Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, slammed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) during an interview following the guilty verdict against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on all counts.

“The irony of what Congresswoman Waters did. She borrowed the playbook of the Ku Klux Klan from the 1920s and 1930s. They would stand outside of courtrooms, and they would threaten violence,” Dershowitz told Newsmax. “This violates the separation of powers. It insults the integrity of the independent judiciary, and Congresswoman Waters ought to be ashamed of herself. What she did was disgraceful.”

In a separate interview on Newsmax, Dershowitz said that Chauvin’s conviction should be overturned because the jury was tainted by outside influences.

“Well, first what was done to George Floyd by officer Chauvin was inexcusable morally, but the verdict is very questionable, because of the outside influences of people like Al Sharpton and people like Maxine Waters,” he said. “Their threats and intimidation and hanging the Sword of Damocles over the jury and basically saying, if you don’t convict on the murder charge and all the charges, the cities will burn, the country will be destroyed—seeped into the jury room because the judge made a terrible mistake by not sequestering the jury.”

“So the judge himself said this case may be reversed on appeal. And I think it might be reversed on appeal, I think it should be reversed on appeal,” he continued. “I think the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be all over this case if it weren’t a racially charged case, all Americans who care about due process and liberty should be concerned that the jury verdict may have been influenced by, if not the thumb, maybe even the elbow of the outside pressures, the fears, the threats.”

NBC News has some explaining to do.

The network omitted crucial context this week from its coverage of the death of Ma'Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old black teenager who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio, as she swung a knife at two unarmed teenagers.

On Wednesday, during a segment hosted by anchor Lester Holt, NBC aired audio of the 911 phone call that drew law enforcement officials to the scene of an altercation in which Bryant was a participant. For some reason, however, the network declined to air the part of the call in which a frantic woman can be heard saying, “These grown girls over here trying to fight us, trying to stab us!”

Rather, NBC played only the part when the woman says, “We need a police officer here now!”

NBC likewise aired only a small portion of the police body camera footage, leaving out the part in which Bryant is seen clearly lunging with a knife at an unarmed woman. The network aired only a photo of the knife as it lay on the ground — after the shooting.

The rest of the report is also couched carefully in “police say” language, ignoring all the audio and visual evidence suggesting the Columbus police officer did indeed successfully thwart a stabbing attack.

In fact, if you relied solely on NBC for your news, all you know is that a white cop killed a black teenager and that a knife may or may not have also been present at the scene of the shooting. However, footage of the incident shows Bryant had a knife in her hand and that she appeared to be in the process of stabbing an unarmed woman when a responding officer shot her. The 911 audio would appear to corroborate this. None of this was included in NBC’s coverage.

Leading Causes of Death

Data are for the U.S.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death

• Heart disease: 659,041

COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Older adults and people who have severe underlying medical conditions like heart or lung disease or diabetes seem to be at higher risk for developing more serious complications from COVID-19 illness.

IT’S OFFICIAL: IRS DATA CONFIRMS THAT DEMOCRATS ARE NOW THE PARTY OF THE RICH

by Kevin Ryan

In 1993, Democrats represented a huge majority of the poor and middle class congressional districts, while Republicans controlled a huge majority of the top earning districts.

Today, that dynamic has flipped.

Republicans now control a large majority of the middle class districts, while Democrats represent an overwhelming share of the rich districts.

The trend is even more visible when looking at the top 20% richest districts:
1993
Republican: 62%
Democrat: 38%

2020
Republican: 17%
Democrat: 83%

Indeed Democrats now represent 65% of all households making $500,000 or more, according to IRS data, while 74% of taxpayers in Republican districts have a household income less than $100,000.

This explains why Democrats are pushing so hard to end Donald Trump’s cap on the state and local tax deduction. Trump’s 2017 tax bill capped the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) -- a popular write-off with taxpayers in high-tax, high-property-value states -- at $10,000.

Democrats are now campaigning on restoring that deduction.

“I’m not voting for any change in the tax code whatsoever unless there’s the restoration of the SALT tax deduction,” Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) said.

And nearly two dozen other Democrats, including 17 New York Democrats and New Jersey Representatives such as Bill Pascrell, Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill, and Tom Malinowski, have made the same pledge.

The deduction overwhelmingly helps the richest 1%.

Democrats are hoping the move will allow their rich voters to accept proposed increases in the top individual tax rate, and the top capital gains rate, and the corporate tax rate, among other things.

Dems are also pushing cultural issues to the forefront of the national discussion, drawing attention away from their efforts to soak their newfound rich constituency. However, this push risks creating the impression that the party of the wealthy is inciting unrest over Twitter from the safety of their gated communities, while the poor and middle class actually have to suffer the consequences of the resulting riots in their districts.

It’s a dangerous political balancing act for Democrats, who hold a slim 218 to 212 advantage in the House, and a tie in the Senate.