July 24 Open Thread: Stand Your Ground = License to Kill

The latest Florida outrage — I know, it’s a new one almost every day — involves the cold-blooded slaying of another black man by another white man who apparently will get away scot-free by invoking the NRA’s notorious stand-your-ground law, claiming that the white man felt his life was threatened by the black man, who took a step away from the white man at the sight of the gun. The linked article from Vox looks at the data accumulated since the passage of such laws (be warned –Pennsylvania has one) and finds it doesn’t reduce violence, which was the supposed reason for its existence. BTW, the white guy, Michael Drejka, 47, is the only person of that name to show up in internet searches, which also indicate a person of that name and age lived in Milford, Delaware, until the mid-aughts. Anyone with knowledge of him is invited to drop us a note on the tip line.

Here’s a shocker: Vendors at the Delaware State Fair sell merchandise plastered with the Confederate battle flag. What I didn’t know is that two years ago they were ordered to knock it off, but the News Journal found that, until the paper pointed it out, the practice continued unabated. Look at it this way, disappointed peckerwoods: It leaves you more cash for whatever they’re deep-frying this year.

Everyone in Washington knows that if you want to get a message to Trump, you have to deliver it by Fox & Friends. That’s why you’re seeing a parade of Congressional Republicans on TV trying to steer Trump into their preferred excuse for his Russia love, that he’s afraid it questions the legitimacy of his election. Gee, ya think?

Elena Delle Donne, who recently scored her 30,000th point in the WNBA, the quickest to the mark in the league’s history, gave and interview to Philly.com in which she aired her grievances with the league’s second-class status and called for more and better marketing to correct the situation.

Anything the left can do, the right can do nastier. The SJW practice of digging up old racist/sexist/insensitive tweets has been turned against the left by some of the right’s scummiest partisans. As I explained a few days ago, corporate America pisses its pants at any hint of controversy, so any such accusation leads to quick defenestration. Now some people are fighting back at the vigilante precedent that’s been set (thanks, Kirsten Gillibrand!), as in the case of director James Gunn, whose “Guardians of the Galaxy” cast thinks it’s unfair to can him over something he tweeted out a decade ago. Gee, ya think?