Modest Public Interest in Close of Zimmerman Trial  —  Wider Race Gap in Interest than for Rodney King, O.J. Simpson  —  OVERVIEW  —  The final days of the trial of George Zimmerman, which concluded July 13 with a verdict of not guilty, attracted relatively modest public interest overall.

Michele Bachmann aide Javier Sanchez arrested after Rayburn thefts  —  Capitol Police arrested an aide to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) after a series of thefts from the Rayburn House Office Building.  —  Javier Sanchez, 37, was arrested last Thursday, a Capitol Police spokesman said.

McCain Suggests Letting GOP Pick Nominees  —  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he and Republicans are trying to strike a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to avoid his threat of triggering the “nuclear option” and would either allow up-or-down votes on seven contentious nominees or at least find …

Senate Control in 2014 Increasingly Looks Like a Tossup  —  This weekend's announcement by the former governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, that he would not seek that state's Democratic nomination for Senate represents the latest in a series of favorable developments for Republicans as they seek control of the chamber.

McDonalds Tells Workers To Budget By Getting A Second Job And Turning Off Their Heat  —  McDonalds has partnered with Visa to launch a website to help its low-wage workers making an average $8.25 an hour to budget.  But while the site is clearly meant to illustrate that McDonalds workers …

Witness claims youths yelled ‘this is for Trayvon’ in beating  —  Police still investigating claim in beating of Hispanic man  —  Baltimore police say they are investigating a witness account that a group of black youths beat a Hispanic man near Patterson Park Sunday while saying, “This is for Trayvon.”

BREAKING NEWS: Nueces County sheriff confirms judge found dead at courthouse  —  CORPUS CHRISTI — State District Judge Tom Greenwell was found dead from a gunshot wound Monday night in his chambers, Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin confirmed.  —  Corpus Christi police …

Teens chase kidnapping suspect on bikes, save 5-year-old girl  —  (CNN) — Two teenage boys are being hailed as heroes after they chased a car carrying a kidnapped girl — on their bicycles.  —  Five-year-old Jocelyn Rojas was playing in her front yard in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she vanished Thursday afternoon.

Can History Be Restarted?  —  The Daniel Johnson article on “The Decline and Fall of the History Men” linked here in our picks section yesterday deserves additional reflection.  Johnson laments the fact that no one writes “big history” in the style of Gibbon, Macaulay, or (more recently) Trevor-Roper.

Ex-Fiancee Urges Filner To Submit Resignation  —  Says Sexually Explicit Messages To Other Women Led To Separation  —  The ex-fiancee of beleaguered San Diego Mayor Bob Filner says she ended her relationship with him because he became increasingly abusive toward her and began sending sexually …

Petraeus's Pay for Part-Time CUNY Job, Criticized at $200,000, Drops to $1  —  It was supposed to be a feather in the cap for the City University of New York's ambitious honors college.  Or perhaps a careful first step back into public life for a leader sidelined by scandal.

Zimmerman verdict: LAPD declares unlawful assembly  —  Protesters denounce George Zimmerman verdict along Crenshaw Boulevard.  (KTLA-TV Channel 5 / July 15, 2013)  —  Los Angeles police officers and protesters denouncing the George Zimmerman verdict were playing a cat-and-mouse game Monday night …

Kirsten Gillibrand's slow climb to 51 votes  —  For weeks, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's staff has been keeping a large whiteboard whip chart to tally her uphill fight for a military sexual assault measure.  —  On Friday, her staff made a big change to the chart - and to Gillibrand's momentum …

What Attorney General Eric Holder just said about the Zimmerman case - click to read and POST YOUR COMMENT  —  Sent to me by FNC colleague Jake Gibson:  —  There are the AG's remarks at today's Delta Sigma Theta sorority convention that will address Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman