Category Archives: rights

The Biden Panic-Mongering

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In a Wall Street Journal article about the European Union’s failure to deal with its Wuhan Virus situation in any serious way, there are a couple of graphs that bear on our own situation. The first one concerns the number of confirmed Wuhan Virus cases (which is much less than the number of actual infections).

Notice that. At our worst, there were only some 75 cases per 100,000 people, a roughly 0.075% case rate in our population. (The EU was much better at that time, more on that below.)

The second graph concerns our Wuhan Virus mortality rate.

Notice that: at our worst, our mortality rate was around 1.5 per 100,000, a roughly 0.0015% mortality rate in our population. A back-of-the-envelope bit of arithmetic indicates a roughly 0.02% mortality rate given a confirmed case (and even lower given an actual infection). (Here, too, the EU fared better.)

This is the exaggeration of the Biden administration—and of the Progressive-Democrats in Congress—regarding our virus situation.

It’s time to throw off the chains (to use a term of art) of overreaching government and go back to going about our normal daily business.

No more lockdowns. Businesses full open, workers back to work, out of work workers freely able to find work, consumers freely able to consume.

Children back in school in person, K-12 sports and other extra-curricular activities back in full swing, teachers who continue to refuse to go back to in-person teaching fired for cause (which would open up some jobs for actual teachers).

So it is, in the EU. Despite the EU’s incompetence in vaccinating, its case rate and its mortality rate are vanishingly small. Quite apart from the EU’s and its constituent nations’ governing personages needing to get off their dead behinds and get the vaccinations rolling, they need simply to open up and let their citizens’ lives return to normal.

No more excuses.

UK’s Good Faith

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…has been slapped down. Great Britain surrendered Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 on the PRC’s promise to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy for 50 years, a promise the PRC made within the context of its one country/two systems framework, a promise made in the UK-PRC Joint Declaration.

The PRC began welching on its word when it began, in no particular order (because commitment timelines mean nothing to the PRC) denying duly elected city legislators their seats, arresting peaceful protestors—including provoking violence to create excuses for the arrests—enacting mainland laws allowing Hong Kongers to be “extradited” to the mainland for what passes for trials in PRC courts.

And now the latest step in the PRC’s reneging.

The “patriots governing Hong Kong” is a resolution that will allow a pro-Beijing panel to approve some candidates that it deems sufficiently “patriotic,” according to the BBC. The vote was 2,895-0, with one abstention[.]

And

Thursday’s near-unanimous vote by the National People’s Congress paves the way for China’s top lawmaking body to revamp as soon as next month how the former British colony picks its leader and legislators. The overhaul will give Beijing much greater control over local elections that were meant to be partly democratic—thanks to an effective veto against candidates deemed unpatriotic.
…
The resolution mandates the creation of a commission in Hong Kong that ensures that prospective officeholders conform with criteria laid down in the city’s miniconstitution and national-security legislation.

Nearly unanimous. Nothing untoward, or the least bit odd, about that. Nosirree, Bob. Well, maybe not so odd, coming from a tyranny as it does.

An Interesting Court Fight

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…may be in the offing.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) signed into law a bill that bans all abortions save when the mother’s life is at risk. Even pregnancies resulting from rape or incest are banned from abortion.

The governor also acknowledged the ban is in contradiction of binding precedents of the US Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law.”

Indeed. Especially since the primary precedent is Roe v Wade, which is, at bottom, a technologically oriented precedent. The Court ruled that States could govern the availability of abortions after the third trimester began—because that was the point at which the fetus became viable outside the womb under the then-extant medical technology.

Today’s medical technology has advanced by orders of magnitude; accordingly, at worst, the Arkansas law provides the Supreme Court the opportunity to adjust its precedent in accordance with modern medical capability, if not to rescind Roe altogether.

Additionally, the ACLU is being its usual cynical self.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas attacked the bill calling it “cruel and unusual[.]”

No, what’s cruel, but sadly entirely too usual, is murdering babies before they’re born.

Censorship

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A collection of Letters in Monday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the Kancel Kulture’s penchant for censorship.

A couple of points regarding that penchant. One letter writer asks,

Why do the canceling elite feel they must protect us from anything that might possibly be upsetting?

The answer is because they assume, since they are so terrified of anything remotely or just potentially a little bit upsetting, and they need desperately to be protected from such, that everyone else must be terrified and so need protection, also.

Another letter writer notes, with reference to censoring Seuss, that

To learn to read is to learn to expand one’s mind and enable critical thinking.

As part of that, those depictions of an earlier age also could be used to illustrate how far we’ve come as a nation. The elitists, the Progressive-Democrats, and the Left generally, however, can’t stand for us to see that progress. It would undermine their narrative.

An Early Model

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The Georgia Senate has passed, and sent to the Georgia House, election reform legislation that could be a model for other States to follow—while, say I, encouraging—requiring, really—the Federal government to butt out.

Some highlights:

  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and
  • limit mail-in ballots to individuals who qualify based on specific criteria
    • people who are physically disabled
    • are over 65 years old
    • are eligible as a military or overseas voter
    • have a religious holiday around election day
    • work in elections
    • somehow need to be outside their voting precinct during the early voting period and election day
  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting
  • require voter identification to request an absentee ballot
  • require Georgia to participate in a nongovernmental multi-state voter registration system to cross-check the eligibility of voters
  • allow mobile voting units to be used only to replace current brick-and-mortar voting facilities, not supplement them
  • set up a telephone hotline to receive complaints and reports regarding voter intimidation and election fraud, and require the State’s Attorney General to review them within three days