The Rittenhouse jury instructions: provocation included

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew Branca has posted his analysis of the day’s proceedings in the Rittenhouse trial. It contains the jury instructions and is quite detailed, and I suggest you read it or at least skim it.

I wish I could say it cheered me up, but it most assuredly did not.

The comments there are worth reading, too. I’ll highlight some of them, but there are plenty more:

“andrew [Branca writes] Judge explaining lesser included offenses, notes reduces risk of a second trial due to a hung jury.”
******
That is probably the most ominous thing that I have read…The judge is allowing more lesser includeds so as to increase the likelihood of a guilty verdict inorder to reduce the “risk” of a second trial. Making decisions not on “law” or the “risk” of Kyle going to prison but to increase the chance of a guilty verdict inorder to avoid the hassle of another trial!! WTF

I still have a problem with provocation with intent. KR’s statement was that he dropped the fire extinguisher because he saw Ziminski with a gun pointed at him. Ziminski proved he had a gun by firing a shot into the air several seconds later.
The state needs to disprove KR’s testimony with some evidence. Ziminski was never called to testify that KR pointed a gun at him. No witness testifiied to seeing KR point his rifle, and there were witnesses everywhere. We have a retouched photo, that now the prosecutor is going to tell the jury what it shows? That sure doesn’t sound like “evidence”, and the judge SHOULD NOT allow it.
Finally, the entire foundation for the prosecution’s close is based on a video for which we have no idea where it came from, that was only provided to the defense in the second week of the trial, immediately before the prosecution rested. So, the state charged and prosecuted KR for more than a year, and conducted the first week of the trial, without the only evidence that supposedly supports their charges? If that doesn’t prove political persecution, I don’t know what does.

I’m confused now.

As I understand things, as the trial started, the FBI unexpectedly showed up with low-res drone footage that everybody understands was from the FBI.

Then, halfway through the trial, some additional drone footage mysteriously appeared, and no one knows who took it, who stored it, who may have tampered with it, or really anything about its provenance or chain of custody.

And Kyle’s freedom is going to hinge on barely-discernable “information” recorded on that video?

How was this evidence ever accepted by the defense?

Provocation with intent occurs when the defendant deliberately provokes a violent response, with the intent of then having an excuse to use deadly force against the person provoked.
__________

I don’t see how this argument is going to make any sense. If Kyle really pointed his gun at Ziminski with the deliberate intent of provoking either him or Rosenbaum to attack him so that Kyle could then shoot one or both of them, then why did Kyle run away from them, instead of just shooting them as soon as they moved towards him? The fact that Kyle tried to get away from them seems to be pretty clear and convincing evidence that Kyle had NO intent to provoke them into attacking him so he could shoot them.

The reporter witness McGinnis, who witnessed the Rosenbaum shooting, testified that when Rosenbaum first came at Kyle, Kyle “pivoted” and ran away. Kyle could have shot Rosenbaum right then, but he didn’t. When Rosenbaum caught up to Kyle, Rosenbaum came at him again and Kyle moved the barrel of his gun away from him. IOW, Kyle had yet another opportunity to shoot Rosenbaum if that was what he wanted, but he didn’t do it. Kyle didn’t shoot until Rosenbaum lunged at him and actually grabbed the barrel of his gun. Kyle’s behavior doesn’t make sense if he was just looking for an excuse to shoot Rosenbaum. Kyle did everything possible to AVOID shooting Rosenbaum for as long as possible, and only shot him when he had no other choice. That behavior is completely inconsistent with the argument that Kyle was deliberately trying to provoke Rosenbaum in order to have an excuse to shoot him.

So the Rekieta Law panel today said that the only reason provocation was allowed today is because Rittenhouse himself brought up the pointing of a gun when he took the stand. If he hadn’t have testified, it would not have come up and the state would never have been able to resurrect its dead case.

I’ve watched most this case, but trying to think back to this – is this true? The prosecution could not have brought it up via video? I know there was no other testimony about it. Ziminski sure as heck wasn’t there to say so.

