"I am 80 and figure I can speak the truth as I see it. Ignorant I am not."

Said Duke professor Jerry Hough, defending himself after getting criticized for something he wrote in the comments section of a The New York Times editorial titled "How Racism Doomed Baltimore." Hough's I'm-old defense appears in a WaPo article titled "Duke professor, attacked for �noxious� racial comments, refuses to back down."

Here's what Hough wrote in the NYT:
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"The driver of the police van, officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., who is black, is accused of second-degree 'depraved heart' murder � the most serious charge of them all..."

"... which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison."

Other counts against the cops include involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault and false imprisonment. The five men and one woman posted bond and all but one reportedly were released.

�We are satisfied with today�s charges,� Gray�s stepfather, Richard Shipley, told a news conference. �These charges are an important step in getting justice for Freddie.�

"Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., 45... has been on the force since 1999..."

An African American, Goodson drove the van that transported Gray to jail. Goodson, whose bail was set at $350,000, is the only officer in the group facing a murder charge...

Goodson is the grandson of a police officer.... He lives in Catonsville in Baltimore County, where two of his neighbors said Friday that he had minimal interactions with them.

Frances Hubbard, who lives on his street, described the officer as a �family man, always polite, always speaks. I see him eating with the family.�

"Who Is This Objectively Badass Attorney Running The Freddie Gray Investigation?"

Headline at a Huffpo article that's teased on the Huffpro front page with "BALTIMORE BADASS":



If the question is the abuse of government power in the form of the police, the answer is not mindless cheerleading for another form of government power, a prosecutor.

Objectively Badass...

Yeah, let's be objective. Let's be level-headed and demand that all government power � police, prosecutors, the lot � operate within the bounds of the law.

My criticism is of the headline and the front-page teaser. The article doesn't contain the word "badass" or present Marilyn Mosby as anything that warrants the use of the word "badass." She herself is saying appropriate things like "I uphold the law" and "At the end of the day I�m here to do my job. It�s about applying justice fairly and equally to those with and without a badge. Did I treat this case any different in the pursuit of justice? No, I didn�t."

I wonder what pushed Huffpo to use that word "badass." I doubt if the word would have been chosen if Mosby were a white male.

"She gave us her word. I said, 'How will you handle police brutality?'"

"She said: �If you put me in this chair, I don�t care if they are in uniform or not. I come from a family of officers. Some are good, some are bad. I will hold everybody accountable to the law.� And thank you, Jesus, she lived it out."

From a NYT article about Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore prosecutor who has charged 6 police officers with homicide for the death of Freddie Gray. The quote is from a woman whose brother was killed by police and who strongly supported Mosby's campaign to oust the incumbent state's attorney for Baltimore City.

And here's a quote from  Lester Spence, an associate professor of political science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University: "Black power is about taking the office and using it to make government more humane for black people, and that�s what we see in her. She�s supposed to treat me, the corner boy in the Western District and the police officer exactly the same way when it comes to the law. Historically, because of racism, her predecessors have not effectively done that."

"David Simon, the creator of the iconic Baltimore-based HBO series The Wire, lashed out in a lengthy interview against Martin O�Malley..."

"... saying in the wake of this week�s riots and curfew that the former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor was the 'stake through the heart of police procedure' in the city."

Speaking with The Marshall Project, Simon traces his wariness back to O�Malley�s time as Mayor between 1999 and 2007, when Simon says he made �mass arrests� of citizens for minor offenses to pad crime statistics. �[W]hat happened under his watch as Baltimore�s mayor was that he wanted to be governor. And at a certain point, with the crime rate high� he put no faith in real policing.�

Simon, a crime reporter at the Baltimore Sun for more than 10 years before he moved to television writing, has been an outspoken critic of O�Malley for years. He has even said that the Wire character Tommy Carcetti, an ambitious politician who manipulates crime reduction statistics, is partly based on O�Malley, a presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

Here's the whole interview. Excerpt:
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"For a time in recent decades, it looked like the reform examples of New York under Messrs. Giuliani and Bloomberg and the growth of cities like Houston might lead to a broader urban revitalization."

"In some places it did. But of late the progressives have been making a comeback, led by Bill de Blasio in New York and the challenge to sometime reform Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago. This week�s nightmare in Baltimore shows where this leads. It�s time for a new urban renewal, this time built on the ideas of private economic development, personal responsibility, 'broken windows' policing, and education choice."

A Wall Street Journal editorial titled "The Blue-City Model/Baltimore shows how progressivism has failed urban America." (Pay-wall protected, but if you Google some text, you can go in.)

Tonight's game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox will be closed to the public.

"The unusual decision to play the game before an empty Oriole Park at Camden Yards follows two straight days of postponements."

Lawprof Roger Groves comments:

Some have already blamed the youth who rioted as the sole culprits, the only cause of the problem. That reminds me of those who can�t understand why their weeds continue to grow when their lawn mower only cuts off the leaves. They didn�t see that the root of the problem requires digging deeper than what was on the surface....

That does not excuse bad behavior.... But as for the baseball aspect of this, playing a game without fans is not the answer.... Yes, a fan-free game minimizes the risk of a lawsuit for having a game in which they could get hurt. But even if it was more expensive to the owners and MLB, sacrificing fans for the profits and logistics is not a good idea. Ticket refunds may ameliorate the problem a bit. But I suspect the fans that paid that hefty ticket price would much rather see the game than have the same money back they already decided to spend.

I'll just add 2 things:

1. Playing before the empty stands makes a powerful visual statement that is entirely different from a postponement. If there's a postponement, there's nothing to see, and seemingly nothing is lost. Some later game between those 2 teams is turned into a double header. But when a game is played to empty stands, the disturbing spectacle will be on TV and radio. Many people will watch/listen and experience the theater of sadness. Fans will live through hours of What Has Happened to Our Proud City. On TV, there will be none of the shots of kids and weird guys and pretty girls to amuse us during the inevitable longueurs of baseball. You might think it won't matter so much on the radio, but it will. The crowd sound in the gaps in the chatter are integral to the beauty of baseball on the radio.

2. Groves's statement "That does not excuse bad behavior" will, I am sure, sound lame to many of you, but I happen to have my copy of Michael LaBossiere's "76 Fallacies" open to the precisely relevant page: "Confusing Explanations and Excuses":
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"Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland and possible Democratic presidential candidate, is speaking out on the violence in Baltimore. O'Malley's rival, Hillary Clinton, is not."

Says the Weekly Standard, noting yesterday's tweets from the 2 candidates.

In fairness to Hillary, she was not the governor of the state that is having terrible trouble right now. She was not the mayor of Baltimore. O'Malley, if he is to be a plausible alternative to Hillary, needs to be able to flaunt his achievements as governor and mayor.

He's tweeting things like: "We must come together as one City to transform this moment of loss & pain into a safer & more just future for all of Baltimore's people." I wouldn't give him much credit for self-interested, anodyne statements like that. Baltimore is really hurting him. The man was mayor of Baltimore or Governor of Maryland from 1999 to just this past January. If Baltimore has big problems, he's responsible for them! His expressions of sorrow and hope for the future are fundamentally ridiculous.

Meanwhile, it might be nice if Hillary would show up and contribute something to the national political debate.

"When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself."

"When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con."

Writes Ta-Nehisi Coates.