Tag Archives: rights

Suicide Pact

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The Thomas More Society has filed suit in Federal court against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) edict barring gatherings of more than 10 people indoors and more than 100 people outdoors.

[T]he nonprofits Election Integrity Fund and One Nation Michigan [plaintiffs in the Thomas More case] argue that Whitmer’s order functions as an abridgment of their right to free speech and assembly under the US Constitution.
Whitmer’s orders “constitute direct restrictions on [the groups’] right to engage in protected speech and assembly and therefore violate the First Amendment,” the suit argues, stating that any restrictions on constitutional rights “must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.”

Lower (State) courts have ruled that the Wuhan Virus situation is sufficiently important and dangerous that Government restrictions on Constitutional freedoms and rights must be overruled.

However, there is no clause in our Constitution that allows the Government to restrict individual liberties whenever it thinks something is more important than those liberties. In particular, the 1st Amendment says this in pertinent part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble….

Hence the need for narrow tailoring of any intended restriction and the need even then—especially then—for that restriction to achieve a compelling government interest, not just one convenient to it. The Government has no interest, compelling or otherwise, in restricting these basic freedoms because of the virus, especially since it’s increasingly apparent that such restrictions cause more medical and economic harm than the virus itself.

Along these lines, Supreme Court Justices Robert Jackson (Terminiello v City of Chicago) and Arthur Goldberg (Kennedy v Mendoza-Martinez) have argued that our Constitution “is not a suicide pact.” Indeed, it is not. However, deviation from our Constitution would lead quickly to national suicide.

The Thomas More case would be a slam-dunk were it not for a collection of self-serving politicians and a similar collection of activist judges.

“Better Have an Army”

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In response to President Donald Trump’s statement that he wants to stop Federal funds from going to “anarchist jurisdictions,” which include New York City, Seattle, Portland, and DC, among others, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) issued this threat:

He can’t come back to New York. He can’t. He’s going to walk down the street in New York? Forget bodyguards, he better have an army if he thinks he’s going to walk down the street in New York.

Yes, Fredo Cuomo’s older brother said that out loud.

It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.

Kidnap, Inc.

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That’s the new company headquartered in Beijing.

Here’s a partial list of the People’s Republic of China’s iconic business’ products:

  • Cheng Lei, Australian citizen, television anchor for a Beijing media outlet
  • Yang Hengjun, Australian citizen, writer held on vague “espionage” accusations since last year
  • Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Canadian citizens, held in the PRC since 2018 as hostages to pressure Canada not to extradite to the US Huawei’s CFO
  • threats that Czech Republic Senate President Milos Vystrcil would “pay a heavy price” after he led a business delegation to the Republic of China

And these are just the famous ones, the VIPs.  It’s not very useful—nor is it particularly safe—for foreign nationals to travel to or within the PRC.

Safety and Efficacy

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Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan had some thoughts on drug trials in the context of the current Wuhan Virus (my term, not theirs) situation. For the most part, they’re right. There’s one aspect of their op-ed, though, that I want to comment on.

…if we don’t know what works, and what doesn’t, we’ll waste time and money on treatments that won’t help and may harm. Even if a vaccine is discovered and approved, the pandemic won’t end unless most Americans get vaccinated, which will require confidence in the product’s safety and efficacy.

The FDA currently must determine both safety and efficacy. That’s misplaced, though, and it misuses both time and money, and it misidentifies the money involved.

The FDA should be intimately involved in determining a drug’s or vaccine’s safety; we don’t need a market of snake oil salesmen claiming the safety of their wares.

But we don’t need Government involved in free markets. The free market here is that of patients and their doctors; they should be free to use—an extension of the Right to Try concept—drugs to mitigate the virus’ infection or likelihood of infection, and they should be free to use vaccines to achieve longer-term protection from the virus as soon as those chemicals have been shown safe.

The right to try given safety also would answer one of Gottlieb’s and McClellan’s concerns about numbers of trials and trial size: there are lots more patients and doctors in the market than would be participating in FDA-supervised trials, every one of those patients and doctors would be volunteers, and their data would be both more broadly based and available much faster than via an FDA-supervised trial or the series of them that might be necessitated by questions arising from a given trial.

Another of Gottlieb’s and McClellan’s concerns is that waste of money. Their concern proceeds from the assumption that it’s the government’s and pharmaceutical companies’ money being wasted. In Gottlieb’s and McClellan’s paradigm, that’s true. But in a free market—those patients and doctors—it’s the patients’ money being spent; it’s their assessment of whether their money is being wasted. Pharmaceutical companies will recoup much, if not all, of their expenses through their sales, and Government need not be involved at all.

Danger from In-Person Voting

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It’s quite minimal, regardless of the hysterical panic-mongering of the NLMSM and the Progressive-Democrats. Dr Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator:

“Well, I can tell you it has been safe for me to go to Starbucks and pick up my order,” Dr Deborah Birx told Just The News in an interview when asked about in-person voting.
…
“If you go into Starbucks in the middle of Texas and Alabama and Mississippi that have very high case rates, then I can’t say that it would be different waiting in line in the polls[.]”

Voters just need to pay attention to what they’re doing.