The politics of hoodie wearing

You wrote:

In order to do that, the citizens need spies to watch the politicians
at federal, state n local levels of government, in legislative & executive roles.

We were talking about lobbyists.

Lobbyists are not spies, and their role is to press the agenda of their clients,
not to "watch" members of government.

I think a look at a person tells you more about their experiences in the racial realm than decisions made in offices at the Census Bureau.

So what's the point of these laws?

I think the point is to make people afraid.

The EFFECT of the Stand Your Ground law, though, has been to get a kid
who had gone to the store to get an iced tea for his brother and was only [??] talking
on the phone to his girlfriend shot dead.

Let us the important thing here. A KID IS DEAD. You talk about
the right to self-defense as some sort of primary right.

The right to life is considerably more primary,

and Trayvon Martin was deprived of that.

Any law that leads to that consequence is bad law.

Not to mention that prosecutors and the police are angry at the law,

because they say it's let those left standing in gang wars go free,

it's let those left alive in bad drug deals go free,

and it's let people who succumb to road rage go free. It's bad law.

We disagree. It seems to me that looking at the guy tells you he isn't white. Knowing that, it is safe to assume he's been the object of some race-based treatment - and even though he may not self-identify as Hispanic - that is the category he has likely found himself in... based on what most people base their perceptions on - appearance

If there is no right to life in the US, why have laws on murder?

re David
Your arguments as usual are completely wrong-headed.

If someone takes your life, your alleged "right" of self-defense

(never, I repeat, mentioned in the Consitution--your cites said NOTHING)

means absolutely nothing if SOMEONE--we are not talking lightning strikes or drowning
here neither of which would be in any way averted by shooting them--if someone deprives you of your life.

This awful law,

the way it has played out in practice, completely absolves people who make terrible,
mistaken decisions with no basis in reality at all

for their mistakes that kill someone totally innocent, or even partially innocent.
It escalates something that before it might have only involved
screaming at each other, or an ugly look, all the way up to death.

Look at someone wrong and they can shoot you, and get away with it,
even in the absence of any overt action. BAD law.

Prosecutors hate it because it lets the bad guys walk.

They're in effect exempt from any punishment even tho they were equally to blame, or even more, but just happened to be a better shot. There's no chance of putting the other half of the gangers shooting at each other in jail, or the drug dealers, or that asshole who yelled at you because he thought you cut him off. They don't even go to jail, which is where they SHOULD be, bcause they claim self-defense and walk. STUPID law.

And your "sense" of what happened is pure fantasy and unsupported hypothesis.

He "could have pulled on the gun", he "attacked Zimmerman from behind". Sheer fantasy.

His girlfriend says he was on the phone to her and she heard him ask Zimmerman
"Why are you following me". Do you usually talk to the back of someone's head?

You're making up your "facts" as you go along.

Did you look at the videos of Zimmerman's arrival at the Sanford police department that night?

No blood can be seen and mashed noses bleed all over the place, no apparent damage to his nose at allno disarranged clothing, all his clothes look neat and clean, no wound visible on the back of his head, totally normall walk uncharacteristic of someone who allegedly just got beaten and had his head bashed on the sidewalk.

Your version of events, which you've clung to tenaciously to try to exonerate George Zimmerman
from what it clearly is, at the very least manslaughter, is despicable.

Fox news made much of a mystery witness who supposedly said it was Zimmerman on the ground,
according to a police leak. That witness appears to be a minor,

whose mother said the Sanford police,
who didn't even talk to him until a week after the shooting,

tried to pressure him to change his account.

He says he couldn't tell who it was on the ground because it was too dark.

Exactly.
And in this case, your hero killed a kid.

The gun nut

interfered with with this kid's right to walk

and breathe and then he stole his life.

I'm glad you've have finally seen the light and see things the way the rest of us living, breathing people do.
Miracles will never cease.

Richard Kurtz, the funeral director who prepared Martin's body, was asked if there were any signs on his hands that he had punched someone.

"The only thing that I was able to see was the gunshot wound," Kurtz told The Last Word. "I could not see evidence like he had been punching somebody as the news media say he was punching ... It just did not add up to me."

Anyway, you seem to have some emotion invested in trying to say this guy is white. Why is that?

U have the right... that no one interfere with u.