RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/justice-department-intervenes-against-northams-communal-worship-restrictions/The Virginia restrictions run afoul of the First Amendment.

‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.

As I related back in April (here and here), Attorney General Bill Barr has admonished states and municipalities that the Justice Department stands ready to take action against social-distancing edicts that unduly restrict fundamental constitutional rights. The DOJ’s Civil Division has been paying particular attention to restrictions on the free exercise of religion — specifically, heavy restrictions or outright bans on communal worship.

A number of governors and mayors, particularly in blue states and cities, have decreed that, in their considered opinion, religious observance is not sufficiently “essential” to be indulged while the authorities are trying to stop the spread of COVID-19, the potentially lethal infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. State and municipal executives are relying on their emergency powers to dictate draconian restrictions (i.e., these are not legislative enactments).

We need not speculate whether insufficient weight has been accorded the Constitution in the fashioning of various prohibitions on worship, work, and assembly. As New Jersey governor Phil Murphy smugly put it when questioned by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, the Constitution is “above my pay grade,” so “I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.” His Honor was relying on a purportedly higher authority: “scientists.”

https://canadafreepress.com/article/an-end-to-the-chaos

Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and
Prosperity.

Finally, someone is in control.

For too long, Americans have been free to come and go as they pleased. They could climb into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted, at any time of day, for any reason they chose, or for no reason at all. And they never had to justify themselves to anyone. It was a deplorable situation.

A fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts

If a store was open for business, a person could just walk right in and shop to his heart’s content. If it was too crowded for his taste, he was free to go elsewhere. Or he could go about his business cheek by jowl with other customers, possibly exposing himself to all manner of illness. Worse, if he had children with him, or children at home, he risked exposing them to whatever horrible disease he might pick up at the store. Deplorable.

He could go to a Walmart, or a dentist, or a barber shop, or a restaurant, or even a church for God’s sake, and it was left entirely up to him to decide whether the risk of contracting an illness was worth whatever benefit he stood to gain. But such decisions are too important to be left to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. It’s about time someone put a stop to all this. 

Yes, a fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts. Tens of thousands of small businesses have been destroyed, along with their owners’ life savings. Collateral damage. It was unavoidable and well worth the price if it meant that someone would finally be put into control, that someone would finally have the authority to do what’s necessary to keep us SAFE. Because that’s all that matters in the end.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/495833-how-to-open-society-using-medical-science-and-logic?rnd=1588469307

As of the first week of May, more than 66,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that three to four weeks typically elapse before death, thousands more who are already infected will also succumb to the virus. That said, the direct toll from the infection has markedly declined throughout the United States, including the epicenter of New York. The curves have been flattened – the stated goal of the isolation has been accomplished – for both hospitalizations per day and deaths per day.

We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences. Half of neurosurgery patients still refuse to come in for treatment of diseases that if left untreated risk brain hemorrhage, paralysis and death, even when their doctors directly reassure them. That’s just one subset of the latest reports of skipping two-thirds to three-fourths of cancer screenings, most childhood vaccinations and treatment for new strokes and known cancer.  

There are two critical aspects of this urgently needed re-entry plan. First, policymakers must apply logic and critical thinking to the massive amount of evidence we have acquired and combine that with decades of established medical science. Second, we must demonstrate and fully convey the logic underlying the plan to reassure a public that has become almost paralyzed with panic and fear.