Holding a can of iced tea and wearing a hooded sweatshirt should not arouse fear or suspicion in any American neighborhood. But popular culture's influence on the public is strong and leads people like Zimmerman to view the mere presence of a black youth as cause for alarm -- and in this case, deadly action. This is hardly surprising when primetime crime procedurals inundate us with storylines featuring young black men committing violent acts and dealing drugs. Movies routinely portray the American black experience as poor, violent and terrifying. When black men appear in the news, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, the stories are almost completely restricted to sports or crime coverage. Our society views young black men as inevitable criminals that we should lock away before they have a chance to do real damage. Geraldo Rivera serves as a perfect, if disgusting, example of how our country views young black men when he said, "No one can honestly tell me that seeing a kid of color with a hood pulled over his head doesn't generate a certain reaction -- sometimes scorn, often menace."

But the anger we feel over the loss of Trayvon cannot die with him; our work is only beginning. We must repeal "Stand Your Ground" laws so they are no longer used to protect people like Zimmerman who take the lives of innocent citizens. To change the law, we must first change minds. It is the responsibility of people like you and me to stop accepting distorted images of young black men in our popular culture and to transform the way our society views and treats black boys. Lasting change, however, requires our work to go beyond reforming any individual law to reaching hearts and minds and dealing with the underlying bias current cultural norms reinforce.

Pascal Abidor was riding an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York. (snip)...

A team of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers boarded the train and advanced through each car, questioning passengers. Pascal had made this trip countless times before, so when a customs officer approached him, he didn’t give it a second thought. But Pascal had never met Officer Tulip. After looking over Pascal’s U.S. passport and customs declaration, Officer Tulip asked two simple questions: Where do you live, and why?

Pascal answered that he lived in Canada. He lived in Canada because that’s where he was pursuing a PhD in Islamic Studies.

Next, she asked him where he had traveled in the previous year, and he answered Jordan and Lebanon. He showed her his French passport (he’s a dual citizen) with the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” stamp, and the Lebanese stamp with the little cedar tree on top.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Wednesday told a young man not to use a pink ball at a bowling alley in Wisconsin.

“You’re not gonna use the pink ball. We’re not gonna let you do that. Not on camera,” he said, according to Reuters reporter Sam Youngman.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in the country, blasted Santorum for his comment.

In a landmark decision today, the court said that prostitution is extremely dangerous work where inherent risks are multiplied by laws preventing prostitutes from working together under one roof or hiring security staff.

...the death penalty has been vigorously debated and is often considered to be “settled” law, at least by those who support the status quo. Opponents cite its lack of deterrence, its cost to the legal system and the fact that invariably, innocent people would be put to death. The state’s use of the death penalty makes of society the very thing it deplores: a murderer, a killer in revenge.

These points are all valid. And yet, upon reading McClintic’s testimony, a common gut reaction is that if what she says is true, she and Rafferty simply don’t deserve to live. It is simple, it is basic, it is human; it survives statistics, defences based on horrible childhoods and theories prizing rehabilitation over punishment.