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Showing posts with label op-ed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label op-ed. Show all posts

New op-ed in the New York Daily News: Concealed weapons save lives, The evidence is clear: Massacres are stopped by legally armed citizens

My newest piece there starts this way:

Friday’s horrible shooting in Colorado occurred in yet another place where guns are banned. And that’s consistent with a trend: With a single exception, every multiple-victim public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms.

The Cinemark movie theater in Aurora, like others run by the chain around the country, displayed warning signs that it was illegal to carry guns into the theater.

This applied to all nonlaw enforcement personnel, including individuals with concealed handgun permits. In other words, despite more than 4% of the adult population of Colorado having concealed handgun permits, a gunman intent on killing a lot of people could be confident that law-abiding citizens there would be sitting ducks.

If one of the hundreds of people at the theater had a concealed handgun, . . .

Mayor Bloomberg has a competing piece also on guns in the same newspaper and his is "Gun Control Cannot Wait."

Newest Fox News piece: UN gun control treaty will reveal gun laws Obama really supports

Since I wrote this piece, I am hearing that the UN is unlikely put out the Arms Trade Treaty either tomorrow or next week. I have also heard the problem is with China and Russia who don't want any restrictions on government selling guns. My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:
Sometime later this week, the UN will finally unveil its Arms Trade Treaty. The exact date the treaty will be released is a secret.

Russia, China, France -- with its new Socialist government -- Britain and the Obama administration are writing the treaty behind closed doors. Yet even if the final treaty is being kept under wraps, we still have a pretty good idea of some of the requirements that will be in it.

The group writing the treaty is not promising. Russia and Britain ban handguns and many other types of weapons. The possession of guns for self-defense is completely prohibited in China. The Obama administration is undoubtedly the most hostile administration to gun ownership in US history, with Obama having personally supported bans of handguns and semi-automatic weapons before becoming president. And remember the recent scandal where the Obama administration was caught allowing guns go to Mexican drug gangs, hoping it would help push for gun control laws.

The treaty seems unlikely to ever receive the two-thirds majority necessary to be ratified by the US Senate, but that doesn't mean it still won't have consequences for Americans. . . .

UPDATE: A couple of people suggest that Obama is not hostile to gun ownership. For those who don't know about Obama's views on guns, I suggest that they go here and here.

Four days after the piece was published it was still number one in terms of views.

UPDATE: Fox News: "UN arms treaty aims at terror, but puts Second Amendment in crosshairs"

American Second Amendment rights and U.S. foreign policy interests could be directly threatened by the latest wording of a United Nations draft treaty seeking control over international trade in conventional weapons, FoxNews.com has learned. . . .

New Fox News piece: Obama needs a history lesson on business and the US

My newest piece starts this way:
According to President Obama, his administration has been pro-business, indeed one of the most pro-business administrations ever. Yet, on Friday, in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama admonished those opposed to higher taxes on business: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

What a slap in the face to all those Americans who built successful businesses. And Obama wonders why businesses are afraid to invest, when he uses such rhetoric.

Obama, during his presidency, regularly has called Wall Street executives “fat cats,” bondholders “speculators,” and accuses doctors of giving patients unnecessary and harmful surgery.

He has regularly blamed private companies rather than the government for the financial crisis. Indeed, the only blame he gives to the federal government is that there wasn’t enough regulation.

Even for liberal New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg Obama's attacks have at times been too much: “[Obama’s] bashing of Wall Street is something that should worry everybody.” . . .

Op-ed at RealClearMarkets: Austerity Works: It's Time to Give It a Try

Op-ed at RealClearMarkets: Austerity Works: It's Time to Give It a Try

This piece is with my son Sherwin. The graphs are pretty powerful. The piece starts this way:
Austerity or growth, is that the choice facing Americans and others around the world?

The debate never seems to abate. European Union finance ministers last week gave Spain permission to delay cutting some government spending and reducing its deficit, though many such as The Economist magazine fear that even the cuts that will be made go too far. A similar decision may soon have to be made for Greece. Even though the pro-bailout parties won the June Parliamentary election, they too are asking for a two-year delay in cutting spending and reducing their budget deficit.