The gun charge may be a blessing in disguise. If the jury wants to acquit on the felonies, this gives them a misdemeanor charge to convict on so they at least convict on something. That’s a better compromise than the “lesser” included offenses which are all major end-of-your-life-as-you-know-it felonies.

And I think that Kyle has something important going for him that has nothing to do with the law. He seems like a nice kid with good-hearted intentions. I think it was good that he took the stand. He presented himself well. It helped to humanize him and maybe help make it more difficult to callously ignore the evidence and the law and simply throw him to the wolves out of political bias.

Nevertheless, if they convict Kyle on the basis of this bogus evidence and ass-hat prosecution, it means they had it in for him anyways, the whole trial was an exercise in futility, and Kyle was doomed from the start. No actually fair and un-biased jury could possibly convict on the basis of what I was in this trial.

It’s that very last paragraph of that last comment that reflects my views. Short of a dismissal with prejudice by the judge – which I think should have happened but I also think was never ever going to happen – such cases come down to the jury.

And not just the jury as they watch what is revealed in the trial, either. I’ve said that “a mind is a difficult thing to change,” and it really really is. That certainly applies to jury members all of whom supposedly come to trials with open minds. Open minds would be nice, but it’s not that way and is almost never that way. It’s especially rare in a case such as Rittenhouse’s, which has been very heavily publicized and propagandized for well over a year, with even national figures such as Joe Biden weighing in to condemn him.

Disgusting, but true. At least Obama only said Trayvon Martin might have been his son; he didn’t say the “white Hispanic” Zimmerman was a white supremacist.

It is almost a certainly that the jury pool in Kenosha was tremendously tainted by all that negative publicity, and in addition there was and is the added threat of jurors knowing that riots will probably ensue without a guilty verdict. That’s mob rule, and it’s the terrible sword that hangs over our heads now that the authorities charged with keeping civil order have abandoned that endeavor in many cities and states in recent years. The original riots in Kenosha that sparked the Rittenhouse’s actions were a form of the same thing – people enraged at what they thought had happened to Jacob Blake, and already making up their minds that the police who shot him had to pay.

In Rittenhouse’s trial, the jurors brought with them into that courtroom whatever preconceptions they had, and it’s probably the case that none of them or few of them changed their minds because of the trial proceedings. I have no idea how they were originally leaning, though, and that’s the all-important question.

I can’t imagine any thinking person being persuaded of Rittenhouse’s guilt by the evidence in this trial. But what I can imagine isn’t the point. The point is: who are the jurors, what did they each think going into the trial, what will they each think at the end of it, and will at least one of them decide he is not guilty.

Now the governor of Wisconsin calls out the National Guard (plus, is this the end of self-defense in Wisconsin?)

The New Neo Posted on by

Governor Evers of Wisconsin has authorized 500 Wisconsin National Guard troops in anticipation of the Rittenhouse verdict.

You could say this was prudent, because if there is anything less than a conviction on the most serious charges, riots have been promised. You could also say – and you’d be correct – that this is just another element of the case that will tend to intimidate the jury from rendering a “not guilty” verdict. I would add that in my opinion this jury should have been sequestered, because all of this could have easily been foreseen. But I’m not even sure that the defense asked for that, and at any rate it was not done.

What’s more, irony abounds. Evers didn’t see fit to call the Guard when the Kenosha riots occurred, but he should have. And that’s not just 20/20 hindsight; it was quite obvious at the time. If he had done so, it is highly likely that Rosenbaum and Huber would still be alive, Grosskreutz would have retained his biceps, and Kyle Rittenhouse’s entire future wouldn’t be in jeopardy. There were so many points along the way when authorities made the wrong decisions, and I don’t think it was mere incompetence, I think it was a combination of cowardice and leftist ideology, with sometimes one predominating and sometimes the other.

I fight against my own pessimism, but in this case I’m losing that fight.

In other developments in the trial today, I’m still trying to get a bead on what was decided about the judge’s instructions to the jury. This Legal Insurrection thread is worth reading on that score, but I’m going to wait for Andrew Branca’s roundup tonight of the day’s events before I say much more, except to quote some commenters there.

