The woman’s name is likely to soon go mainstream - Marissa Alexander. The grassroots are in a tizzy and well they should be based on the evidence available. Back in 2010, an abused wife fearing for her life was cornered with her husband threatening to kill her, which he freely admitted in court. She had grabbed a gun to protect herself, this hardly being the first time the man rained violence down on her, and she fired. No, not at him, but above him. The cops came, ignored the order of protection she had against him and arrested her. Self defense and stand your ground were both ruled out. The judge pointedly said stand your ground did not apply since she had escape routes, completely missing the letter of the law which does not require a person to flee. Did we mention she had a concealed weapons permit? Or that she was black?

So we have another perversion in the world of Florida law. A woman just living her life suddenly forced to defend herself and paying the ultimate price. Will the grassroots save her? Will Rick Scott ride to the rescue? Only if the pressure is great and the media takes up the cause. You can read the woman’s plea for help here. It’s simply heartbreaking.

But that assertion is completely inaccurate and should be retracted, because the local Neighborhood Watch organization has long been on record as wanting nothing to do with this guy. So he was acting on his own, proactively and without supervision or coordination, in an attempt to enforce the law as he saw it. Moreover, Mr. Zimmerman was armed with a pistol, which would be in direct violation of the code of conduct for any Neighborhood Watch organization in this country.

There is a word in the English language to describe someone who proactively and without legal authorization attempts to enforce the law. Mr. Zimmerman is, by definition, a vigilante. And because he was packing heat, he is by definition an armed vigilante. That is the central fact of this case, and that is the only way he should be described in the media. If that characterization of Mr. Zimmerman seems incendiary, it is because the indisputable facts of this case are incendiary.

Among the dozens of outrages in this story is one that should trouble absolutely every law abiding American: George Zimmerman was not tested for drugs or alcohol. Where I live, testing any shooter for drugs or alcohol, fatal or not, including the police, is standard operating procedure, and done in every instance. Not testing would have only one purpose: obstruction of justice. The police in Sanford, Florida should be so charged (I would bet the rent that Zimmerman is a steroid abuser). All you should need to know about how the police in Sanford regard young black men can derive from the fact that they made no significant effort to identify Mr. Martin, despite the fact that he was carrying a cell phone. He was taken to the hospital as a John Doe, where his father had to identify the body after searching for him for hours. If that’s not enough, a Sanford police officer corrected a witness, a schoolteacher, who described hearing Trayvon Martin scream for help, telling the witness that it was George Zimmerman calling for help. That’s witness intimidation, a felony in all 50 states.

Here’s a challenge for the media or more likely, given our media’s notorious cowardice, some enterprising criminal justice or journalism grad student: go back over the last several years in the states that have enacted Shoot First laws and investigate the circumstances of each and every instance of “justifiable homicide” in those states. In Florida alone, the average number of such homicides each year has almost tripled since the law was passed, from about 12 each year to more than thirty. That’s a lot of blood, and a lot of grief and loss.

But whether Mr. Zimmerman himself is ever arrested, indicted, and convicted is almost beside the point. Rather, there are two larger points we should carry from this tragedy. First, Florida’s Shoot First law and the laws like it in 21 other states encourage and protect armed vigilantism, which is directly contrary to the interests of public safety and the rule of law. And second, the obvious likelihood that the events in the tragic murder of Trayvon Martin would have unfolded differently had Trayvon been white should have all of us searching our souls at to why still so many of us regard some others among us as less than fully human for literally the most superficial of reasons: the color of their skin.

We live in a country where a black man can be president, but heaven forfend should one of them walk around one of our gated communities unaccompanied. Just what are those gates for, anyway?

It’s probably a close call who hates women more - Rick Santorum or Rush Limbaugh. Right now, the money has to be on Limbaugh for calling a college student a slut on his national radio show. This forum for hate and prevarication has long lived in the gutter but this was a new low - though one that hits in the pocket book as advertisers flee. But a funny thing has happened so far - no mass protest appeared, just a twitter campaign against the advertisers. Maybe we’re old fashioned, but shouldn’t women be marching in the streets rather than sending 140 characters to some corporation? Can we have a little more outrage out there from women?

Limbaugh, by the way, has been depositing his sperm in various women for years. Four marriages yet no children and this guy is calling someone a slut? What does Santorum think of him? After all, this is sex not for procreation - not that we can understand how this snake charmed his way into four women’s lives. Perhaps he has a bag of evil apples to tempt these otherwise virtuous women? And by the way, if he’s shooting blanks, thank god for that.

Rick Santorum has long been opposed to contraception and Obama’s team finally exposed the truth - that the GOP isn’t much in favor of it either. This is a disastrous policy for the party - not least of all because almost all women use or have used birth control including, apparently, Bristol Palin (allegedly to minimize menstrual pain). If you alienate women, you cannot win national elections and that is certainly the case with Santorum, whose flavor of the week status is just about done.

So where does that leave the party? Following Roy Blunt down the path of no return with a silly amendment that would allow employers to deny coverage for contraception or anything else if it’s against their conscience. There is so much wrong with this, it’s almost impossible to begin. First of all, the government haters want big brother out of our lives yet they are happy to let companies meddle in our personal health? And this is not just about contraception - anything could be denied due to moral reasons - obesity drugs, HIV medication, diabetes meds. That is sick and twisted. Meanwhile, the reporting from our clueless media focused on contraception. The entire GOP just voted to allow any treatment to be banned because some CEO feels like it! What the hell? And a big FU to Dems Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin and Rick Santorum 2, I mean Bob Casey. You three are idiots and at least one of you is gone after this year.

