"I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function."

"I think if they want to give their opinions, they should do so in a respectful and in a manner that is consistent with their oath to the Constitution to respect a coequal branch of government. Their failure to do so I think is abhorrent, but I don't think it has prejudiced us with additional material that would prejudice this jury." 

Said Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, the judge in the Derek Chauvin case, quoted in "Jury ends first day of deliberating with no verdicts in Derek Chauvin murder trial/With the dismissals of the alternates, the jury of 12 is now half white and half people of color" (Star Tribune). 

It's a hopeless wish. People are going to talk. And disrespect is part of human expression. An important part. The rule of law is one of the all-time great ideals, but the way the law plays out in real life deserves — and benefits from — the expression of disrespect. It's fine for the judge to wish for respect, but it's up to him to do what earns respect. 

His main point here is to deny that there has been a mistrial because of what's been said out there in public, particularly what Rep. Maxine Waters said — that protesters need to get "more confrontational" if there is no guilty verdict. It's horrible to think that all the hard work of conducting a trial could be squandered by one wild-talking politician. Of course Cahill denied the motion.

But does the threat of riots unfairly prejudice the jury — and does Waters's one inflammatory statement make all the difference? What does "more confrontational mean"? It could just mean bigger, louder, more passionate demonstrations. But perhaps we're supposed to know that she meant destruction and violence — just like the way the supporters of the last impeachment were sure that when Trump urged people in the street to "fight like hell," everyone was supposed to know he advocated criminal disorder.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House. Thank you to @DCPoliceDept for literally saving our lives from a crazed mob."

Rand Paul tweeted 7 hours ago.

He's getting pushback. I'm seeing tweets like: "We all saw the tape! No one 'attacked' you. They were protesting, and yelled at you while you were cowering behind a police escort." And: "The video proved that @randpaul is a liar. This was a stunt to send to #FoxNews." Where's the video? I see this, but I don't know what portion of the incident it shows.

There's also this tweet: "See, if the police provided this sort of protection to every person of color instead of firing bullets in their back, people would not be protesting in the first place." It seems to me, the reason the police were on the scene in the Jacob Blake incident was that they came to protect a woman who had called them. The woman had made a call and the call was responded to. Does this tweeter want the police to provide protection or not? If a woman calls and asks for help in a domestic situation, should the police leave her to handle her own problem?! Whatever happened to concern about violence against women?

ADDED:

Maxine Waters: “And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.” pic.twitter.com/1efIW8VI3e

— Kelb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 28, 2020

"Pocahontas, to you I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won't apologize."

Trump responds to the demand that he apologize for calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas."

I watched the rally live last night and have that in my handwritten notes as something I wanted to blog, but I'm cutting and pasting it from a Fox News article that, as you can see from the headline, highlights something else: "Trump claims Maxine Waters' IQ in 'mid-60s,' slams 'fake Pocahontas' Elizabeth Warren in rally to unseat Jon Tester."

The reason for putting those 2 things together is obvious: He's attacking a particular individual — in both cases, it's a Democratic Party woman — and he's saying something that will make his antagonists feel he's being racist. His supporters will probably say, no, he's going after the individual, and Elizabeth Warren really did seek advantages by making claims about her probably nonexistent Native American ancestry, and Maxine Waters is being judged to be unintelligent because of actual stupid things that she has said. Trump knows all that, I assume, and he means to go right there and create political energy by enlisting supporters and antagonists into that endless argument.

The linked article has another quote that my notes remind me I wanted to tell you about: "Democrats want anarchy." That was part of a discussion of illegal immigration (in which he also said Democrats would let the gang MS-13 "run wild."

"For these members of his Cabinet who remain and try to defend [Trump], they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop [at] a department store."

"The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them," said the Democratic Party's Congresswoman Maxine Waters, quoted in "Maxine Waters shows why the Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Red Hen story is extremely important" by Aaron Blake (WaPo), who opines:

Waters's comments have been roundly denounced, including by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and some will argue she's a fringe figure in the party who doesn't speak for most Democrats. But what she said is a logical extension of the debate and the questions raised over the Red Hen incident. Plenty cheered such harassment of Nielsen and Miller, such was their anger over the family-separation policy. When passions run as strongly as they do with a story like this, actions will be ratcheted up.

Which means Democrats and Trump opponents as a whole need to decide where their line is for civil disobedience (or, in Waters's case, possibly going beyond civil disobedience)....

Civil disobedience?!! Somebody needs to look up the definition of terms! "Civil disobedience" doesn't have to do with harassing individuals and shaming or scaring them out of appearing in public. Civil disobedience is declining to obey an unjust law. It's governing your own behavior in observance of a higher morality than the government's law. It has nothing to do with violating just norms — such as rules of etiquette or the legal protection from threats and physical violence — to hurt other people when those other people offend your moral standards!

