George Zimmerman’s lawyer quits after client is accused of threatening Shellie Zimmerman

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Mark O’Mara, the attorney who successfully defended George Zimmerman against charges that he murdered Trayvon Martin, said Tuesday that he would no longer represent the former neighborhood watch captain.

Lake Mary Police on Monday detained and then released Zimmerman after oficers responded to a 911 call from his wife, Shellie, who accused her husband of threatening her with a gun and punching her father in the nose.

Police Chief Steve Bracknell later said that Shellie Zimmerman had refused to press charges and had dropped her claim that Zimmerman had a gun.

But in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night, O’Mara said that Zimmerman did have a gun during the incident.

“He never took the weapon out,” the attorney explained. “He made sure the gun was not moving anywhere and didn’t do anything because Mr. Dean was sort of coming at him. That can be seen in the video.”

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for O’Mara said that he would no longer represent Zimmerman in future cases, including charges resulting from the confrontation on Monday. The spokesperson said that Zimmerman intended continue working on a defamation suit Zimmerman had brought against NBC.

TMZ reported last week that Shellie Zimmerman’s recent divorce filings indicated that she was getting $4,300 a month from the Zimmerman Legal Defense Fund. But at the same time,Zimmerman is asking Florida to cover up to $300,00 of expenses from his trial.

Earlier this month, O’Mara was hired as a legal analyst for CNN.

RNC Director Of Hispanic Outreach Quits Party And Registers As A Democrat

By Adam Peck/Think Progress

When Republicans appointed Pablo Pantoja to State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, they hoped he would be able to bridge the sizable gap that only expanded during the 2012 elections, when the state’s 4.3 million Hispanic voters supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a 20 percent margin.

But after months of inaction by Congressional Republicans on comprehensive immigration reform and stiff resistance by Republican-leaning groups like the Heritage Foundation, Pantoja has had enough; on Monday, he announced via email that he was leaving the party and registering as a Democrat:

Friend,

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Pantoja goes on to specifically cite last week’s revelation — that an author of Heritage’s false report on the cost of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill wrote a dissertation in which he suggested that Hispanics are at a permanent disadvantage because they have lower IQs — as the final straw in his political evolution.

Prior to assuming the role of state director, Pantoja served in the National Guard, doing multiple tours abroad in Kuwait and Iraq before returning to the states and getting involved in Republican politics. In 2010 he served as a field director in Florida during the midterm elections.

Republicans have for months tried to find ways to make inroads with the country’s growing hispanic population, especially in the swing state of Florida. Hispanics there turned out to vote at a rate of more than 62 percent in 2012, significantly higher than the national turnout rate of 48 percent and the highest rate of Hispanic turnout in the country.