The Obama administration has put increasing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to ease up on Germany's austerity prescription. President Obama continually touts more government spending as the cure, and derided Republican "let's cut more" spending strategy as the cause of Europe's economic problems.

Last month, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was having none of it, telling Obama to fix the U.S. deficit before giving Europe advice: "Herr Obama should above all deal with the reduction of the American deficit. That is higher than that in the euro zone." . . .

Newest Fox News piece: The truth about Obama's tax cut extension plan

My newest piece starts this way:
Politics, not economics, is driving President Obama's election year strategy to force a battle over his efforts to raise income taxes. So much of Obama's speech Monday focused on his political opponents and the difference between those whom he claims support the middle class and those who support what Obama continually called "the wealthy."
For an administration that last week blamed Fox News for the class warfare rhetoric, Obama's talk today sure contained a lot of such rhetoric.
But contrast Obama's position with that of other prominent Democrats. Just last month, his former chief economic advisor Larry Summers told MSNBC: "The real risk to this economy is on the side of slow down, certainly not on the side of overheating, and that means we've got to make sure that we don't take gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year that's gotta be the top priority." Former Democratic President Bill Clinton made a similar claim warning against tax increases because it is better to "avoid doing anything that would contract the economy now." Under Obama administration pressure both quickly retracted their statements.
Obama seem oblivious to Summers' and Clinton's concerns about the poorly performing economy. . . . .
Brit Hume has an excellent response here.

Newest Fox News piece: A disappointing jobs picture and no, we're not doing better than Europe


My piece starts this way:
Americans faced another disappointing jobs picture today. Of course, we could go through the numbers again. With the working age population growing by 191,000 last month, 80,000 more jobs doesn’t even come close to absorbing all these new workers, let alone employing those who have long been out of work. And then there’s the most important number of all: for 41 months, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent.  

 
But how does the US labor market compare to Europe or the rest of the world?  Earlier this week news reports may have made Americans feel a little better, if only by comparison. Reflecting the philosophy that you should be thankful for what you have because things could always be worse, the headline in the Los Angeles Times read: “Think 8.2% unemployment is bad? It's a record 11.1% in Europe.”  An Associated Press article carried by Fox News and a host of other outlets made the same point.

 
The point has not been lost on President Obama, whose administration frequently references Europe as an explanation for our slow growth.  Last month, Obama noted: “slower growth in Europe means slower growth in American jobs.” 
The problem with such a seemingly obvious comparison is that the US and most of Europe define unemployment quite differently. . . .
A couple of other notes.

1) About a third of those 80,000 jobs are temporary service sector jobs.
2) 85,000 people went on disability in June.
3) Obama predicted that the unemployment rate now would be about 5.8% (January 10, 2009) and 6% (February 26, 2009 estimate).



Newest Fox News piece: Holder contempt citation -- just remember that people died because of 'Fast and Furious'

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:
People died.  It is something to remember during today’s historic House vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. Never before has a sitting attorney general been held in contempt.   
With all the hoopla over past scandals from Watergate to Filegate to Pardongate, the cover up was always worse than the crime.  Yet, in "Fast and Furious," the guns that the US government supplied to Mexican drug gangs have been used to kill one American border agent and over 300 Mexican citizens and commit numerous other crimes. 
To date, because of administration stonewalling, we don't have answers to the most basic questions.  Why would the Obama administration give drug gangs guns without trying to trace them? Why not inform Mexican officials about the program so that the Mexicans could try tracing the guns on the Mexican side of the border? Why start pushing untraceable guns to Mexico at the same time that the Obama administration was making theirwildly false claim that 90 percent of crime guns in Mexico were from the US? . . .



UPDATE: In my piece I mentioned that the Democrats who voted against Holder were under real pressure not to do it.  Politico has this:

The Georgia Democratic Party refused on Friday to denounce antagonistic comments the recently-elected chairman of its convention delegation made regarding U.S. Rep. John Barrow.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was just last week unanimously elected chairman of the state party’s convention delegation, said Barrow had betrayed his party by green lighting a Republican-championed effort to charge U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt, the first instance in which federal lawmakers had imposed the sanction on a member of any presidential cabinet.
“You are a Republican hiding in Democrat’s clothing,” Lowery said of Barrow. “He doesn’t count in the Democratic column. He might as well go on and be a Republican.”
For the state’s most vulnerable incumbent pol, it was an unusually strong reprimand from a party-endorsed voice. . . .




UPDATE: The final vote was 255-67.

The vote was 255-67 with one lawmaker voting not present. Seventeen Democrats broke ranks to vote in favor of contempt, while two Republicans voted against the measure.
The vote was preceded by a heated floor debate.
“It’s important to remember how we got here,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said during a speech ahead of the vote. “The Justice Department has not provided the facts and information we requested. … It’s our constitutional duty to find out.”
The GOP-led House took the step over the alleged failure to provide additional information about the failed gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- a division of the Justice Department led by Holder.
Democrats walked out of the chamber ahead of the vote.
“What is happening here is shameful," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who argued House Republicans are more politically motivated in attacking Holder than getting to the bottom of the failed operation, in which at least two of the guns were connected to the fatal shooting of U.S. border agent Brian Terry. . . .
More are following Pelosi's lead that the vote was motivated by Holder's attempt to stop voter suppression.  Seriously?
AME expressed its “profound disagreement” with the contempt vote and also suggested that Holder had been unfairly targeted for his effort to curtail voter suppression laws. . . .

Newest New York Post piece: "A Nation too scared to quit"

I hope that this piece gets shared widely as I think that the information in it is pretty important.  The piece starts this way:

In case you missed it, hiring fell a staggering 9 percent last month. The hidden secret is how bad hiring has been throughout the “recovery.”
Economists say the recovery started in July 2009 — but the jobs picture still looks more like a recession. 
New hires not only fell during the recession, they’ve kept on falling during the “recovery” — something that isn’t supposed to happen. 
The economy has added jobs for 20 months, but very slowly. The total actual number of jobs has grown by just 1 percent during the 36-month “recovery.” In all past recoveries since 1970, the average job growth in the first 36 months is 7 percent. 
The story gets even worse when we look more closely at that small increase in jobs. 

In the year and half before the recession, new hires averaged 5.25 million per month. During the recession (December 2007 to June 2009), they fell dramatically to 4.39 million, hitting 4.2 million per month in December 2008, right before Obama became president. . . .
Note: the word actual was missing from the piece as it was published in the NY Post.



Interview with National Review on my new book "Debacle"

Interview with National Review on my new book "Debacle"

My interview with National Review starts this way:

John R. Lott Jr. and Grover G. Norquist are the authors of Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. Lott, a former colleague of the president’s at the University of Chicago Law School, answers some questions about the depth of the debacle and the way out from National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: John, you say that when you were a faculty colleague of Barack Obama, he tagged you as “the gun guy” and announced that “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” That can’t possibly be true. Why should we believe you?

JOHN R. LOTT JR.: Well, don’t just take my word for his views on guns, look at the positions Obama took on guns during his time in Chicago. Obama supported a ban on handguns in 1996, and a ban on the sale of all semiautomatic guns in 1998 (a ban that would have encompassed the vast majority of guns sold in the U.S.). In 2004, he advocated banning gun sales within five miles of a school or park (essentially a ban on virtually all gun stores), and he has worked in other ways to support bans. He was on the board of directors for the Joyce Foundation, the largest private funder of research to ban gun ownership in the U.S. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Fast and Furious -- Holder's day of reckoning has finally arrived

My newest piece starts this way:
With the House committee voting Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the stalemate between the Obama administration and Congress ultimately boils down to about 1,300 documents.  
Congress wants to know who prepared a February 4, 2011 letter where the Obama administration claimed that the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns to Mexico (so-called “gun walking”), including the gun used to kill US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.  
The Obama administration admits the letter was in error, but they have always maintained that the knowledge of these tactics did not reach the top political appointees in the Obama Department of Justice. 
After a year-and-a-half, the dam broke when a mole in the Justice Department gave the House Oversight committee a set of wiretap applications proving that high department officials knew about the administration's efforts to aid the gun smuggling. The leaked documents destroyed much of Attorney General Eric Holder's credibility since he had claimed that they were not relevant to the case and refused to release them. . . .