First we have this:

The state’s entire basis is that there is no such thing as self defense, at least not in practice. In this trial so far the state has argued:

1. Kyle did not KNOW that Grosskreutz was going to pull the trigger, so it wasn’t a reasonable threat.
2. A defender is a threat to their attacker and may even be MORE of a threat provided the defender has a more capable gun. Apparently that invalidates uses of force.
3. Not risking death or bodily harm to give medical aid to the person you shot shows disregard for life
4. Having a gun at all is provocation
5. Being stripped of your gun by an attacker does not create a reasonable fear of death
6. As you pointed out, shooting anyone in any way in a mob is inherently reckless

This whole trial is just a look into what the left wants self defense to look like, as well as court process in general. There is no use of force of any kind that can pass the scrutiny Binger wants applied here.

That’s the way I see it, too: if the jury convicts on these charges, the right of self-defense is pretty much gone in the state of Wisconsin.

There’s also this:

The idea of “recklessness” here is tantamount to a principle that one can never shoot in self defense if attacked by a mob. When will there not be someone “possibly behind” the attacker in a mob? One could go further and point to the historic/common sense fact that a good portion of the most deadly attacks are those of multiple attackers. This is a case of “if not now, when?” That is, if one cannot shoot to defend against mob violence, there is no right to self defense.

A charge of “recklessness ” in this context is not a “lesser included” charge, but entirely negates the right of self defense. It should not be on the verdict sheet as a matter of law (unless)…Kyle was lobbing grenades.

Arizona school board president kept files on domestic terrorists

The New Neo Posted on by

Otherwise known as parents who might have opposed him in some way:

The president, or possibly his father, appears to have kept a dossier on 47 parents who dared to speak out against his policies at school board meetings — a dossier complete with Social Security numbers, background checks, a divorce paper, mortgage documents, trade certifications, and screenshots of Facebook posts.

There’s a petition calling for his resignation, but he denies personal involvement with this. At any rate, someone seems to have been collecting such information:

The dossier also includes videos showing a man taking photographs of parents and children in the hours before a school board meeting. “Somewhere around here we have a private investigator who’s writing down all of their plates,” the man says in the video. “They don’t know it’s me … I covered up my license plate.”

Once again I am reminded of how the internet has facilitated this sort of practice, both in its compilation and in the organization, storage, and dissemination of the information. It’s not just the federal government, either, although it certainly helps that entity gather a huge amount of information on all of us and also to store it and to locate it when the time seems right. It’s also local government and private individuals, and activists have jumped at the chance.

Rittenhouse and the right to self-defense

The New Neo Posted on by

I probably will write more about this over the weekend, because I need more information on it in order to say something more intelligent about it. But I’ve been appalled at two things recently in the Rittenhouse trial – in addition to the fact that he was charged with murder in the first place. Both things underscore, for me, how much of our legal system depends on the integrity of public officials such as prosecutors.

Prosecutors have a lot of power, even though the system is set up to protect the rights of the accused through rules such as the presumption of innocence. But even being charged with something like murder is an ordeal – and there’s also the creation of an atmosphere (by the MSM and political operatives such as Biden) that prejudices the public against a defendant such as Rittenhouse and includes the threat of violence if a guilty verdict isn’t reached. That threat of violence is not only against the community as a whole, but against specific jurors who will supposedly be doxxed if the verdict isn’t guilty.

Remember that the genesis of this entire horror show was MSM lies about the shooting of Jacob Blake, and resultant rioting, as well as the abdication of the government of the city in keeping the peace. Rioters were allowed to – well, to run riot – and that’s the only reason Rittenhouse was there in the first place, as well as the reason anarchy prevailed in the streets that August night.

The DA’s office charged Rittenhouse precipitously, without having nearly enough information to know whether the charges were valid. It was either a cave to the mob or a political decision by leftists, but either way it was shockingly fast under the circumstances. The performance of the ADA (Binger) during the trial has been abominable, and the case against Rittenhouse is astonishingly weak. A DA with integrity would never have brought this case, but these DAs did, and the prosecutors in this trial have pursued it doggedly.

Yesterday the prosecution was allowed to introduce some extraordinarily weak and dubious evidence (you can read about it here), an “enhanced” video that surfaced recently that was originally impossible to decipher and whose “enhancement” involved a process by which the image is hopelessly distorted by the addition of enormous numbers of pixels that weren’t there in the first place.

