RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/04/the-failed-experiment-of-social-distancing/

The history of science, sadly, is littered with bad experiments gone horribly wrong. The Great Social Distancing Experiment of 2020, when it is over, will very likely be toward the top of that list.

After a two-month trial, researchers are collecting early outcomes of the Great American Social Distancing Experiment of 2020.

The results, to say the least, ain’t pretty—and the “experts” who initiated this experiment on 330 million well-meaning but unwitting test subjects are starting to admit failure.

“Wait. An experiment?” you may ask. But we have been assured by the credentialed class that keeping a distance of six feet between healthy people for weeks on end was the only tried-and-true way to prevent the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus. No way would the government shutter public schools and colleges for five months, bankrupt small businesses, send tens of millions to the unemployment line, jeopardize the nation’s food supply chain, prevent children from comforting dying parents and grandparents, and subject their fellow countrymen to soul-crushing house arrest for the first time in U.S. history if the so-called “social distancing” guidance hadn’t been carefully vetted over time, you might insist.

Certainly every variable and every side effect of social distancing has been factored into this economy-crashing “mitigation” strategy, right?

Unfortunately, and maddeningly, the answer is no.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration and a lead booster of social distancing, admitted Sunday that the draconian measures aren’t working as the experts promised.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/repeal-the-logan-act-11588629596?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Congress passed the Logan Act in 1799, and it’s long past time to repeal it. Only two people have been prosecuted under it, in 1802 and 1852, and both were acquitted. But the law invites political abuse, as we’ve seen recently in the case of Mike Flynn.

The act makes it a crime for citizens to engage in unauthorized “correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government . . . in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.” Since the U.S. has disputes with every other country, its reach stops just short of lunar orbit.

Since the law is hardly ever enforced, why not leave it alone? Because while the law is still on the books, it can always be trotted out and used selectively, even maliciously. That’s exactly what happened to Mr. Flynn when James Comey’s Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to destroy him and undermine the president.

The Logan Act is a devilish temptation—to bad cops at the FBI, to bad lawyers at the Justice Department, and to bad policy makers in the White House. The law is so broad and vague it can be used to investigate almost any opponent at almost any time. If anybody can be threatened, enforcement is bound to be selective and discriminatory, not uniform and blind as law enforcement should be. These endemic problems mean the Logan Act would probably be found unconstitutional, if it faced such a challenge. It hasn’t, because no one has been convicted under it. So it lurks on the books, a tool for political mischief.

Regarding your editorial “Battering Norman Borlaug” (April 25): Shortly after becoming the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, I was made aware that desperate, starving people in Zambia had broken into a convoy of trucks carrying U.S.-donated sacks of food out of their country. I was dumbfounded, and found a Jesuit missionary in Zambia to speak with about this unbelievable occurrence. He said: “Yes, ambassador, that cable was correct—that food was a product of GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds, and if they allow it into Zambia the people here will want to grow it, and they would never after be able to export food to Europe.”

I couldn’t accept that food technology was being used to deny food to starving people. This led me to Dr. Borlaug. I arranged a conference and many meetings in Rome for this man to explain the wonders of new food technology and its promise to thwart the curse of starvation and malnutrition in Africa. This was in 2002 and people there were dying at the rate of 25,000 a day.

The controversy over GMO food persists today, although there is still no proof that it causes anyone ill effects. The credibility of Dr. Borlaug in Rome convinced the Holy Father to task the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the question of GMO food. After exhaustive research, the Academy of Sciences reported to the pope that they found no harmful effects to people who ate GMO food, and that it offered great promise to end world food shortages.

One senior member of the Roman Curia, who came to know Dr. Borlaug through this experience (he came to Rome twice at my request, at his own expense), said, “This man is a saint!”

Scripture tells us that we are all sinners—even the saints. Apparently, according to PBS, Borlaug’s sin is that he saved too many lives.

May he rest in peace.

R. James Nicholson

Washington

Mr. Nicholson was ambassador to the Holy See 2001-05.

We had the pleasure of meeting Norman Borlaug and filming his receipt of the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, which led to the production of a one-hour PBS documentary about his life and work.

Borlaug saw the famine conditions in several parts of the world as a human emergency and knew very well that his high-yield strains of wheat and accompanying farming methods were only buying time. But poor farmers all over the world were very quick to adopt his hybrid seeds and farming strategies when they saw the results, and this kind of transformation continues in Africa and many other places to this day. Before his death, Borlaug was very active in helping smallholder growers vastly improve their lives through modern seeds and growing methods. Your editorial is spot on.

Philip Courter

Crystal River, Fla.

I heard Borlaug give a speech late in his career where he addressed criticism of his work. His position was simple—he had met many, many well-meaning (and well-fed) critics over the years, but had never met any willing to starve to death for their beliefs.

Joe Bouton

Athens, Ga.

