First off, George Zimmerman must be intent on putting The Onion out of business. I’ve known a lot of people who claimed they were doing God’s work (Tim Tebow and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, come to mind) but usually they didn’t use it as the reason they killed someone:

George Zimmerman has no regrets from the night he killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, the Florida resident told Fox News’s Sean Hannity Wednesday.

“I feel that it was all God’s plan,” Zimmerman said. “I’m not a racist and I’m not a murderer.”

Somehow I don’t think God is all that cool with Zimmerman passing the buck “upstairs” as it were. I don’t recall anything in the Beatitudes about “Blessed are the people who shoot black teenagers in hoodies carrying Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea …” unless Zimmerman thinks Blessed are the Peacemakers …” somehow refers to the unauthorized use of handguns to shoot people we don’t know because we assume based on their apparel choices they might be “up to no good.”

I’m thinking God needs to get on Twitter ASAP and denounce this moron because this is not the kind of PR he/she/it needs right now. I mean, isn’t it bad enough God has to deal with Pastor Fred Phelps motoring around the country to protest every dead soldier’s funeral, much less having an “alleged” murderer claiming that he was called by a higher power to blow a hole in Trayvon Martin’s chest? And didn;t a bunch of people on September 11th of 2001 claim they were fulfilling God’s plan too? And didn’t Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell agree with them? How did that go over? Not so well as I recall.

At least this story of an organized criminal enterprise has something Zimmerman’s bad joke of an excuse for killing an unarmed boy in his interview with Hannity lacks: something that truly does tickle my funny bone:

Silver SpongeBob SquarePants coins minted by a private company in New Zealand were among the assets seized by FBI agents from Peregrine Financial Group after its chief confessed to nearly 20 years of fraud last week.

Ira Bodenstein, the trustee in Peregrine’s bankruptcy case in Chicago, said the coins were in a vault at the firm’s Cedar Falls, Iowa, headquarters. The value of the takings was not immediately clear.

The coin disclosure adds a new twist to the case of Peregrine Finiancial [sic] Group CEO Russell Wasendorf Sr., who was arrested last Friday after he confessed to doctoring bank statements to make regulators think his futures brokerage had nearly twice the assets it did, leaving customers with an estimated shortfall of over $200 million. […]

A four-coin set of SpongeBob Squarepants, housed in a “distinctive” treasure chest, went for $259, according to a website that displays both the PFGBest logo and that of the New Zealand Mint. (www.spongebobcoins.com/)

Each coin in the set shows a character from the Nickelodeon animated series and bears the inscription “IN SPONGEBOB WE TRUST.”

Now that is the funniest thing I’ve read in while. Who knew that people even made silver collectible SpongeBob Coins, much less invested in them. All things considered, I think Zimmerman would have been better off claiming SpongeBob SquarePants made him shoot Trayvon, don’t you? If you’re going to make up stupid, absurd excuses for why you shot someone dead (see, e.g., the infamous “Twinkie Defense”), I think the “SpongeBob” defense” beats the “I was Just Fulfilling God’s Plan” defense any day of the week. And twice on Sundays.