Back in Iowa, circa 1979, we had to take a driving test as well.  I remember using one of the highway department's Ford L800 dump trucks.

Afterward, the examiner told me I almost took out some stop signs on a couple of right hand turns, but he passed me anyway.  

1. Russian olive trees in bloom
2. The thick, fecund air that envelopes an Iowa county blacktop in mid-summer
3. The combination of charcoal lighter and grilled meat
4. A freshly baked apple pie
5. Pipe tobacco 

I think you can get a CDL for intrastate driving when you're 18.  

I remember getting a Class B license when I was 17, but this was in 1979.  This allowed me to drive a converted school bus and a couple of dump trucks for the county highway department one summer.  They paid me $3.50 per hour, plus a ninth hour each day at time and a half.

Clearly, Martin was wrong if he attacked Zimmerman.  But Tommy's point is that he didn't deserve to die for the mistake.

Stalk is defined by my pop up dictionary as "pursue or approach stealthily."  

No one disputes Zimmerman's right to be there (nor his right to ask a question that Martin has no obligation to answer), but it sounds like it could reasonably have been seen as menacing.  

You are correct:  I've not been in that situation.  A few bloody noses and split lips... that's about it.

But when I was 28, I don't think I'd have been terribly worried about a 17 year old I outweighed by 20%.  It sounds like you had three guys going at you, and that seems to be quite a difference. 

I wouldn't call it unprovoked.  Zimmerman was stalking him.

Zimmerman also outweighed Martin by 30 lbs., yet he was unable to defend himself without resorting to his gun?  He was in mortal fear -- not just fear, which I take as one of Tommy's points -- of Martin?  

Good article here on the 2010 failure:  

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/21/EDP81E2JDF.DTL

You've just described the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Is it fair to say that some large chunk of people who wave the Confederate flag do so to express a racist viewpoint?  And that the remainder at least know that it has taken on a racist connotation?  

I'm not trying to run afoul of Godwin's Law, but the swastika comes to mind.  It started out as a religious symbol and ended up getting ruined through its embrace by the Nazis.  If someone were to walk down the street with a  swastika today, I can imagine a lot of people would be rightly disappointed, to say the least.

I'll grant that the Confederate Flag has a far more nuanced history than the swastika, and maybe it's contextual.  On the flags of Mississippi and Georgia, it's one thing; carried by a guy with a white hood it's quite another?

Weissberg means "white mountain" in German.

The Onion couldn't write this stuff.  

Well, there are certainly lesbians who are mothers.  Given that most of them (I'd guess) are single, they probably work harder than those with spouses around to help out.

What astounds me is the utter lack of empathy and awareness.  I mean, she must know mothers, even if she might not be one herself.  Maybe even her own mother, you'd think.

And they say Republicans are waging a War Against Women.  

This is interesting from the WSJ:

The settling publishers did retain one tool for their negotiations with Amazon. Under their agreement with the government, they can make a deal under which Amazon would be prevented from selling a publisher's entire catalog at a sustained loss. However, if Amazon sold best-sellers at a loss and made that up with profits elsewhere, publishers wouldn't be able to stop it, so it isn't clear how valuable that tool would be.

It's hard to believe that Hatchette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins would agree to something as toothless as this.

I'm not sure if I understand the anti-trust definition of cost of production. It was my understanding that Amazon's $9.99 was a loss leader, in that they were selling books for below their acquisition cost.  They were doing that to push Kindle sales, but, because it was so sustained, it also had the effect of cutting off the oxygen to any would be retailers of e-books.  

Seems like classic anti-trust behavior to me.  On Amazon's part, not Apple's.

Wow. We're wistfully wild with wily word wecweation.  

The NYT has it up today.  Better late than never.