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On systems such as the PR2, the robot_state_publisher node is used to publish all transforms of a robot model. One important feature of it is that it future-dates static transforms to ensure that static trasnforms can always be looked up. Also have a look at the tf faq and this answer for more information on future-dated transform.

My guess for what happens in your case is that rviz tries to look up the transform between odom (or base_link) to the laser although it hasn't received the transform for the current time yet which will lead to a failure. To fix it, future-date your static transforms.