12 hours later the piece is still number one among the opinion pieces.

Update: "Hill Poll: Voters: Obama over-reached blocking Fast and Furious docs"
The Hill Poll found that likely voters disapproved by an almost 2-to-1 margin of Obama’s assertion of presidential power in the case. Overall, 56 percent of voters disapproved of his action, while only 29 percent approved.
Democrats have accused Issa of waging a partisan campaign that has no real purpose save for embarrassing Obama and Holder.  Issa has always denied his pursuit of Holder is politically driven. . . .
Sixty-one percent of independents said they disapproved of the president’s actions, and just 25 percent approved. Among Republicans, opposition to the president’s use of executive privilege was more entrenched at 78 percent.  
Even 28 percent of Democrats, and 30 percent of self-identified liberals disapproved of Obama’s position. . . .

Update:  Summary of case by Bill Whittle, though some will find his language very strong.
New National Review piece: Obama's revisionism: He predicted a strong economy, but blames his failure on Bush.

New National Review piece: Obama's revisionism: He predicted a strong economy, but blames his failure on Bush.

My newest piece starts this way:
Americans’ patience is running thin. Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 40 months. Since the recovery started, over 7.2 million Americans have given up looking for work and left the labor force. It is during recessions, not recoveries, that people are supposed to give up looking for work.
But it is obviously all Bush’s fault. At least, that is President Obama’s new take. During his big economic address on Thursday, Obama repeatedly said that the economic problems we face today were “a decade in the making.”
But there is a problem with Obama’s logic. Over the last three-and-a-half years, the president and his administration have continually claimed that the stimulus was working and that a robust recovery was starting. If the legacy of the Bush administration policies was going to hinder the recovery so badly, why did Obama keep on predicting that things were going to get better soon? . . .

Newest Fox News Op-ed: Two mistakes in Obama's press conference last week

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

“The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government,” President Obama claimed on Friday. His solution to fix the public sector was more government spending.
When people started screaming, Obama clarified his remarks and said “It’s absolutely clear economy is not doing fine,” but he just couldn’t bring himself to disown his statement about the private sector generally doing “fine.” His clarification still asserted that there is “good momentum in the private sector.” But private sector employment growth has fallen in each of the last four months, reaching a pitiful 82,000 in May.
President Obama is also wrong about his other claim that state and local governments are doing poorly relative to the private sector. . . .
Newest piece at National Review Online: Bloomberg’s Soda Ban

Newest piece at National Review Online: Bloomberg’s Soda Ban

My newest piece starts this way:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to ban sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces. He believes that by this measure he can reduce obesity. But plenty of evidence indicates that he will fail. The ban will inconvenience people and waste their time, but it will not make them thinner.  
Bloomberg didn’t originate this type of idea. Public schools, which hold their students captive for much of their day, have tried a similar approach to making students lose weight. And some have gone further than Bloomberg’s limit on cup size and have banned such drinks completely. But even complete bans haven’t worked. Students simply drink more sugary drinks after school. According to an article in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior analyzing data for Maine, “keeping such drinks out of teenagers’ reach during school hours may not be enough.” . . .
Michelle Obama supports Bloomberg's ban. 
she said, "We applaud anyone who's stepping up to think about what changes work in their communities. New York is one example." . . .

New piece at Fox News: What Zimmerman, Martin medical reports tell us and the media didn't

UPDATE: Photos from George Zimmerman investigation


My new Fox News piece starts this way:
The new medical reports on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case tell us a lot. And it is not just for what they find, but also what they don’t find.
First, the reports provide striking evidence that Zimmerman did not start the fight with Martin, and that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense. Martin’s injuries were two-fold: broken skin on his knuckles and the fatal gunshot wound.
Zimmerman’s injuries involved: a fractured nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury.
It takes considerable force to break the skin on multiple knuckles. The large range of injuries on Zimmerman indicates that the Martin’s attack was prolonged. . . . .

