Finally, a poll on the Zimmerman verdict

A Huffington Post / YouGov poll of 1,000 adults:

2. If you had been a member of the jury, would you have voted to find George Zimmerman guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter, not guilty, or would you have been unsure? 

Guilty of murder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15%
Guilty of manslaughter . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23%
Found not guilty . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41%
Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21% 

4. In the way they covered the case, would you say the news media were biased in favor of Zimmerman, biased against Zimmerman, or did they not show any bias one way or the other? 

Biased in favor of Zimmerman . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12%
Biased against Zimmerman . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48%
Not biased one way or the other . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . 18%
Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22%

The article has additional black-white breakdowns, but no mention of the views of misc., of course. Nobody cares about them, except when it comes to immigration policy.

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National Immigration Safety Board needed

Cops standing around flattened baby carriage: not a good sign

NBC 10 Philadelphia reports on a streetrace that killed four pedestrians:

When police led Khusen Akhmedov, shirtless, out of his home in Lancaster on Wednesday, neighbors didn't know he was about to be charged with killing a young mother and three of her children. 

They did know that Akhmedov's car looked like it had been in an accident. 

The same car he boasts about on his Facebook page, an Audi S4, is the car Philadelphia police say was speeding down Roosevelt Boulevard when it raced right into Samara Banks, who was crossing the busy highway with four of her children. Only one survived. 

Court records in Pennsylvania show Akhmedov has nine driving infractions dating back to 2009. ... 

Witnesses told police Akhmedov was speeding on the night of the crash. He and Ahmen Holloman were allegedly racing down the Boulevard when, according to police, Akhmedov lost control of his car, plowing into Samara Banks as she was crossing the street in the Feltonville section of the city with her kids. Banks, 28, died and so did her three youngest children, ages 7 months, 23 months and four years old. Her 5-year-old son survived with bumps and bruises. 

On Akhmedov’s Facebook page, one of the videos posted is of a profanity-laced scene where two cars are seen drag racing on a deserted road. ... 

There are also dozens of photos, including pictures of Akhmedov posing with the Rocky statue

Of course.

, a photo of him with EMTs, posing in front of a fire truck and another photo of him sitting on top of his Audi with a Philadelphia Police sticker visible on the trunk. 

His neighbors on Queen Street in Lancaster assumed that because of the police sticker, Akhmedov worked for law enforcement. That is a stretch from the reality of his day-to-day life, where he faces trial in a federal fraud and conspiracy. 

On his Facebook page, Akhmedov says that he earned a Criminal Law degree from Penn State. According to Penn State spokeswoman Betty Roberts, Khusen A. Akhmedov did attend Penn State for one school year -- from the Fall of 2008 through the Spring semester of 2009 -- but the school has no record of him graduating. 

This just proves we must pass the DREAM Act.

Akhmedovv also mentions that he speaks Russian and Turkish. A friend of the family, who did not want to be named, said Akmedov came to the Lancaster area with his parents in the early 2000s. They chose that area because it has a growing community of Russian immigrants, according to the family friend. 

Akhmedov is accused, along with six other people, of billing the government for millions of dollars in private ambulance runs that were not necessary. Akhmedov was an EMT for the company, according to the federal indictment. 

From Lancaster Online:

Akhmedov moved from Russia to Lancaster with his family almost 10 years ago, and they are now citizens. He is a graduate of McCaskey High School and was planning to marry soon. 

Akhmedov's family are ethnic Meskhetian Turks, a group that has been persecuted for decades.

Meskhetian Turks were residents of Soviet Georgia. The Soviet Union was a finishing school for organized crime and disorganized living, especially in its Caucasus regions.

So, why was the Akhmedov family allowed into the U.S.? Is being a crooked meathead a job Americans just won't do? Was there a Streetracer Shortage? Were patients who didn't actually need ambulance rides to get to their dialysis appointments rotting in the fields? Was it Akhmedov's American Dream to not only play but live Grand Theft Auto? Did the Akhmedovs claim that a lot of people back home really hated them?

Perhaps those folks who knew them had their reasons.

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The slow success of Kurdish nationalism

From the NYT on Syria:

The civil war has Balkanized the country, with an array of armed groups controlling different areas. The government retains its grip on the capital and has been solidifying its control over a string of major cities to the north. Rebel groups hold large swaths of land in the country’s north and east, though they are far from unified, with militias competing for resources, imposing their own laws and sometimes turning their guns on one another. The Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority, control their own areas and often fight to keep the rebels out.