Has such evidence ever been admitted in a court of law? It’s possible, but I certainly haven’t heard of it before. The prosecutors contend that it shows Rittenhouse pointing his gun at someone, which could go to the issue of provocation and could at least arguably cancel out his right to self-defense.

Today, it appears (I’ve gleaned this mainly from discussions in comments around the blogosphere, but the situation should emerge more clearly later on) that that the judge has allowed the prosecution to include lesser charges at this late date. The trial is over in terms of evidence, and my understanding so far is that in Wisconsin there apparently is a rule that the prosecution can add new charges if the judge thinks they fit, even after all the testimony is over. To me, this would seem to give the prosecution a terribly unfair advantage if they have a weak case and want to pursue a defendant and make sure he’s put away on something.

At least, that’s my understanding at this point. If you’ve been watching the trial today (I haven’t), and/or if you know more about the Wisconsin laws on these points, please feel free in the comments.

On August 27 of 2020, shortly after the events in this case transpired, I wrote that this case could have the result of “discouraging bona fide self-defense on the part of the rioters’ targets.” The left has been trying for a long time to weaken this right in the US as they already have done in countries such as Britain, and they see this case as a big opportunity.

Now it comes down to the jury, but so far this case has been appalling in every way.

The continuing war against the right

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin.”]

The left would like Jews to believe it’s the right they have to fear:

As director of Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization who also taught at the International Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Hoffman’s message to worried American Jews is that they’re not scared enough. What Hoffman is trying to do is to scare American Jews into believing that Trump supporters—meaning roughly 75 million Americans, or half of the electorate—are domestic terrorists and violent white supremacists. Worst of all, according to Hoffman, is that there’s not much to be done to stop them. He recommended a service that will scrub your information from the internet. Otherwise, if the red-baseball-cap-wearing hordes come for you, you’re on your own.

Antisemitic extremists are real, and they live on both the left and the right. It was a white supremacist who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. Indeed, white supremacism and right-wing antisemitism, from the Ku Klux Klan to Charles Lindbergh, are deeply embedded in American history, even if by now we’d hoped to transcend them. But are they more dangerous today than ever before in American history? It may seem so, but only if you are ignorant of that history—or pursuing an agenda that threatens to endanger American Jews, rather than protect them from harm.

So why is a man who has researched terrorism for more than four decades and worked at the higher levels of the American national security apparatus telling the Jewish community that they are helpless against millions of their own fellow citizens, who should now in fact be considered their enemies? Because Hoffman is messaging on behalf of a shameful and deeply un-American push by the Biden administration to criminalize the regime’s political opponents—an initiative in which Jews are being positioned as, and told they are hopeless to avoid being, targets.

Jews, of course, are a very small part of this, because their numbers are tiny. On the other hand, those numbers tend to include some major Democratic donors. In addition, the left is afraid that various ethnic groups whose vote they’ve long counted on – in particular, Hispanics and even a small percentage of black people – are starting to leave the fold as the party moves further to the left. The Democratic leadership relies on fear in an effort to keep them in line, and this appeal to Jews is part of this.

Remember back in August of 2012, when none other than then-VP Joe Biden addressed a crowd composed mainly of black people this way?:

Biden told more than 800 ticketed supporters that Romney wants to repeal the financial regulations enacted after the Wall Street crash of 2008. “He’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street!” Biden said. Then he added, “They’re going to put you all back in chains” with their economic and regulatory policies.

That was when the mild-mannered Romney was running.

The left relies on the public’s ignorance and lack of curiosity

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting Twitter thread (hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin”):

On the one hand, it’s good that Sarah Beth Burwick has finally seen at least some of the truth about this case, and is beginning to doubt that her previous sources are reliable.

But did she have no previous curiosity? It certainly wouldn’t have taken but a moment to find out that the men Rittenhouse shot were white, a fact that would have given the lie to all the mendacious “white supremacist” talk about Rittenhouse. It was almost impossible not to know something about these three if a person read even a small amount about the case. I saw their photos early on, and also knew the basic facts of the case, and they weren’t the least bit hard to find. For example, I wrote this post the day after the news broke, in which I mention that all three men who were shot were white.

