RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Constitution’s various provisions protecting individual liberty must at times give way to government control in response to health hazards.

From legal scholar Richard A. Epstein ’s “Measles: Misinformation Gone Viral” for the Hoover Institutiononline,

This entire episode was fueled by fraudulent studies published by Dr. Andrew Wakefiel d in 1998 in Lancet magazine, which twelve years later the journal eventually retracted, but only after much of the damage was done. Those studies, which had been funded in part by plaintiffs’ lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers, purported to find a (nonexistent) link between vaccines that were manufactured using a mercury-based compound, Thimerosal, and autism. Unfortunately, Lancet’s forthright retraction of the article did not quell the uneasiness about vaccines in either Britain or the United States. Indeed, it may well have fueled populist concerns of an ever-wider conspiracy among establishment figures. . . .

The current struggles over sound vaccine policy raise a tension between public health on the one hand and competing versions of individual liberty on the other. This conflict was, if anything, more acute a century ago when infectious diseases cut a wide path for which vaccines and other treatments provided only a limited response. The main constitutional lens through which these issues were viewed at the time was one of police power. This all-pervasive notion has no explicit textual authorization in the Constitution. But a moment’s reflection makes it clear that the Constitution’s various provisions protecting individual liberty must at times give way to government control in response to health hazards.

On Tuesday we rapped Chris Christie for his odd doubts about public vaccines amid a dangerous outbreak of measles in California. But it seems this is something of an epidemic among potential GOP presidential candidates, so perhaps it’s time for some facts about science, liberty and public health.

Rand Paul joined the vaccine follies Monday in an interview with CNBC. While acknowledging vaccines are a “medical breakthrough” and it is a “great idea” to raise “public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids,” Mr. Paul then gave credence to the conspiracy theories that have frightened parents. He suggested there is a health concern in giving “five and six vaccines all at one time” and explained that he had delayed his own child’s immunizations.

In an editorial titled “Reckless Rejection of the Measles Vaccine,” the Times argues that it is “shockingly irresponsible” for “misguided parents to put other children and adults at risk of catching measles from their unvaccinated children. Public officials and pediatricians need to restrict where unvaccinated children are allowed to go if the parents refuse to do so.” (NYT 2/3/15) The total number of people infected this year is 102 in the 14 states that have reported outbreaks.

Compare this to the Times’ attitude towards quarantining health care workers returning from ebola-stricken countries in Africa. In that case, the individual’s rights trumped the rights of other children and adults who might have come in contact with someone incubating and spreading a potentially fatal disease. And compare the concern for public safety with the information regarding HIV/AIDS a few years back. In 2008, the Times reported that HIV was spreading in NYC at three times the national rate. 4,762 New Yorkers contracted it in 2006, with gay minority men leading the population at risk; for the population under 30, 77% were Black or Hispanic (NYT 8/27/08). Yet, a few years later, the Times editorial urges that Gay Men Should Be Allowed to Give Blood (11/27/14) They protest that the rules governing blood donations date back to the 1980’s when little was understood about how the virus spreads. Although it is true that significant progress has been made in managing HIV, there is as yet, no cure for the virus. The Times’ objection to the F.D.A’s consideration of a one-year deferral instead of a total ban is that it stigmatizes gay men as well as limiting the pool of donors.

President Obama told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that 99.9 percent of Muslims are peaceful.

Employing the Islamic device of teqiyyah (the Koranic requirement upon Muslims to be deliberately deceptive in what they say to non-Muslims) the president predictably spewed this inversion of the truth to the Crescent News Network’s prime enabler, Fareed Zakaria.

The tragic truth is that what Barack Hussein Obama says is 99.9% illusion or cynical deception. We are all still waiting for that mythical 99.9% of Muslims to take to the streets to denounce the jihadists, terrorists and fellow Muslims who espouse violence and a culture of death. But don’t hold your breath.

As we approach the dreaded tax filing deadline of April 15th, many Americans are ill-prepared for the news they are going to receive from their tax preparers or tax preparation software. Between three and six million people are going to be affected by penalties, an “Individual Shared Responsibility Payment,” associated with the Affordable Care Act. And most of those affected have no idea how much financial pain they are going to feel.

When the Obama Administration was selling Obamacare to the American people – you remember, “It’s not a tax,” “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it,” “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” etc. – they alluded to the existence of penalties for those Americans who did not purchase ACA compliant health insurance. The amount for the first year non-compliance penalty was routinely quoted as $95. For many the choice was clear: keep the non-compliant health insurance, pay the $95 penalty (read: non-compliance tax), and hope that a Republican-led Congress would affect relief for the taxpayer as soon as they took control in Washington, DC.

Scott Walker is the new flavor of the week, the new dish on the Republican menu. He brought crowds to their feet in Iowa over the weekend and placed first in an important regional poll to identify favorites for 2016.

For someone derided by the smart guys as dull and unexciting, the governor of Wisconsin is suddenly the flash and splash of midwinter. Such flash and splash, synthetic by definition, is usually the work of pundits dulled by the lethargy of January, the most useless of the months, eager to find something “new and entirely different.”

