JUDGING THE JURY 

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly described himself as "stunned and disappointed" by a Brooklyn jury's acquittal of Robert Ellis in the shooting death of Officer Russel Timoshenko and the wounding of his partner, Officer Herman Yan, last year. Kelly's not the only one. The Post's editorial writers have their (obvious, somewhat undemocratic, and yet understandable) lamentations.

The jury deliberated 10 hours before finding Ellis not guilty of aggravated murder, deciding that he only drove the car that was pulled over by the two cops in a routine traffic stop in July 2007, which led to the shooting. The Post, of course, finds this wooly-headed and molly-coddling, though we could just as easily imagine the Post's laissez-faire crowd finding this an exercise in populist skepticism about the state.

But, no. Here's their take: "Are we heading back to the days when juries routinely let cop-killers walk free because they believed officers were no better than street thugs?" Stay tuned for future histrionics.