The Kurds of the Middle East are famously one of the larger language groups without their own state. Except, they are slowly quietly getting de facto control of parts of their homeland: first in Iraq, now in Syria as it too falls apart. The Kurdish formula in the 21st Century seems to be keep their heads down, don't push too hard for ethnically ambiguous territory, stay out of fights in the capital of your old countries, mind your own business, and be patient.

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British Open

I like this oddly surrealistic photo by Glyn Kirk of Phil Mickelson and ten greenskeepers, none of whom is looking at the second most famous golfer in the world. It's like a Magritte version of Van Gogh's picture of crows and a wheat field, or maybe a still from an alienated 1960 Euro movie: Last Year at Muirfield. (By the way, the essential weirdness of golf courses has only been exploited in one or two arthouse movies, most notably Lars von Trier's Melancholia.) Or Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year and Race for People with No Sense of Direction skits. Or like when all the Agent Smiths in the Matrix Reloaded fight scene finally lose and then they all get depressed, turn different directions, and walk off (8:30 in the video).

It's interesting that all those greenskeepers aren't watering the not very green fairway. American golfers like a uniform carpet of green grass, but British Open courses are played on the random humps and bumps of sand dunes, where the trouble comes from the ball rolling into trouble. These days, pro golfers only fear two things: wind and gravity. Playing conditions look sensationally fast for an Open.

Muirfield, the home course of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, is the snobbiest, most formal golf course in Scotland. And yet, like almost all Scottish clubs, it is less private than thousands of American country clubs. Muirfield is open to non-members two mornings per week. If you are interested in private club lore, here's a description of what getting on Muirfield is like for an outsider by a guy who managed to play all the top 100 courses in the world on Golf magazine's list, finally finishing off with Augusta National after about a decade of trying to wheedle an invite.

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Zimmerman defense preferred women jurors

Jury selection is a fascinating little field. It's a little bit like casting movies, another business in which some market research is done (lawyers in massive trials will occasionally recruit mock jurors to see how they vote in an upcoming case). But, mostly, it's done based on hunches by charismatic experts / blowhards. 

All-woman jury was a key strategy, Zimmerman defense consultant says 

Yamiche Alcindor 8:40 p.m. EDT July 17, 2013

SANFORD, Fla. -- One of the people instrumental in helping George Zimmerman's defense team pick an all-women jury says that he decided months in advance that a female panel brought the best chance for acquittal. 

Robert Hirschhorn, a jury consultant with more than 28 years experience, told USA TODAY that women are better listeners, less judgmental, and would more easily understand the fear Zimmerman felt when he shot Trayvon Martin. 

"I wanted to make sure we were going to get jurors that would follow what the court of law required not what the court of public opinion wanted," Hirschhorn said. "My number one goal was to get fair jurors that would really be able to listen to the evidence and decide the case on facts and law not emotion." 

Hirschhorn's instincts paid off Saturday when a jury of five white women and one Hispanic woman acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the Feb. 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Hirschhorn got involved in the Zimmerman case in April when Zimmerman defense attorney Don West brought him in. Hirschhorn, who is based in Lewisville, Texas, has worked on several high profile cases including the trial of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy as well as New York millionaire Robert Durst, acquitted of killing and dismembering his elderly neighbor. ...

In doing so, he decided women would be more favorable in getting Zimmerman acquitted and that people with anti-gun stances would have to be eliminated.

... A beginning group of 211 people filled out juror questionnaires, which were then read by lawyers and Circuit Judge Debra Nelson. They chose who would make it to the next round for individual questioning about media exposure to news of the shooting in open court. Later, lawyers went down the list, striking jurors individually. At least six people were dismissed during this phase. 

... In Zimmerman's case, Hirschhorn did two rare things: Hirschhorn didn't recommend lawyers ask for a change of venue and he didn't have Zimmerman's lawyers use all their strikes against jurors. 

"Sanford was the epicenter for this event," Hirschhorn said, explaining what he told lawyers."If we want George to get a fair trial, we want people from his county to decide this case." 

Early on, Hirschhorn thought women would relate to Zimmerman's story better than men and would understand the position Zimmerman found himself in the night of the shooting. 

"I believed in my heart that an all-female jury was the right jury for George," Hirschhorn said. "My experience has been that women are better at listening than men." 

The thinking behind his theory was that women would be less judgmental in a self-defense case where lawyers would be asking them to put themselves in the position Zimmerman found himself when he killed Trayvon. 

Hirschhorn also knew he would need to eliminate potential jurors who held anti-gun views and who were not completely honest with their knowledge of the case and the opinions they had formed. 