But January ennui (pundits suffering lassitude of their own always often throw in something French in the third paragraph) sometimes uncovers the real thing, and Mr. Walker looks like authentic. Voters, both Republican and Democrat, seem to be bored with the pale and stale, the old and not so bold. Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and the gang, worthies all, are from a movie sent from Netflix. Hillary Clinton, the freshest face the Democrats can find, only reminds everyone of scandals, some more sordid than others, from the previous century.

Hijab: from privacy to slavery

What began as the seventh century Bedouin woman’s attempt at privacy and protection from the desert has become a veil symbolic of a woman’s indignity and servitude. As Nonie Darwish so aptly explained in her book, Cruel and Usual Punishment, women have come to represent the totality of evil and inferiority in Islamic teaching.

Considered lacking in intelligence and religion, women are seen as half the worth of men in a Shari’a court; in the case of rape, her accusation has no worth without four witnesses. Women may be raped for wearing “indecent” clothing, and beaten by their husbands for leaving the house unaccompanied by a male relative. If her behavior further irritates, he may imprison her without food and clothing, and arrange for stoning until dead. In this despotic society, women bear the honor of the male, so that girls and women may be killed by a father who fears his esteem has been sullied.

Conjuring images of the dying who had clawed at the dank walls of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh grabbed at his head, screaming out in agony as he fell to his knees, his body burning, his brain slowly cooking. His Daesh (Islamic State) captors had abruptly abandoned disingenuous negotiations with the Jordanian government for his release, their hostage having actually been killed many days before. Instead, they decided to record al-Kaseasbeh’s purposeful immolation. Having drenched him in accelerant, the savages lit the liquid fuse that set the young lieutenant ablaze. As he writhed, they filmed, indignant to his agony; his humanity. Barbarity for the purpose of terrorist propaganda had been achieved.

Just a month earlier, tens of thousands had taken to the streets in major Middle Eastern cities in support of Islamofascist assassins who slaughtered the staff at Charlie Hebdo. Turkey’s president, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, publicly intimated that the attacks in Paris were justified due to the magazine staff’s transgressions against Muslim sensibilities. And he went further than that, stating, obtusely, that Muslims have “never taken part in terrorist massacres.” Erdogan made these alarming statements as Boko Haram waded through the blood of the 2,000 people they slaughtered in the Nigerian town of Baga, in the name of Islam. So, violent, intolerant Islam is on the march.

Do these ladies remind you of the Democratic front runner (so far) for 2016??????rsk

María Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón is better known as Isabel Perón. She was the third wife of the former President, Juan Perón who had a taste for tarts. During her husband’s third term as president from 1973 to 1974, Isabel was both vice president and First Lady. When Peron died, Isabel became President and was in office from 1 July 1974 to 24 March 1976 where she gamely continued the corruption, theft, and cronyism of her departed husband and was deposed in 1976.

Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner is the current Presidenta of Argentina and widow of former president Néstor Kirchner. She succeeded her husband when his term ended. Unlike Isabel Peron, she was actually elected by a sizable margin, pledged to continue her husband’s thuggery and “redistribution” of national funds. Néstor Kirchner worked alongside his wife, Cristina. The press called their arrangement a “presidential marriage.” She was a great pal of Hugo Chavez and other assorted despots and ruined Argentina’s economy with corruption, falsification of public statistics, harassment of Argentina’s independent media and use of the tax agency as a censorship tool.

She is in the news now because of the “assisted suicide” of Alberto Nisman who charged that she conspired with Iran to cover up the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack.

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Winston Churchill

What is it with our self-proclaimed betters, those moral and intellectual paragons who are always ready to recite, as if by Pavlovian conditioning, that war solves nothing and all soldiers are contemptible killers? Clint Eastwood’s latest movie has brought them into the open, all the better for an easy shot.

The movie American Sniper covers the four tours of duty in Iraq of US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Clint Eastwood puts you right in a war zone without any desensitising introductions. It is disquieting, and meant to be no doubt. He brings home the sheer courage of US Marines combing through Iraqi streets and buildings not knowing if and when they would be maimed or killed. Kyle had the life-saving and noble role of protecting them from ambush. At least, that is the way I feel.

Some on the left, such as Michael Moore, feel differently. Snipers are ‘cowards’ apparently; ‘shooting people in the back’. Some deadbeat commentator on MSNBC (NBC News reporter Ayman Mohyeldin) described Chris Kyle’s exploits in defending US marines as going on a ‘killing spree’ and ‘showing racist tendencies towards Iraqis and Muslims’. Nothing printable adequately describes these self-obsessed poltroons who are able to enjoy their comfortable safe lives only because of courageous people like Chris Kyle?

But let’s take it on its face. What would these doyens of the loony left say about snipers in the Second World War? What would they say they about any soldier in any war who shot someone without giving them a warning and an even chance to shoot back? Crews of bombing planes will obviously fall foul of these armchair paragons of fair play in war. I doubt First World War sharpshooter Sergeant York (played by Gary Cooper in the 1941 movie) would escape unscathed.