius who in less than 24 hours with no help from an attorney came up with a perfectly fitting 'story'.    

Beth Harwell a "republican" in name only is the only reason we can't carry at the state house today...  All she has to do is sign a letter and the posting is gone.

We really need to change to the law to force TDOS to have the burden of proof in disqualifying permit applications...  We're paying the state $115 for their make work project, the least they can do is run around and track down all the paperwork to prove an item on the background check is disqualifying or not.   I'm curious if somebody could challenge this denial in court?  Technically TDOS has no proof of a disqualifying event under 39-17-13xx so they have 90 days to issue the permit under state law, I doubt there is any case law on the subject, but if we could get a ruling against TDOS it might make things a lot easier for others down the road.

Decades later maybe...  Germany had most likely lost the war before we even entered into it.  The Soviet Union had completely stopped the German advance by Dec 5th, 1941 before we entered the war.  The Soviets would have beaten Germany back on their own without any of our help, all we did was make it less painful...   We can't say with any certainty that our entering the war changed the final outcome of Germany being defeated, all we can say is we certainly shortened the war.   And again, why would Hitler have attacked us?  He wasn't know for attacking strong neutral states...  Why didn't he attack Switzerland for example?  Or Sweden?   Our history books try to paint Hitler as some mad man out to rule the entire world, but that just isn't consistent with what happened.  He likely was a mad man but it doesn't seem as if complete world domination was his goal.    

Why only 400 employees, I bet that city would be the same mess it is today if they laid off 50% of the city employees.  Nothing but a bunch of make work jobs to begin with.    

We sat back and did nothing while during the 20th Century governments killed well over 200 million of their own citizens...  Were we supposed to go to war over the mass killings in China and the Soviet Union?   Just curious what is the exact number of people a government is about to kill where we should jump in?   Should we declare war on Syria because they managed to kill nearly 100,000 of their citizens?  What about Sudan with 460,000?  What about Rwanda with over 1 million?  Or Cambodia where 2.5 million were killed in 4 years, more than 25% of the population?   When exactly did we sign up to be the policeman of the world?     Or how about if you want to help people get their freedom from a ruthless dictator you organize a charity to buy them weapons, or raise a private company of men and go over and fight beside them?  

He had all sorts of plans, invade Russia (crazy), invade the middle east (even more crazy), but he didn't have a plan to invade North or South America.  You're right, 10, 15, 20 years down the line he might have been a threat...  but, why didn't he invade Switzerland then?  If all he wanted was world domination why did he leave Switzerland alone, right next door?  Compared to Russia or the US, Switzerland would have been an easy target.   Yes I believe we should go back to an non-intervention policy, countries that stay out of other people's business don't seem to get attacked or invaded on a regular basis.  How is that short sighted?  We've tried nearly 100 years of getting involved all over the globe, how is that working out for us?  How about we try some trade with the world, and keep our noses out of the affairs of other people for a 100 years and see how that works out?  Can it really be worse than the last 100 years?   I believe we can continue to be a world superpower, have the the most powerful military in the world here inside the US to protect us from attack, and if people make the mistake of attacking us destroy their civilization back into the stone age...  Without having 900 military bases all over the world, without having to provide billions of dollars in tax payer money to governments who are evil and hostile not only to their own people but are no friend of ours...  just because of 'national security'.   Call me crazy, but maybe just maybe it wouldn't hurt to try a little less intervention?    

FDR knew Japan's Navy was going to attack us hours before they did, and didn't order all of our fleet to sea...  but you're right once we were attacked, we had no choice to go to war...  but that is only part of the story.   Why did they attack?  Two reasons, the first led to the second.  When Japan invaded China, we set up an embargo of oil.  This left Japan with less than 2 years of oil left to run their country, so they were forced to look towards the Dutch East Indies to secure a new source of oil.  So they set out to secure this new source, but the Philippine's were in the way... so they attack us at Pearl Harbor in hopes of knocking our navy resources out of the fight, so they could secure oil.   So, the reason we had a fight on our hands, is two fold...  we tried to build an empire, by holding territories far from home, violating principles of our founding fathers... and second we tried to embargo oil which violated the warning Washington and Jefferson gave us about entangling alliances..  by picking China over Japan, and selling weapons (and secretly providing men) to one side, while trying to cripple the other side by embargoing of oil.   So, yes once they attacked we had no other choice than fight, and win, period.  Why Japan had attacked us at that point doesn't much matter, but if we had stuck to founding principles, we very well might not have been attacked.  But, who knows?      

I can't prove a negative, you make the claim that Germany was a serious threat to the existence of this country...  That they could have invaded and conquered this country in the 1940's and had some plan to do so...     I've never seen anything to back up any of those claims...  so enlighten me, where is your proof, what historical document are you basing your feeling that Germany was a threat to us here in the US in the 1940's.   I've read my fair share of history, and there just isn't proof that we had to enter WWII.    