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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-or-lucky-how-florida-dodged-the-worst-of-coronavirus-11588531865?mod=hp_lead_pos5

MIAMI—When the coronavirus pandemic swept toward Florida, public-health professionals nationally warned of a potentially devastating wave of infections that could imperil the state’s large senior population.

But so far, the state seems to have dodged that fate, despite not following advice to impose measures such as an early, blanket lockdown to minimize spread.

With Gov. Ron DeSantis preparing to start reopening the state on Monday, epidemiologists and others are asking: What happened? Was Florida smart or lucky?

The answer may be a bit of both. Mr. DeSantis restricted visitation to nursing homes but he left early lockdown decisions to local authorities. Mayors in some hard-hit large communities shut down faster and more aggressively than the state, gaining valuable time.

Walt Disney World closed two weeks before the statewide order. Spring breakers, who packed Florida beaches and bars until mid-March, went back home. Some scientists point to Florida’s low population density, while others to its subtropical climate to explain fewer infections.

A key factor, many say, is a change in the behavior of Floridians. Though the governor didn’t impose a statewide stay-at-home order until April 3, people began hunkering down en masse in mid-March, according to firms that analyze anonymous cellphone data.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/j-christian-adams/2020/05/03/foundation-funded-journalists-lie-about-voter-fraud-n387767

Last week I wrote about a new constellation of leftist philanthropy trying to influence the rules of the 2020 election, including pushing vote-by-mail, paying reporters to deny that voter fraud exists, and lobbying Congress to federalize state power over elections. Less than 24 hours later, I saw these dollars in action – through a smear by the propagandists at ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) posing as a newsroom. It is the new model in a changing media landscape, where groups like George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society give ProPublica hundreds of thousands of dollars and ProPublica does what the funders ask.

It should be no surprise that ProPublica is tasked with attacking anyone who reports on voter fraud or election security vulnerabilities but sometimes it rises to the level of parody.

A few weeks ago, my organization reported that federal data published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission revealed a terrible problem with vote-by-mail. It turns out that tens of millions of ballots went missing, were rejected, went to the wrong address, and ultimately were never counted as valid votes.

You can read the disheartening data here.

Reporting on millions of ballots that were mailed out but never counted as valid votes is too much for ProPublica’s donor masters. So this weekend, Derek Willis of ProPublica penned a ham-handed attack on the revelation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/03/at-least-five-studies-have-shown-that-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate-is-under-1-percent-n387776

Appearing on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday night, Dr. Debora Birx admitted something that anyone paying attention to the coronavirus pandemic has known for some time now. “I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases,” Dr. Birx said. “And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected.”

The question, of course, is how much? Well, we have a rough idea already.

But, first, let’s go back to what experts said originally. Back in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent. “If you look at the cases that have come to the attention of the medical authorities in China, and you just do the math, the math is about 2%.”

Some of us will remember how President Trump endured a lot of criticism for saying that he had a “hunch” that the WHO’s estimate was too high and that the fatality rate of the coronavirus might actually be below 1 percent. “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor,” Trump said. “I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/01/now-we-know-there-was-an-anti-trump-conspiracy-at-the-fbi/

Recently unsealed notes show top FBI officials debated whether they should get President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn “to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired,” or “admit to breaking the Logan Act” for talking to former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. As the deep-state onion gets peeled back layer by layer to its rotten core, it becomes clear this wasn’t mere government misconduct. It was a criminal conspiracy.

These are not mere procedural quibbles, but profound questions about the integrity and legality of the FBI’s investigations into key officials in the incoming Trump administration, including Trump himself. A pattern of collusive illegality on the part of the FBI and key Justice Department officials has become increasingly clear from these and other revelations.

The newly released notes contain shocking revelations of how the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigators and top FBI officials set their “perjury trap” for Flynn.

Flynn, you will recall, pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to federal officials. But he did so only after being forced to sell his home to fund his legal defense, and after threats to prosecute his son if he didn’t cop a plea.

It was coercion, plain and simple. The kind of thing a totalitarian or dictatorial regime would do. Yet such skullduggery was routine for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which tried to gin up false charges of Russian collusion first against the Trump campaign and later against the incoming Trump administration.

In questioning Flynn in January 2017, the FBI circumvented its own rules that require it to go through the White House counsel’s office. Instead, it brazenly barged in and questioned Flynn, a former Army lieutenant general, in his office just three days after Trump was sworn in.

Among the other illegalities, the FBI’s own notes of the meeting were later re-written – that is, tampered with – by both FBI special agent Peter Strzok and his paramour FBI lawyer Lisa Page. That tampered document was used as a pretense to overturn a decision in early January to close the case against Flynn. Instead, lacking any real evidence, the FBI chose to pursue an investigation it hoped would lead to a prosecution.

An honest mistake? Earlier emails released in the investigation of the FBI’s misconduct show that Strzok and Page loathed Trump and desperately wanted Hillary Clinton elected president. Yet, Strzok spearheaded the investigation into Trump, a clear conflict of interest. And he was one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn in the White House.