On that same day, August 27, 2020, I wrote a post entitled “The game plan of the MSM in not showing the evidence that would tend to support a self-defense argument for Rittenhouse.” Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s the game plan: keep from the public those parts of the videos that might tend to exonerate Rittenhouse, controlling the narrative and setting a widespread public perception that he’s a murderer. That might cause even more riots, which the left seems to want, as well as discouraging bona fide self-defense on the part of the rioters’ targets.

Then, once the whole “narrative” is set in stone in the minds of most of the public, the following reactions often occur: DAs (even ones that are not Soros-funded) feel they must throw the book at the culprit in order to calm things down, jury pools have become biased and/or may be frightened about the possible repercussions of any “not guilty” verdict, and if said not guilty verdict is nevertheless rendered the resulting riots are even more extreme because much of the public feels that justice has not been done. That also adds to the general disgust for the court system, and the left believes that can only aid them as well.

There you have it. Sarah Beth Burwick and the people on her thread who have had similar experiences, in which watching some of the trial made clear certain very basic facts of which they’d been previously unaware, are the dupes of this cycle. They may be awakening to it now, but will it remain an isolated incident for them or will they take more general lessons from it? And how many of them are there, compared to the vast numbers who continue to be duped – and who seemingly willingly play along and don’t do their very basic homework?

A little further down on that thread, Burwick adds:

Let me add a few points-
1. All my friends/family are progressively and I recently woke up to their hyocrisy and msm BS
2. I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the case
3. If you hear someone called a white supremacist enough times, you believe it unless…..

…you realize you need to question everything you’ve been told, which is what is keeping me very, very busy of late.

Well, good for her. But I repeat: how many people are doing this? It’s a rhetorical question for which I don’t have an answer. I hope very very many, but I’ve hoped that before and the hopes were not fulfilled.

[NOTE: And by the way, legally it wouldn’t have mattered if the men Rittenhouse shot were white or black. But in the public eye it matters to a great many people, and the assumption that they were black would have further hurt Rittenhouse. Well, at the very least, the jury now knows that they were white.

I also think (although I’m not sure) that their races might have mattered had they been black and Rittenhouse was acquitted, and the federal government was contemplating filing federal charges against him, as some sort of racially-motivated perp, for violating their civil rights.]

The ceremony of innocence: the Rittenhouse trial

The New Neo Posted on by

The Rittenhouse trial has been particularly awful – and for me it’s also been quite emotional to watch, especially yesterday when Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand. The decision to have him testify surprised me greatly, and last night I watched most of his testimony and was even more horrified by the situation in which this young man has been placed.

That situation began in August of 2020 when several seemingly-unhinged and aggressively hostile men attacked the then-17-year-old in a nightmare scenario that led to Kyle shooting and killing two of them and shooting and wounding a third. Each time he only fired when his life seemed gravely in danger. There is no question in my mind that it was self-defense, and that it was also an intensely traumatic evening. His testimony yestreday made that trauma even more clear when he broke down in huge shuddering sobs when forced to describe being surrounded by that hostile group.

But his attackers were an uncontrolled mob, and one of them (Rosenbaum) was apparently genuinely mentally ill. What’s prosecutor Binger’s excuse?

What do I mean by that last question? By any ordinary legal definition of justifiable self-defense, Rittenhouse is not guilty of murder and Binger must know that because he knows the law. He chose to prosecute Rittenhouse anyway. Perhaps it was out of a desire for fame, perhaps Rittenhouse just rubs him the wrong way, perhaps Binger wanted to appease and placate the mob, perhaps he’s a leftist and it was political, or perhaps he’s just a sadistic person with no moral sense whatsoever. Or perhaps some combination of those things. Whatever Binger’s reasons, his performance yesterday and even before that has been repugnant and vile, and yesterday those qualities increased exponentially.