It’s not for nothing that Olympia Snowe, as moderate as the GOP gets these days in Congress, is giving up the ghost. Sure, she’ll blame the growing partisanship. But she was the lone GOP vote against this week’s ridiculous conscience policy and it can’t be a coincidence. Secretly, Snowe knows the GOP is full of women haters and she’s sick of it. There is no other way to spin giving up a safe seat that will make the resulting Senate more partisan, rather than less.

The media likes to play various scenarios - if Romney wins, he has the nomination sewn up, if Santorum wins, it could go all the way to the convention, Paul who? You get the drift - it’s not reality any more than a Chinese-American basketball player is going to lead the Knicks on a resurgence to greatness. Okay, that could actually happen. But the GOP’s search for an end to their disastrous primary campaign is a long ways off, with no one poised to step in and save the party from itself.

Lin is that classic American story - the rags to riches guy - and it’s easy to see why people got excited. Obama is the same - a scrawny b-ball playing brainiac who inspires millions. Mitt? Not so much. He’s the scion of a wealthy, politically connected family who’s never done what many consider real work. He has the right credentials and is clearly smart enough, but he fails to connect or inspire in any way. Yet he’s the nominee barring a major collapse and even probably not then.

Who does excite? Well you have those in the race - mainly Santorum with his common man conservative approach, and Paul, whose marriage to Libertarian dogma is all-encompassing. Yet neither has hit Lin-heights, in part because politics is a long and ugly road. Santorum has baggage - earmarks, years of appropriations and compromise in running the country - while no one is seriously going to vote Paul if they believe in “American exceptionalism” aka the right to bomb the crap out of people.

So some look outside the race, even to a brokered convention, but who could step in? Sarah Palin? Jeb Bush? Mitch Daniels? These are no Lins let me tell you. We know them too well - much of the phenom’s story is built around his rise from obscurity - and they’d have neither the money nor organization to stand against the Obama onslaught.

In the end, the only guy who has any of that is already in the race. Unfortunately for the GOP, he’s about as inspiring as a wet mop. And that’s not how you win the Presidency against the original Jeremy Lin.

Civilian deaths reported between 104,000 - 114,000 according to Iraq Body Count.

American troop deaths: 4484
American casualties: 33,186
http://antiwar.com/casualties/

Original estimated cost of the war $50 - $60 billion
Amount spent as of October - $800 billion +
Final estimate including equipment replacement & troop treatment for injuries and PTSD: $4 - $5 trillion
Christian Science Monitor

We’d ask if it was worth it but we know the answer. What a sorry waste of money and human life.

For the last few elections, the American electorate has been remarkably reactive - first against Bush, then for Obama, then against him, then against core GOP ideas. It’s been a topsy-turvy time unlike others in recent politics. Incumbents are increasingly vulnerable even as parties become more desperate to support them. And more and more, ballot initiatives are ruling the day.

The two big ones yesterday were both Dem wins - overturning the GOP’s anti-union law in Ohio and soundly defeating the Personhood Amendment in Mississippi. A less publicized initiative in Maine had voters thumbing their noses at GOP efforts to end same-day voter registration - a heartening occurrence since the GOP has made a mission out of limiting access to the polls.

Add in holding the Iowa State Senate - the last buttress against GOP craziness in that state - and replacing AZ State Senate President Pearce, author of the odious immigration measure, and you have more signs the electorate likes the middle way best.

Will this be the moment people point to as the change in direction back towards the Democrats? Perhaps, but let’s not forget that a year is forever in politics. Even worse, the devastating nature of the Dem losses in 2010 will be reflected for a decade in gerrymandered seats - nothing was more important than holding statehouses and legislatures last year and we failed at that. So the likelihood of the Dems taking back the House - a political must for this country’s future - can be termed very difficult at best.

It’s a long way to go. At least, we know that the electorate is not crazy - even in Mississippi. But this has all been playing defense and you don’t win without some offense. Will Obama bring the big guns or will the electorate snap back into populist Tea Party rage? It’s too early to tell, no matter what the prognosticators today will be saying.

Back in 2006, Congress forced the Postal Service to pre-pay future retiree benefits to the tune of $5.5 billion a year for 10 years. Not coincidentally, from that moment on the USPS’ financial position has deteriorated quickly. Now a bipartisan group of Senators wants to extend the term to 40 years and to refund $7 billion in overpayments. This would allow the service to remain solvent and manage its cashflow - the alternative is the USPS going bust as soon as next summer.

The hiccup, of course, is the House, which is saying we can’t afford to give back the $7 billion. They also want to establish a financial control board that could result in layoffs rather than the buyouts proposed in the Senate bill. While the existence of their bill does show a basic understanding that something needs to be done, as opposed to say fixing infrastructure, the unfortunate slash and burn nature of their “cut at all costs” must be avoided.

It’s time for Americans to stand up for their postal workers. They’re working for us day in and day out - time to return the favor.