The South Florida Criminal Lawyers' Blog has this very useful discussion (the whole post is definitely worth reading).  Note also that this post is from April 13, 2012 and my guess that the new evidence would 

. . . the "provocation" theory is shaky, at best. F.S. 776.041 provides that the "Stand Your Ground" law is not available to a person who: "Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself." . . .. . . First, even if Zimmerman "provoked" the incident, he may still justifiably use deadly force, if: "Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant." According to Zimmerman and at least one witness, Trayvon Martin was on top of Zimmerman. What is more, Zimmerman claims that Martin bashed his head on the concrete, which caused Zimmerman to fear death or great bodily harm. If the State cannot contradict this version of events, Zimmerman likely can establish that he "exhausted every reasonable means to escape," (he claims he was pinned to the ground), and he reasonably feared Martin's use of force would "likely cause death or great bodily harm."
Second, it is far from clear that following Trayvon Martin while speaking with the police constitutes "provocation." The second exception to "provocation" states that if the provocateur "In good faith...withdraws from physical contact" and communicates his desire to "withdraw from physical contact," but the other party "continues or resumes the use of force," then the provocateur may rely on the "Stand Your Ground" law. What is important to note, is that F.S. 776.041(2)(b) presumes that the "provocation" includes "physical contact." However, based on the evidence that is public thus far, there is no evidence that Zimmerman initiated "physical contact." What is more, there is no precedent in Florida law indicating that conduct short of "physical contact" provides justification for the use of force, or amounts to "provocation."
Make no mistake: George Zimmerman has a real chance of avoiding a jury. All he has to do is convince a judge, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he acted in justifiable self-defense.

The medical reports strengthen the argument that Zimmerman did not initiate physical contact and Zimmerman's yelling for help surely falls under the heading that he "communicates his desire to 'withdraw from physical contact.'" See also this post entitled "Probable Cause Affidavit in George Zimmerman Case Woefully Inadequate" on the same blog.

Newest piece at National Review Online: Obama and GM Cook the Books

My newest piece at National Review starts this way:

Would you hire President Obama as your financial adviser? Three years ago his administration invested more than $100 billion in taxpayer money to bail out General Motors. On Tuesday, the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth less than $34 billion. By anyone’s definition, that investment is a glaring failure. Yet over the last few days the Obama campaign, in a $25 million marketing blitz, has flooded the airwaves with ads in battleground states, claiming the bailout should be counted a rousing success.
Unfortunately, assertions that “all loans have been repaid to the federal government,” that the bailout “saved more than one million American jobs,” that “U.S. automakers are hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers,” that GM is again the “number-one automaker” — all are based on creative accounting. . . .

Media Matters gets it wrong again, John Lott's newest piece at Fox News

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

Media Matters’ Founder David Brock showed no shame when he was caught illegally using guns for his own personal protection. Indeed, Media Matters’ continues to lash out at others who own guns or support letting individuals use guns for the own protection, even increasing their attacks.
In April alone, Media Matters ran 32 articles attacking the NRA alone. Additional pieces have defended the Obama administration’s Fast & Furious program and dealt with other gun related topics.
Media Matters also attacked me three times over the last two weeks: I had an op-ed in the New York Daily News and an appearance on MSNBC defending Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws and The New York Times actually had the temerity to interview me and refer to me as “a researcher of gun culture who has held teaching or research posts at a number of universities.”
Media Matters wasn’t happy.
In total, since January 2011, they have criticized me in 25 pieces.
With headlines such as “John Lott fudges gun facts again” and “New York Times citing discredited gun researcher John Lott,” Media Matters attempts to thuggishly intimidate both people such as myself and those who talk to me (my response to their piece on the New York Times is available here). Alas, some people, including those in the media, believe Media Matters. . . . .

