More on Trayvon Martin

Following up on yesterday’s post.
•Scott Lemieux points out that Zimmerman’s defense didn’t invoke the stand-your-ground Florida law at all. He claimed self-defense, which was plausible under Florida’s current law. Which Lemieux suggests is the problem: In a nation where lots of people can legally walk around packing, starting a fight then claiming self-defense when it goes against you is a bad idea.
•Charles Pierce says we shouldn’t forget about stand-your-ground, though—after all, that was the original reason Martin wasn’t going to be charged, before the shit hit the fan.
•Conservative media sites, however, see government handling of the case as more proof of Obama’s hate for white people. Roy Edroso rounds up the right-wing blog responses to the event. If you’ll remember when a former SC Republican official made Tweets about how Martin would have grown up to be a gay whore, you’ll be unsurprised that the real villains are Martin’s parents (shamelessly publicizing the case to get money) and the black community which rioted (oh, wait, it didn’t) and made vile accusations that there is still racism in America (to paraphrase Edroso elsewhere, for a depressing number of right-wingers, the real racial injustice is that they can’t use the n-word in public without getting criticized. Bonus points, one Michael Becker announces that (in reference to Obama’s comment that if he’d had boys, his son could have faced the same nightmare as Martin) “this President wouldn’t bat a eyelash over the fact that ‘his son’ is a dead gangsta wannabe who simply jumped the wrong guy and got what he deserved.” Because (as Edroso says) fighting back when you’re attacked is apparently, a capital offense for black guys in Becker’s world. And in the world of National Review’s Dan Foster, Kim Kardashian’s sympathy for the Martin’s is grounds for him to say, “get effed” (not quite so euphemistically, though).
In this, comments thread, several commenters suggest some bloggers were salivating about the black riots they anticipated and feel disappointed none came. Though it won’t stop them from bringing up the topic: it hasn’t in the past.
•And here’s another Florida shooting: A guy says he shot into an SUV because he didn’t like “thug music” and had no idea he’d actually killed a 17-year-old.