Different Day, Same Shit.

Courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel

Right about now, George is probably hoping that out of those 40 potential jurors, his defense team can narrow those down to 12 fine folks who'll follow in the grand tradition of the all-white jury.

Last time on DDSS, yours truly left you with the image of George Zimmerman sweating bullets over jury selection, hoping he wouldn't end up with, ahem, a jury of Trayvon Martin's peers, so to speak. With the selection of six women, five of whom are white and one who's Hispanic, George can rest a little easier. Looks like what I said about the grand tradition of the all-white jury is slowly coming into fruition.

To my understanding, Florida courts only require a jury of 12 in capital cases where the death penalty is on the table. That leaves the fate of Zimmerman and the opportunity for justice to be truly served hinged on the decision-making processes of six female jurors and if needed, one or more of their four alternates (consisting of two men and two women).

I don't like where this is going. Not one bit.

Let's take a look at the jury, courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel. Parts that stand out to me are highlighted as follows:

B-29: A nurse on an Alzheimer's ward who is black or Hispanic, has several children, is married and lived in Chicago at the time of shooting. She said she doesn't watch the news, preferring reality television: "Right when we got here, I got cable... I love my reality shows." During jury selection, she said she was arrested once in Chicago.

B-76: A white, middle-aged woman who said Zimmerman had an "altercation with the young man. There was a struggle and the gun went off." Has been married 30 years, and is unemployed. She formerly worked with her husband in his construction company. Her 28-year-old son is an attorney in Seminole County. She also has a daughter, 26, has been a victim of non-violent crime and rescues "a lot of pets."

B-37: A middle-aged white woman who has worked for a chiropractor for 16 years and has many pets. She described protests in Sanford as "rioting." Her husband is an attorney. She has two daughters: A 24-year-old dog groomer and a 27-year-old who attends the University of Central Florida. She used to have concealed weapons permit, but let it lapse. Her husband also has one.

B-51: A retired white woman from Oviedo who has a dog and 20-year-old cat. She knew a good deal about the case, but said "I'm not rigid in my thinking." She has been in Seminole County for nine years, is unmarried and has no kids. She previously lived in Atlanta, and used to work in real estate. She also ran a call center in Brevard County which she said had 1,200 employees.

E-6: A young white woman and mother who used to work in financial services. She used this case as an example to her two adolescent children, warning them to not go out at night. She has lived in Seminole County for eight years, and is married to an engineer. She was arrested in Brevard County, but said she "was treated completely fairly." Her husband has guns.

E-40: A white woman in her 60s who lived in Iowa at the time of the shooting. She heard national news reports and recalls the shooting was in a gated community and a teenager was killed. She described herself as safety officer, is married to a chemical engineer and loves football. She has a 28-year-old son who's out of work. She said she's very well versed in cell phone technology, and has been a victim of crime.

And the alternate jurors:

E-54: A middle-aged white man with a teenage stepson who wears hoodies. He recalled seeing photos of Zimmerman's head and face that show injuries. E-54 loves golf and genealogy, and said he's been married for five years to a technical engineer. He grew up in Seminole County and has a teenage stepson.

B-72: A young man who is possibly Hispanic, does maintenance at a school and competes in arm wrestling tournaments. He said he avoids the news because he does not want to be "brainwashed." He grew up in Chicago, is single and an alumni of Phi Beta Kappa. He is very physically active, and was a high school athlete. He said that he doesn't believe you can determine a person's strength based solely on their size or how they look.

E-13: A young white woman who goes to college and works two jobs, one of them as a surgical assistant. She heard the shooting was a "racial thing." She said she could be a fair juror "just because I don't really know that much." She is single, has lived in Seminole County for 17 years and attends church. She also owns and rides horses.

E-28: A middle-aged white woman who has worked as a nurse for 26 years. She knew little about the case and has no opinion about Zimmerman's guilt. She has lived in Seminole County since 1985, and has been married for 28 years. Her husband is a teacher and they have two adult children, 27 and 23 years old.