Some historical background on the idea from Wikipedia:

One of the oldest depictions of civil disobedience is in Sophocles' play Antigone, in which Antigone... defies Creon, the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law...

Thoreau's 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government"... [argued] that citizens are morally responsible for their support of aggressors, even when such support is required by law. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican–American War....

By the 1850s, a range of minority groups in the United States: Blacks, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, racial egalitarians, and others—employed civil disobedience to combat a range of legal measures and public practices that to them promoted ethnic, religious, and racial discrimination....

Civil disobedience is an important tradition in American history. Don't mix it up with bad behavior that has had — and deserves — no veneration.

Obama's liberal critics catch fire.

!. Jane Hamsher finds it "just weird" that one of Obama's people is denouncing Paul Krugman and the “Firebagger Lefty blogosphere."

I know the goal is to attract the much-prized Independent for 2012. But who do they think is keeping Obama’s poll numbers afloat?

2. Congresswoman Maxine Waters complains that Obama's bus trip didn't include any black communities and has this colloquy with her audience:

WATERS: We don't put pressure on the president.

CROWD: That's right!

WATERS: Let me tell you why: We don't put pressure on the president because y'all loooove the president.

CROWD: No! (grumbling, shouting)

WATERS: You loooove the president. You're very proud. You're very proud to have a black man...

CROWD: That's right! Yes, we are.

WATERS: ...first time in history of the United States of America.

CROWD: (shouting)

WATERS: If we go after the president too hard, you going after us. When you tell us it's all right --

CROWD: It's all right! (shouting)

WATERS: When you tell us it's all right and you unleash us, and you tell us you're ready for us to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation!

What would someone have to say on "Meet the Press" to prompt a follow-up question from David Gregory?

The previous post is about something Bill Cosby said on today's "Meet the Press." That was part of a segment about what Obama can do to help "the black community" with its "deepest problems." Also in this segment was Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Take a look at this:

[DAVID] GREGORY: You go home to Watts and you go out there and you see young people--the fact that we have a black president, that means something.

REP. WATERS: Well, of course it means something. He's absolutely a role model. I was watching the young boys from the Ron Clark school who have a--they were in a choir, and they have created a song about Obama. And I was watching their faces. And certainly if there's one thing you can say about this historic election, it is that he has created hope. He has, you know, let young people know and young black boys know that you can, you can indeed succeed.

Let me tell you about this parenting issue. I have--or we just had a Black Caucus retreat, and parenting emerged as the number one concern in that retreat. Now, as a public policymaker and a legislator, I think about ways by which we can be helpful in bringing about the kind of public policy that will assist families. And so parenting is one thing that I'm going to spend a lot of time on, because I think that we should dedicate personnel in our public schools to work with parents and to get parents involved. The PTA does not do that. But the teachers cannot do that, the teachers cannot be concerned about what is going on in the classroom and follow the kids home. But if we have a component in the school that's dealing with going to the home, finding out what is happening with this child, what are the circumstances under which they are living, and be able to direct resources toward that family and give families support, I think we can use parenting as a way to begin to deal with these very serious problems where children drop out and children are already considered failures before they reach high school.

I'm really feeling hopeless about David Gregory as Tim Russert's replacement on MTP. No follow-up question? Does he even listen to what the guests are saying?

Waters just said that the teachers can't follow the kids home, but that there ought to be "a component in the school" that — what? — follows the kids home? What sort of "component"? I'm afraid of these components! What is Waters proposing, and does Gregory have any capacity for critical thinking? How is it acceptable for government authorities to intrude into the home this way?

Then, Bill Cosby is going on about service:

... these Jesuits, I — they have an answer, and they make their boys go out into the community and give service... One of the things I've heard... is that when a person gives, when a person does a service, that there's something that happens to them emotionally. I've heard people in prison working with prisoners talk about prisoners breaking down and crying because they taught another prisoner, they mentored another prisoner to learn how to read. And that the, the mentoring person started to cry. You can't--as a policeman, as a policeman said to me -- make a man cry by punching him in the face. They don't cry. But here this man is, and it's something emotional about us giving to each other, teaching each other. And that's what this family's talking about.

Again, no follow-up from Gregory. Is Cosby suggesting that the government — like the Jesuits — should make their boys go out into the community and give service? A public-service draft? Could Gregory give some critical push-back?

Or was Gregory patronizing black people? Not only was he sparing his black guests any challenging questioning, he also abysmally failed to see the libertarian interests of black people as those guests went on about following black kids home from school to check on whether their parents are decent and forcing young black men into service. If those proposals had been made in a way that seemed to extend beyond the "black community" with its "deepest problems," would the light bulb in Gregory's brain turn on? What exactly are you talking about doing? How would you respond to those who would argue that this is an unacceptable — perhaps even an unconstitutional — burden on individual liberty?