randomWalks

From way over on this side of the Pacific we watched a woman juror stand up and say "Maybe in the future I will become an anti-death penalty advocate, but for now I thought it was my duty to be a responsible citizen."

This puzzled me. Was she really trying to say that she wanted to vote against the death penalty and that she felt she would wait to do this at some other trial?

Or was she saying that now she is filled with the certainty of justice and that only a weak moral compass, later, not now, will make her choose to stray from this certainty?

I wonder what she really mean to say, because she looked teary-eyed when she said it.

Talk about fear, though. I was made to stand out in front of the high school I taught at for four days, checking visitor passes, when I should have been in my classroom preparing for classes on Niehbur and Descartes.

It was the most unsettling thing to be standing, vulnerable, on the fringe of forest, eight miles from the Manassas shooting, 1/2 mile from the same highway.

More about this from the Post's Marc Fisher:

So will you consider the idea that no matter how awful Muhammad is, it is only God's task to take his life? Will you consider that life in prison is a more severe penalty than death?

Heck, no, because you've been death-qualified. Last month, the judge and lawyers made certain that when the trial reached this phase, you'd be ready to don the executioner's hood. The screening process for jurors -- originally intended only to make certain that you are impartial -- has been so madly distorted that lawyers now seek to fix juries by probing citizens' psyches to pick the folks most likely to do their bidding.