New Op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "U.S. money given to GM has been a bad investment"



The print version of my new piece starts this way:
If you invested more than $100 in a company, would you be happy if your shares were worth only $35? By anyone’s definition that investment would have been a terrible failure.
Yet, that is how the federal government’s investment in General Motors looks. The federal government has put in well over $100 billion into shoring up General Motors, but the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth only $35 billion on Friday.
GM sales have bounced around, rising in March and then falling in April, but investors’ best guesses for what future sales will be are already in GM’s stock price. And surprisingly, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that support for the bailout has been rising and now 44 percent of likely voters say that the bailout was good for America.
The money the government spent adds up quickly: $50 billion in TARP bailout funds, a special exemption waiving payment of $45.4 billion in taxes on future profits, an exemption for all product liability on cars sold before the bailout, and $360 million in stimulus funds. Other money of which it is harder to quantify GM’s share includes the $15.2 billion Cash for Clunkers program and the $7,500 tax credit for those who buy the Chevy Volt. And all those costs don’t even include the billions taken from GM’s bondholders by the Obama administration. . . .

Some sources for the piece:

Piece at the New York Daily News: "Stand Your Ground makes sense"

Piece at the New York Daily News: "Stand Your Ground makes sense"


My piece starts this way:

Call them what you will: “Stand Your Ground” or “Castle Doctrine” laws. Mayor Bloomberg and members of Congress, speaking on the House floor, go so far as to label them “shoot first” laws. 
This is a gross exaggeration — a slander, in fact, against legislation designed to reform a flaw in our treatment of self-defense. Earlier statutes affirmatively required potential victims to retreat as much as possible before using deadly force to protect themselves, sometimes putting their lives in jeopardy.
The supposedly infamous laws passed in Florida and elsewhere, in contrast, use a “reasonable person” standard for determining when it is proper to defend oneself — requiring that a reasonable person would believe that another individual intends to inflict serious bodily harm or death on them.
Pundits who’ve had a field day ripping apart Stand Your Ground laws repeatedly fail to mention that crucial “reasonable person” standard.
The wild speculation that the laws give broad license for vigilantes to go around recklessly shooting people are a totally irresponsible caricature. Ultimately, it is judges or jurors who determine what constitutes a reasonable fear under such a law, not the person who fires the gun. . . .
New piece at Fox News: "Krugman's bad predictions"

New piece at Fox News: "Krugman's bad predictions"

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:
Few prominent economists have a worse record predicting the impact of Obama’s economic policies than Paul Krugman. Writing for the New York Times and touting his close “genuine contact” with the “smart” economists and others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, Krugman has been, and remains, Obama’s most important champion. Not only has he been defending Obama’s Keynesian-type deficit-spending, but he has been advocating still more of these same failed policies. The economy just can’t gain ground. Thirty-four months since the "recovery" started in June 2009 and the actual number of jobs have increased by just 0.4%. Hardly making up for the 5.5 percent drop in jobs from the peak. Given Krugman’s continued prominence in supporting Obama during the coming election, the best way of evaluating the advice is going to give voters is to see how accurate his claims have been up to this point. It is important to realize just how terrible Krugman’s record has been. He predicted on CNBC: “I am still guessing that we will peak out at around 9 percent [unemployment] and that would be late this year.” . . .

New piece at NRO: "Where’s the ‘Probable Cause’? The affidavit in the Zimmerman case fails to justify a second-degree-murder charge."

My new piece at NRO starts this way:
The charges brought against George Zimmerman sure look like prosecutorial misconduct. The case as put forward by the prosecutor in the “affidavit of probable cause” is startlingly weak. As a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, I have read a number of such affidavits, and cannot recall one lacking so much relevant information. The prosecutor has most likely deliberately overcharged, hoping to intimidate Zimmerman into agreeing to a plea bargain. If this case goes to trial, Zimmerman will almost definitely be found “not guilty” on the charge of second-degree murder. The prosecutor wasn’t required to go to the grand jury for the indictment, but the fact that she didn’t in such a high-profile case is troubling. Everyone knows how easy it is for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to indict, because only the prosecutor presents evidence. A grand-jury indictment would have provided political cover; that charges were brought without one means that the prosecutor was worried that a grand jury would not give her the indictment. . . .
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