These are the people tasked with determining whether George Zimmerman will be convicted for the murder of Trayvon Martin or be cleared of his current charges. In addition, the judge in the case, circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson, is disallowing the prosecution from presenting two audio experts who maintain that the source of the screaming heard on 911 tapes was most likely Trayvon Martin.

Little wonder the Martin family had to turn to the power of prayer in hopes of getting something vaguely resembling justice. This trial has all the elements of a monumental clusterfuck, one with deep-setting effects that could last for years, if not decades. Let's pray that it turns out otherwise.

For some reason, plenty of people don't believe that proper office decorum extends to the cyberspace realm of the workplace. To wit, most people know it's not a good idea to spend your downtime surfing porn or forwarding Goatse pics to one another on Exchange. Such behavior would get most people a talking down to and a trip to Human Resources. Or a lovely little pink slip. Conservatives have this thing about passing forwarded emails around like a good toke: they take a puff, savor the smoke and after they've gotten their high off of it, pass it around to other good friends with similar tastes.

One fine afternoon, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Frank Cebull of the District of Montana forwarded an email to six of his dearest friends from his official email account. Normally, this wouldn't be something anyone would give two shits about unless it had unencrypted instructions on how to raise Osama Bin Laden's spirit from the beyond. Unfortunately, it contained the following text:

"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the email joke reads. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Here we have a joke that manages to kill three birds with one large, bleached stone:

• It insinuates that Barack Obama's mother was a loose whore with little to no morals. Only a whore would dare to be so loose with herself and only a whore would have mixed offspring.
• It suggests that blacks are in the same league as or possibly lower than four-legged animals when it comes to how well-regarded they are.
• It denigrates those of mixed parentage, especially those of both black and white heritage. Such couplings are considered "unnatural" by the unreconstructed and their fellow faux-reconstructed hangers-on.

The joke touched Cebull's heart so much that he had to forward it to his friends. That was some good stuff he was toking and he had to pass the joint around the room.

The judge acknowledged that the content of the email was racist, but said he does not consider himself racist. He said the email was intended to be a private communication.

"It was not intended by me in any way to become public," Cebull said. "I apologize to anybody who is offended by it, and I can obviously understand why people would be offended."

Cebull said his brother initially sent him the email, which he forwarded to six of his "old buddies" and acquaintances.

He admitted that he read the email and intended to send it to his friends.

So he's not a racist, but he does enjoy racist jokes now and again and furthermore, he apologizes that it somehow got in the wrong hands. Yep, it's all being blown out of proportion.

It's A Bad Thing™ for a federal judge to engage in activity that potentially colors otherwise impartial decision making in a courtroom setting. A man who finds a crude, racially-charged 3-for-1 joke about the president's heritage may also have no problem with being biased against a black American standing before him. He may also be willing to push said person towards the harshest sentences possible regardless of the crime and possibly disregard evidence and testimony pointing towards an acquittal or a lesser charge. By virtue of engaging in color-aroused activity, he's put a clean shot through his own credibility as far as most people are concerned.

This is why people are standing up and taking notice. That and the fact the judge made no attempt in sugarcoating or P.R. spin. He simply said "Why yes, that was incredibly racist........but I'm not a racist." Like most people caught in a bind of their own making, he's only sorry he got caught. Some people expect that blunt honesty to win people over.

Meanwhile, a comment sums up the suspicions that black Americans have towards their white counterparts in just about any social setting:

Every time I hear crap like this from a white person, it makes it that much harder for me to be in the company of black people because I am concerned they think I feel the same way.

You have no idea what people are thinking about you. A black person has to go through life wondering if the white people they briefly interact with think of him or her as a human being worthy of respect or as a plain-old "nigger." Now imagine having to put up with this in a rather powerful courtroom jurisdiction.

Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush and received his commission in 2001 and has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008.

I'm not surprised. Bush had a way of picking his people.