I can’t ever remember detesting an attorney to such a degree before, but there it is. Binger spoke with much venom and contempt to Rittenhouse, but he spoke with snide contempt even to the judge who was reprimanding him. Binger must know the judge is probably highly reluctant, in such a high-profile trial, to declare the “mistrial with prejudice” that Binger so richly deserves, and so I believe that Binger feels free to play a game of chicken with the judge. I’m not even sure how much of a chance Binger thinks he still has to convict Rittenhouse, but he continues to march on in a remarkably offensive, smarmy, duplicitous manner. As they say, the process is the punishment, for Rittenhouse (you can watch here).

But Binger also knows that juries are unpredictable and sometimes illogical, and that this one just might convict Rittenhouse even though there is no evidential support for a guilty verdict. Juries have done stranger things at times, and every single member of this jury has probably been exposed to enormous anti-Rittenhouse propaganda, including the fact that Joe Biden (as candidate Biden) said he was a white supremacist.

If Rittenhouse is found guilty of murder and the conviction stands, that will tell us the rule of law is finished in this country. Maybe it already is; it’s not the first time I’ve felt a similar sentiment recently. For example, there was the Chauvin verdict (which seemed highly unjustified to me at the time but which at least seems more arguably evidence-based than a guilty verdict for Rittenhouse would ever be), the Flynn case, and also the treatment of the January 6th defendants.

I’ve already written about how the Rittenhouse prosecution reminds me of one work of literature, “Billy Budd.” Two more things came to mind for me last night when I was mulling all of this over. The first was a poem I’ve quoted many times before, each time for a different purpose. There’s always something new to be found in it: Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” Today I want to call attention to these lines:

…Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

It’s unclear exactly what Yeats meant by the phrase “the ceremony of innocence.” But to me, the lines fit the Rittenhouse case very well. The mobs in Kenosha, and the abdication of the authorities who seemed to have given up on controlling them, was and is anarchy (some of the rioters were actually anarchists). Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old teenager who was there to do good, with the idealism that youth often possesses. What happened to him was horrific, and I don’t just mean at the hands of the mob, or the scars he will bear forever from ending two human lives. I also mean what is happening to him at the hands of the state. If he is acquitted it will be far far better than if he is found guilty, but he still will have been abused by the legal system. Innocence is drowned, indeed.

The second thing that came to my mind last night is that what happened to Kyle in Kenosha that awful night in August of 2020 somewhat resembled a movie. So many of them feature an innocent person being chased, but the film that came to mind for me was from a movie obscure enough that I can’t automatically assume that very many of you have ever seen it. It’s the Scorcese film “After Hours,” usually described as a “black comedy” (can we still use that phrase?). I saw the movie when it came out in the mid-80s and liked it. It’s funny, frightening, and surreal all at once; an extremely quirky movie.

Here’s the trailer, which has a bit of the scene I’m talking about, in which an angry mob chases the main character for essentially no reason at all. The film is a comedy, as I said, but it has some scenes that are menacing and truly frightening (at least for me), and that was one. The chase part begins at 1:08 in this trailer:

For today’s proceedings in the trial, I recommend Legal Insurrection’s live feed and comments, and then later tonight Andrew Branca is slated to have his usual lengthy summary. Yesterday’s summary – “Kyle Survives Abusive Cross-Examination”- can be found here.

Veterans Day; Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the link about it if you scroll down on the left sidebar). It’s not necessarily great poetry, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice—and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed—even if each peace was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence—or have continually threatened to—ever since.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one—and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived—and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.

[NOTE: I’ve scheduled this post to be published at 11:11 AM on 11/11.]

Now the Rittenhouse defense says it will move for a mistrial with prejudice

The New Neo Posted on by

Real live court cases don’t usually resemble anything you’d see on Perry Mason or other shows or movies. They’re usually a lot less obviously dramatic, although there are exceptions.

The Rittenhouse case has been an exception.

It also has shown what it’s like when a weak or even nonexistent case is prosecuted for political reasons. When the prosecutor has little to nothing to show for evidence, he or she has to make stuff up and/or engage in offensive antics in order to persuade the jurors of something that isn’t true. And sometimes it works.

The prosecution in the Rittenhouse case has been trying that, particularly Binger, who earlier today earned a tongue-lashing from the judge for some especially egregious violations of the usual well-known standards for the sort of questions and insinuations allowed in court.

