Mind Field: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Part of the Mind Field series. 

Dumb and Vicious: Prosecutor Angela Corey in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case makes a fool of herself and threatens Alan Dershowitz

Dumb, vicious and out to make a political name for herself...
Nancy Grace needs some outrage competition!  

Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection notes that Corey has created an ethical dilemma for herself now:

Corey now has made the prosecution a personal issue. Will she conduct the prosecution in such a way as to achieve justice, or to set herself up for a personal lawsuit against Dershowitz and Harvard?
Corey certainly has a right to protect and defend her reputation in civil actions, but she cannot interject those concerns into a prosecution.  By threatening suit against a critic in the middle of the case, Corey has put her own financial interests at stake in the outcome and conduct of the prosecution.
Florida has adopted American Bar Association Standards of Criminal Justice Relating to Prosecution Function.  ABA Standard 3-1.3 Conflicts of Interest provides in pertinent part:
(f) A prosecutor should not permit his or her professional judgment or obligations to be affected by his or her own political, financial, business, property, or personal interests.
Corey should step down.  Now.

Update:
At least this is pretty.  The Zimmerman prosecution just stinks.  And there is a lynch mob mentality driving it.
More from Sister Toldjah!
Angela Corey does not have the temperament to be a prosecutor and has been thuggish before...
Instapundit
Above the Law:  Not all publicity is good publicity
Orlando Sentinel

h/t: Protein Wisdom

Terraforming Mars: Can we do it and does Mars have rights?

Glenn Reynolds, Robert Pinson, Robert Zubrin, and Ron Bailey have raised the issue of ethics in terraforming, but Kim Stanley Robinson also dealt with the topic (in a fictional context) in some detail in his Mars Trilogy.  Robinson is a good job in creating characters debating the pros and cons of exploring, colonizing, and terraforming Mars.

Zubrin also makes the argument that the technology for (relatively) inexpensive travel to Mars exists now.  Too bad Newt Gingrich did not argue his Mars plan along those lines (although it is certainly not to late for him to do so).

Related site:  The Mars Society