Enlighten me, how exactly was Germany a threat to our nation existence?  Obviously we took two separate history classes in college, because I see no way that Germany was going to even attempt an invasion let alone alone succeed.   I do know that FDR ran on a platform that he would never send US troops to die in a European war, all the while plotting and scheming trying to get the US drawn into a war with Germany.   How we violated our neutrality time and time again, trying to draw Germany into attacking us to have an excuse to go to war with them.   My generation?  I never said my generation has done anything special, but we're still in our 20's and 30's, the vast majority aren't old enough to be elected President yet...  who knows what my generation will do, probably nothing except work our entire lives to pay for old people to retire in comfort playing golf for the last 30 years of their life, while we're forced to work until we die and never see a penny of the money we paid into a Government backed Ponzi scheme.  And watch as our child and their children are forced to try and pay back 17 trillion dollars (and counting) because we spent the second half of the 20th century trying to build an empire that had our founding fathers rolling in their graves over ;)   If you can't tell my tongue is firmly planted against my cheek on the above paragraph...  I'm not trying to say my generation is better than anybody else's, only that we place generations on a pedestal by forgetting what really happened in history.   And yes, my generation will own Obamacare, and whatever else we allow the government to do in our names that limits freedom for all future generations.     

Yes because by getting rid of Hitler and Japan, we allowed Mao and Stalin to grow and kill off more than 10 times as many innocent people as Hitler ever did :)   Nobody says that getting rid of Hitler was a bad thing, I'm not some big fan of Hitler's, but the last thing we should have done, is in the process of fighting Germany is to become just like the Germany we fought.    

How did Hitler pose a threat to the United States?  Where are these secret plans to invade the US after taking care of Europe, UK, Russia, Africa?  There is no indication that Hitler had any plans on invading the US, and even if he had, he could have won.  We couldn't have invaded Europe without England being 20 miles off of her coast.  You're talking about a leader who couldn't even manage to invade the UK, let alone move his entire male population over 2000 miles of ocean and then invade us and win.  It's just a fair tale to believe Hitler posed a direct threat to us in the 1940's.  I believe they stepped up and fought a war, and they sacrificed a lot to win that war.  Were there real heroes of that generation YES, without question.  But, our existence was never threatened during WWII not for a single second.   Once we had war declared on us, there was no choice left but to win the war, and our grandfathers generation did that in spades, many giving their lives for their brothers in arms, and real heroes stepped forward during that time.  I don't question what they did, or how brave many men were in doing so, only why we did it, and why we lost our way as a nation in the process of doing so.   Don't we need to take a look at history not through the lens of a nationalistic coloring book, but through the lens of what really happened and why?  Can we not be a nation that had good men who sacrificed more than should ever have been asked of them, but acknowledge they in many ways sold (or allowed to be sold) the very soul of this country in the process?   As for my generation, we did much the same as my grandfathers, we rallied around the flag when attacked on 9/11 and fought 2 wars when asked, never questioning the reasons behind those wars, we allowed a large chunk of our rights and freedoms (mainly because unlike our grandfathers generation many of us didn't know what real freedom was) to be tossed aside in the name of security theater.     How will the story end for us?  Who knows, it will be my generation that works everyday paying 40-50+% taxes and never see a penny of it back.  My generation that will have to shoulder the burden of a crushing debt given to us by our parents and grandfathers generation, trying to hold a country together who has been brought up dependent on the government instead of themselves.   Who knows what the future holds, I just know that we tend to highlight the positives and forget about the negatives.  Doesn't mean my grandfathers generation weren't good men, but they weren't perfect either and left us with problems at least as big if not bigger than the ones they faced.    

First, FDR knew Japan was going to attack us, and instead of sending the fleet to sea, and protecting our bases in the Pacific he allowed Perl Harbor to be attacked, cause a lot more deaths, and forcing America into a full scale war...  This is after we did just about everything we could do to Japan to drag us into a war with them.   And, the fact is Germany declared war on us...  I don't see how we had a choice, well except we had been funding and supplying German's enemies for 3 or 4 years violating our neutrality....  maybe if we hadn't been shipping free arms to their enemies Hitler wouldn't have declared war on us?  Who knows...   We did the right thing in WWII once war was declared, we went over there kicked butt, and then should have come home...  but that isn't what we did.   We're still sitting in bases we occupied during the end of WWII...  why exactly?    

The entire generation that gave us:   1. FDR as President 2. Social Security 3. Constant war since 1941 4. The "Great Society" :( 5. National Firearms Act of 1934 6. Gun Control Act of 1968 just to name a few   Yeah a lot to celebrate there :(  My Grandfather fought in the war and he was a good man, but his generation did enough to screw this country up, it's hard to separate the few good things they did for this country with the awful road they allowed us to be taken down.    

What do you expect from IL, where the conservative state representatives make Bob Corker look ultra-right wing ;)  

Hmm Dave, I do believe hell has frozen over... and a FEDERAL court has ruled bear is a right (we just don't know how restrictive states can be with that right yet)... And yet IL one of the most anti-gun states in the union is complying and just passed a state wide shall issue carry law, per the judges order.   I seem to recall somebody on this very forum say something about states rights and bear wasn't covered in the 2nd amendment...  you wouldn't happen to remember who said that would you? :)   I'm just pulling your chain for saying this day would never happen.    

What does the % of alcohol sales have to do with the price of bread?