That’s what my grandmother—a much more gracious woman than I ever have been a man—would call things and behaviors that were utter…foolishness.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has signed a law that toughens the penalties for engaging in a variety of acts during riots. Engaging in the riots themselves has long been illegal.
And doesn’t care. That’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, as he made clear in his…testimony…before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last Thursday. Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) questioned Fauci regarding when Wuhan Virus (my term, not Jordan’s or Fauci’s) situation would be ending and CDC guideline restrictions lifted.
Fauci insisted that the restrictions would begin to be relaxed
When we get the level of infection in this country low enough that it is not a really high threat[.]
Despite repeated questions from Jordan to define “low enough,” Fauci remained evasive, repeatedly refusing to be specific, to identify the number…what metrics, what measures, he would use to define “low enough.”
In one of their Tuesday editorials, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the shooting of Daunte Wright in the Minnesota town of Brooklyn Center. They seemed to be on the right track in their insistence for due process both for Wright and for the police officer who, according to body camera video and audio, fatally shot him.
Sadly, the editors blew up their thesis with this, regarding post-shooting events:
On Monday night protesters looted businesses….
Accuracy, and truth, die at the hands of political correctness.
Protesters don’t loot. Criminals loot.
Protesters don’t riot. Rioters riot.
Especially in Los Angeles County, where County District Attorney George Gascón rules.
Gascón has proposed legislation that would bar felonies committed while a juvenile from being counted as “strikes” under California’s Three Strikes law when the person commits a felony as an adult. Superficially, it seems like a good idea. After all, Gascón argues, the child’s brain isn’t fully developed.
A sister of a gang-related murder victim exposed the flaw in that argument, though. Aja Courtney:
Anybody who has children understands that children know at very early ages what’s right from wrong[.]
Jay Bhattacharya, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, (mostly) correctly called out and decried YouTube for censoring and spiking a public-policy roundtable hosted by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and in which Bhattacharya had participated.
Among other things discussed by the participants was the wisdom of requiring children to wear masks in the face of the Wuhan Virus situation. The panel said the requirement was foolish and counterproductive, and this was too much for the Know Betters. YouTube
removed the video “because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
We’ll have none of that here. Much too noisy. Much too disordered. Much to great a risk to our rule.
And so the People’s Republic of China has extended its despotism further into Hong Kong.
China has sharply reduced the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong’s legislature in a setback for the democracy movement. The changes were announced Tuesday after a two-day meeting of China’s top legislature.
In the new make-up, the legislature will be expanded to 90 seats, and only 20 will be elected by the public. Currently, 35 seats, or half of the 70-seat legislature, are elected.
China’s top legislature approved amendments to Hong Kong’s constitution on Tuesday that will give Beijing more control over the makeup of the city’s legislature.
Georgia has just enacted a law reforming and improving its voting processes. The reforms include such things as expanding weekend before Election Day voting from one Saturday and Sunday to two Saturdays and a county-level option to add a second Sunday. Instead of a hazy, subjective signature-matching bit of guesswork on absentee ballots, the State now requires a State-issued (for free) ID. It makes drop boxes mandatory, but they’re available only in in-person voting areas, they’re kept locked after hours, and they’re always under surveillance. The State now allows no-excuse absentee ballot voting.
In last Thursday’s matinee press conference, President Joe Biden (D) agreed with a reporter’s question and suggested answer regarding the filibuster:
“President Obama said he believed the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era. Do you agree?” a reporter asked Biden.
“Yes,” he answered.
So, ex-President Barack Obama (D) and Biden, both of whom previously loudly defended the filibuster, have confessed themselves as racists for having done so, the filibuster being a relic of Jim Crow, and all.
Our slander laws are convoluted, and as part of that convolution, they put certain Americans—celebrities and politicians, for instance—out of effective reach of their protection, and they put other Americans—journalists, for instance, functionally immune to their restrictions. Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, wants to niggle around their edges to improve them.
No. It’s time, to coin a phrase, to go big. Libel law, in fact, is simple enough to simplify: if someone lies about or otherwise slanders another, the liar/slanderer is liable. If someone mistakenly mischaracterizes another and doesn’t correct the mischaracterization when advised of the error, mischaracterizer is liable, if to a lesser degree.
Newspeak for “Cancel.”
That’s what the University of Cincinnati has chosen to do to its now ex-instructor John Ucker in the school’s…reaction…to Ucker’s referring to our favorite virus as the “chinese virus.”
The school’s Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, John Weidner, said this about that:
These types of xenophobic comments and stigmatizations around location or ethnicity are more than troubling. We can better protect and care for all when we speak about COVID-19 with both accuracy and empathy, something we should all strive for.