rcade

I read his tweets before the account was deleted. There wasn't anything in them about gang activity or violence. The only dirt in them is that he liked to smoke pot. The stuff at your link is retweets of what other people said. Most of what he was doing on Twitter was talking to classmates and to girls.

The photo of him in the hoodie is recent, as you can tell from his nose: http://cdn1.newsone....yvon-martin.jpg Friends and family still described him as a baby-faced kid, but it wasn't as pronounced as in the early teen photos.

It wasn't an Air Force investigation. It was a retired brigadier general who investigated the bombing on his own time.

As in so many things, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Good point.

It's a stupid question. I've never said anything to indicate I wouldn't accept the outcome of a real investigation.

I've been in that area of Sanford. No one would think they needed a gun just to walk around there. It's like saying you need a gun to walk around Denia.

Do you need a gun to drive around your neighborhood or make a run to the store?

I find it extremely hard to understand why he needed to be carrying a concealed handgun. Do you need a gun to drive around your gated neighborhood or make a run to the store?

If the Sanford police had fully investigated the shooting that night, instead of acting from the presumption that George Zimmerman was telling the truth, we could have more confidence in knowing what happened. We do know that Trayvon Martin was unarmed and had a legal right to be where he was walking when he was shot to death. We also know that Zimmerman was told not to chase down Martin by police, and that Neighborhood Watch volunteers are told never to chase people or carry guns. Even if we find out that Martin fought with Zimmerman, he had the right to defend himself too. He was being followed by an adult acting weird and carrying a gun.

Look how quickly you believe someone who is hiding his name and face while talking to one TV station. Three witnesses said the person crying for help was Martin.

You're the one judging Martin's girlfriend negatively because she hasn't talked to the media. She came forward after Martin's dad thought to check his phone records to see who he communicated with that night. The Sanford police, in their joke of an investigation, never checked them.

He was 6-foot-2 and only 140 pounds. His nickname was Slim. The photo of him in the hoodie is most current. He was the kind of kid who played Little League baseball through his childhood, then when he was too old to play stuck around as a volunteer running the concession stand. He never had any trouble with the law and pulled his dad out of a fire when he was nine years old.

You're not holding Zimmerman to that standard. What's taking him so long to talk to the media? Audio of the girlfriend describing the call to Trayvon has been released to the media and she'll testify in court.

Getting a grand jury to indict is going to be a lot more difficult because the Sanford police didn't properly investigate Zimmerman the night of the shooting. There's no test about whether he was drunk or high and he was never questioned properly, which would have shown whether his story would have withstood scrutiny. His claim that he was walking back to his car and was jumped by Trayvon Martin is contradicted by the girl who was on the phone with Martin when Zimmerman confronted him. I'm familiar with the area in Sanford where this shooting took place. It's mixed-race, and Sanford itself is 30 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic.

My family was driving on I-95 south of Jacksonville yesterday morning when we passed two cars from UNT. One was a truck with a bunch of Mean Green gear in the back and the other was a passenger van. Anyone know who this might be?

That's not how federal grant money works. There are strings attached. You can't just accept the money for one purpose and redirect it to another.

Pat Robertson on The 700 Club earlier this month: "I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of a controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy. We've said, 'Well, we're conservatives, we're tough on crime.' That's baloney. I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?" http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/08/pat-robertson-pot-should-be-treated-like-alcohol/

Stay at home? That's weirdly personal. But you got me pegged. I do get to work out of my house. Enjoy all that Dallas/Fort Worth traffic on your daily commute.

Then let's hear about those adverse effects, so we can compare the number of pot horror stories to the ones about meth and heroin.

The medical consequences of drugs like crack and heroin on the human body are well-documented and severe. They cross the blood-brain barrier and create chemical addiction. Pot, on the other hand, is no more severe than alcohol. Millions of people use pot and drink alcohol without harming themselves or others. I see no reason a society that legalizes alcohol should not consider legalizing marijuana as well. At a minimum, medical marijuana should be something doctors can prescribe.

"While fighting against [California's failed Proposition 19 last year], lobbyist John Lovell accepted nearly $400,000 from a wide array of police unions, some of which he also represented in attempting to steer millions of federal dollars toward California's marijuana suppression programs. The revelation, reported yesterday by the 's Lee Fang, illustrates how Proposition 19 threatened the paychecks of some of its biggest foes. Police departments stood to lose lucrative federal grants like a $550,000 payment in 2010 to police departments in three Northern California counties that covered 666 hours of police overtime spent eradicating marijuana." http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/pot-legalization-foe-war-drugs One of the reasons police support marijuana criminalization is that it brings big federal dollars to their departments.

Sort of -- I publish a political news site and write computer books on programming. I'm in Florida, so I don't get to Denton often, but we come back every summer.

Where do I pre-order?

I've been thinking for a while about writing a history of UNT sports. One of my journalism professors, the late Jim Rogers, wrote The Story of North Texas.