At a hearing today, Judge Debra Nelson ordered the clerk to summon 500 prospective jurors for George Zimmerman's trial for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, scheduled for June 10.

The Judge also refused to delay the self-defense immunity hearing, which will begin April 22 and last up to two weeks.

Mark O'Mara said he may ask that the immunity hearing be "enveloped" into the trial. [More...]

One of the great thinkers of our time, Ronald Dworkin, has passed away.

R.I.P.

From our heart to yours, Happy Valentine's Day.

Now we need some Valentine's Day tunes - for love, and all the joy, despair, reckless abandon and hopefulness that comes along with it. A few that come to mind:

Bob Dylan: The Wedding Song (love the lyrics)

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The San Bernadino Sheriffs office today denied they intentionally burned down the cabin where Christopher Dorner died.

"We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out," Sheriff John McMahon said at an afternoon news conference.

He said deputies initially fired conventional "cold" tear gas into the cabin in Seven Oaks, near Big Bear Lake, then switched to "pyrotechnic-type" rounds" known as "burners."

Since I was updating live,I was listening to the police scanner feeds (until they went down.) It was confusing since I didn't understand all the terminology, but I did hear the things on this video of the scanner communications. [More...]

Christopher Dorner appears to be dead.
In Grapevine, TX, escaped convict Alberto Morales (story here), is still on the run. [More...]

President Obama is about to deliver his State of the Union Address. Here's a thread to discuss it.

No ABC for me. They started out showing all the people there supporting more gun control. And then said they will show updates of Dorner on the bottom of the screen.

You can watch online here, free of talking heads and news anchor commentary. [More....]

Update 8:30 pm MT: Manhunt over. A charred body has been removed from the cabin. It is believed to be Dorner. See my update below at 5:17 pm -- the shot referred to on the police scanner was Dormer killing himself.

Update 6:20 pm MT: Reports SWAT team is moving out. No definitive word on whether he is in the cabin, dead or alive. Time for State of the Union.

Update 6:00 pm MT: Great thread of scanner communications. The cabin has collapsed. Reports are that Dorner is not inside. There is no confirmation he has been killed.

Update 5:45 pm: Several reports Dorner is dead. The scanner just went down. Cabin is engulfed in flames. News conference momentarily. [More...]

President Obama is recalling 34,000 troops from Afghanistan.

He will deliver his State of the Union address tonight at 7pm ET.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Christopher Dorner isn't the only wanted man on the loose. In Grapevine, Texas, an inmate being transported from from Miami to Las Vegas to serve a prison sentence stabbed an officer with a broken pair of eyeglasses and escaped in a Walmart parking lot near Houston. What were they doing at Walmart? The inmate made a big fuss on the plane from Miami to Houston, and the airline wouldn't let him board the next leg of the flight to Vegas, so the Miami cops transporting him decided to rent a car and drive him to Dallas, where they planned to meet another officer and then all would drive the inmate to Vegas. En route to Dallas, the officers stopped at Walmart so one could use the bathroom. The other stayed with the inmate, got stabbed, and the inmate fled. He also managed to free himself of his handcuffs. [More...]

Are drones being used to find Christopher Dorner?

In Texas, updated reports show that since 1992, the state has paid $65 million to 89 wrongfully convicted persons.

The Navy Seal who killed Osama bin Laden is interviewed in Esquire. He says the government has failed "to help its most experienced and skilled warriors carry on with their lives.

This 60 Minutes report last night on how and why you are unlikely to succeed in getting credit reporting bureaus to rectify mistakes on your credit report was pretty shocking.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The ACLU says CISPA is going to be reintroduced in the House this week.

That's right, the same bill that allows companies to turn over your sensitive internet records directly to the NSA and the Department of Defense without requiring them to make even a reasonable effort to protect your privacy. The same bill that lets the government use the information it collects for cybersecurity purposes "to protect the national security of the United States"—a concept that is, of course, undefined and incredibly expansive. Here we are, ten months later, with a much-deserved veto threat from the administration, a smarter Senate alternative, and an Executive Order that will address part of the information-sharing issue—yet the House starts with the same old privacy-busting bill as before.

The Grammy's have already started giving out awards. You can watch here. CBS has Grammy Connect, letting you choose from a variety of ways to watch. I'm not going to watch until the actual show, at 8 pm ET. The nominees are here.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic writes about Bush Administration torture memo author, now federal judge Jay Bybee's latest decision justifying torture.

[Bybee]came to conclude as a matter of law that a man shacked at his wrists and shackled by his ankles to his bed, without a mattress, in a cell lit continuously for seven days, who was forced to eat his food like a dog because of his shackles, did not have a constitutional right to present the evidence of this confinement to a jury.

The opinion is here. It's about an inmate in California placed on a "contraband watch." The sickening policy is described in the opinion as: [More....]