Now we have the possibility of another dramatic action, this time by the defense:

If granted, that would mean that Rittenhouse could not be tried again. But I doubt it would be granted, although justified. That would be extraordinary. Of course, this entire prosecution is extraordinary, but so are many things in the US these days.

The theory is, of course, that the prosecution’s awful behavior is a purposeful attempt to get the judge to declare an ordinary mistrial and thus earn them a do-over and another bite at the Rittenhouse apple.

The long shadow of false accusations: “White Hispanic” George Zimmerman is still being demonized as though he’s guilty

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday in the comments to the Rittenhouse/Sandmann thread, I brought up George Zimmerman in this way: “…George Zimmerman the half-Hispanic had to be made into a ‘white Hispanic,’ the better to be demonized.”

In subsequently doing a search for Zimmerman’s name, I came across this news story from five days ago:

A weekend event featuring a speech by George Zimmerman was nixed by an Idaho hotel group after the company learned the man who killed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was slated to be a headlining attraction at their venue.

The gathering, billed as the Lethal Force Gun Laws 2021 Tactics & Strategies Conference, was to have begun Friday and ended Monday at The Riverside Hotel in Boise.

Boise is not exactly a deep blue city. And yet it happened:

That report said the hotel owners cited for its reason the “immense pain” Zimmerman caused its “guests, team-members and community” when he gunned down the unarmed Black teen in February of 2012.

So Zimmerman “gunned down” Martin, with the implication that he shot in cold blood some guy who was just standing there. And although Martin indeed was an “unarmed” teenager, he was actually far bigger and stronger than Zimmerman and when shot Martin was engaged in beating Zimmerman bloody, complete with head-bashing into the pavement while sitting on him and trying to reach for his weapon.

It seems the leftist narrative is fully intact at the NY Daily News, nine years after the event and almost as many years after Zimmerman’s acquittal, as you will discover if you read the whole article.

More from the Boise hotel:

We are unequivocally opposed to providing George Zimmerman a platform and he is not welcome at The Riverside Hotel.

You may also recall that Zimmerman has had a lot of trouble repairing his life since those events in 2012, and although I assume his acquittal helped it certainly didn’t mean that he can live a normal life. One of many things that happened to him, post-trial, was that some person (actually, a man named “Apperson”) shot at him while he was driving. You can read about it here:

On May 11, 2015, Apperson shot at Zimmerman while the two were driving in separate cars on a street in Lake Mary. Zimmerman was grazed by glass and metal shards when the bullet broke through his passenger-side window and was stopped by the metal window frame, causing minor facial injuries from flying glass and debris. Zimmerman flagged down a police officer and was taken to the hospital. Apperson maintained that Zimmerman was the aggressor and that Apperson acted in self-defense. Zimmerman also had a gun with him at the time of the incident, but Zimmerman’s attorney said that “George absolutely denies having shown it, waved, displayed, pointed it.” A Lake Mary police spokesperson stated that “the investigation has proven that George Zimmerman was not the shooter.”

On May 15, 2015, Apperson was jailed in Sanford, Florida with a bond of $35,000. While free on bond, Apperson was accused, convicted and jailed for disorderly conduct, which revoked his bond. Lake Mary PD “learned that Apperson has exhibited unusual behaviors in which he had recently been admitted to a mental institution. It appears that Apperson has a fixation on Zimmerman and has displayed some signs of paranoia, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.”

On September 22, 2015, a judge ruled Apperson would stand trial for second-degree attempted murder along with one count of aggravated assault and one count of shooting into an occupied vehicle. Apperson was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a firearm on September 16, 2016.

There’s a permanent target on Zimmerman’s back. I assume the same will be true for Kyle Rittenhouse even if acquitted. Rittenhouse has the advantage, however – at least, I think it’s an advantage – of being so young that, as he matures, his look will change and he might not be all that recognizable in a few years.

NOTE: By the way, in February of 2020 Zimmerman sued Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, as well as Martin’s mother, for defamation. I can’t find anything recent about the lawsuit, so I assume it still might be ongoing.