"In the typical high profile case, jurors have typically formed an opinion against your client," he said, adding that Zimmerman's case was different. "There was a large segment of the community that was against George.There was a large segment of the community that hadn't formed an opinion that George was guilty. The challenge for me was to find those people that can be fair to George." 

It was also Hirschhorn's job to find out which potential jurors were not being completely honest. That thinking led to the elimination of at least three jurors. Zimmerman defense attorney, Mark O'Mara told Circuit Judge Debra Nelson one older black woman failed to tell the court about a leader of her church being a Trayvon supporter and a younger black woman failed to disclose that she was Facebook friends with a potential witness. The defense also eliminated at least one juror --a white man--who said he had issues with guns.

I did a little bit of work once for Houston trial legend Racehorse Haynes, writing up digests of his notes for a projected autobiography. During jury selection in the 1960s, he always noted if a juror had too many mechanical pencils in his his shirt pocket for his occupation: e.g., an auto mechanic with six different pencils in his pocket protector was trying to give the impression he was an engineer. Racehorse felt they were phonies and he didn't want them on his jury.

Was this scientific? Beats me, but Racehorse gave me a ride in his Turbo Porsche, 0 to 90 mph to 0 in about six blocks, one of the first Turbo Porsches in Houston in the 1970s, so he won a lot of trials.

By the way, has anybody seen any good analytical writing about casting movies and TV shows? Most of what I've seen focuses on pairings of leads like Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy. But I'm more interested in casting with large sample sizes of datapoints, such as witnesses on Law & Order, where they want actors who more or less look like what the public expects the character to look like. Anybody seen anything good on that?

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"Michelle Obama Finally Gets Around To Reading ‘Dreams From My Father’"

Michelle Obama Finally Gets Around To Reading ‘Dreams From My Father’ 

WASHINGTON—Saying that she had put it off for a long time and that now was as good a time as any, Michelle Obama told sources Monday she had finally gotten around to reading her husband’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father. “I read the first couple chapters back when it came out, but I just couldn’t get through it, and it’s been lying on my dresser ever since,” said the first lady, explaining that she felt obligated to read President Obama’s autobiographical exploration of race and identity in America even though, “to be honest, it’s a little slow.” “The parts about his dad seem a little overwrought, and he spends so much time writing about himself that he comes across a bit narcissistic—who writes a memoir when they’re 33, anyway? I skimmed a lot of it, but I can still pretend I read the whole thing if he asks.” 

The Onion.

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NYT: "The Myth of 'Race'"

One way liberals account for their ferocious emotions over race is to proclaim that the object of their obsession doesn't exist.

From the New York Times:

LETTER 

Invitation to a Dialogue: The Myth of ‘Race’ 

Published: July 16, 2013

To the Editor: 

What should we do about “race”? 

Over many decades, those who study genetics have found no biological evidence to support the idea that humans consist of different “races.” Based on such scientific data, Ashley Montagu published “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race” in 1942. New discoveries have confirmed what he said then. So why, over seven decades after his book, do we keep talking and living as though biological “races” exist? 

Not only are certain “racial” classifications flawed, as suggested in “Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?” (Sunday Review, July 7); all “racial” classifications are inherently flawed, because they are based on the false idea of “race.” 

The myth of “race” has supported the horrors of slavery, apartheid, segregation, eugenics and the Holocaust. It continues to support racism. We cannot simply ignore the harm this myth has caused and pretend that the myth never existed.
The scientific, democratic and ethical goal should be to eliminate the false idea of “race” completely. But how do we both destroy the myth and remedy the harm it has caused? 

We can begin by mentally changing how we see people. When we look at someone and automatically think about that person’s “race,” we must realize that we are not seeing “race” but instead seeing an arbitrary and harmful societal classification imposed on a continuum of physical differences. 

When we want to ask how someone is classified by the myth, we should always put “race” or “racial” in quotation marks (as I have done here). Such questions still need to be asked, for example, on applications for college or a job, or for the census, for the answers provide the data needed to maintain diversity in education and the workplace and to monitor and remedy the harms the myth has caused and continues to cause. The long-term goal, however, is to make these questions obsolete. 

JOHN L. HODGE 

Boston, July 15, 2013 

The writer is a retired lawyer, former professor of philosophy and the author of books, essays and a blog on democracy, ethics and human rights. 

Editors’ Note: We invite readers to respond by Thursday for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Hodge’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com

You know the old joke about how "If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave"? Well, the New York Times' genetics reporter Nicholas Wade must be spinning in his office chair.

By the way, a dozen years ago I laid out a simple, useful, damn-near tautological way to define "racial group" that largely fits the philosophy implicit in the federal government's racial categories. But, these days, being reasonable doesn't cut it.

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