KRISTI NOEM OR LARRY HOGAN: ON THE WHOLE I'D RATHER BE IN SOUTH DAKOTA -- COVID POLICE STATE VI

            This is a governor that the leftist media like -- at least as long as he follows the left's bidding on the coercive Coronavirus lockdown.  
                                       

Maryland's Covid-obsessed Governor Hogan:  Jabba without the charm       

     He is Larry Hogan, a porcine, left-leaning RINO Republican, with all the constitutional sensibilities of Jabba the Hut.  Nonetheless, he passes the only test the political and media left consider really important at this moment of history:   He has imposed, maintained, and expanded a crude, totalitarian lockdown on the liberty of his state’s citizens in the name of copycat Corona Conformity.

     (As this post is drafted, Gov. Hogan has announced a blueprint for gradually "re-opening" Maryland in three stages -- if, but only if, the rate of Covid hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units both trend downward for at least 14 days.  Putting aside that Maryland's extremely harsh restrictions should not have been imposed in the first place, it very much remains to be seen whether, and to what extent, Hogan will actually authorize the "liberation"of Maryland from its Covid containment -- the proof will only be in the actual pudding.)

          This is a governor that the leftist media loathe.  
                                                 

      South Dakota's intrepid and sensible Governor Kristi Noem  


     She is Kristi Noem, a slim, lovely, intelligent female who would be the media's very model of a modern, independent, and assertive woman -- if she did not fail the above-noted Corona Conformity test (and if, of course, she were not a conservative Republican).  Not only has she refused to retain or extend the soul-crushing personal and commercial lockdowns that most other governors have slavishly imposed, but she simply declined to impose any lockdown on South Dakota in the first place.  

     Instead, she has placed her trust in the people of South Dakota to act responsibly in protecting themselves and each other against the Covid-19 contagion, rather than imposing the totalitarian stay-at-home orders imposed elsewhere.

     As Governor Noem explained in an interview with Laura Ingraham: "I believe in our freedoms and liberties. . . . What I've seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security, and they don't have to do that. . . .  If a leader will take too much power in a time of crisis, that is how we lose our country." 

     Completely crushing her critics' charges that her refusal to lock down her state is irresponsible and unsafe, Noem's South Dakota has actually resisted Covid-19 more successfully than all but three other states.  As of this writing, there have been only eleven total Covid-caused deaths in South Dakota; only Alaska and Wyoming have less.  And South Dakota has experienced lower per capita deaths from Covid-19 than all but three states (Alaska, Wyoming, and insular Hawaii).

     In comparison, Hogan's strict lockdown state of Maryland has experienced a reported 910 Covid-caused deaths, with a per capita rate of 150.5 such deaths per million population.  Compared to South Dakota's 11 total Covid deaths at a rate of only 11.3 per million population!  Even taking into account Maryland's obviously greater population density and proximity to other Covid-19 centers, the enormity of South Dakota's superior resistance to the Covid contagion gives the lie to the left's spurious attacks on Governor Noem's sound and sensible policy.

     To paraphrase comedian W.C. Fields' notorious putdown of Philadelphia in the Covid context, "On the whole, I'd rather be in South Dakota."  

     Not only has Governor Noem's steady leadership protected her citizens' constitutional freedoms, it has done so even while establishing an astonishingly effective record of avoiding the Covid ravages experienced by lockdown states like Maryland, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey.

                                                             * * *

            The presidential election campaign has already gone too far for either party to change horses at this stage.  The democrats are stuck with the dementia-addled Joseph Biden, and the Republicans are irrevocably committed to the re-election of Donald Trump.  

            Like Obiwan Kenobi, Trump is presently “our only hope” to defeat the utterly disastrous prospect of prolonged totalitarian democrat rule in this country.  If a Democrat wins in 2020, along with a Democrat congress, there can be no doubt that they will so distort and corrupt the nation’s election process to make a Republican return to power flatly impossible in the foreseeable future.  Under these dire circumstances, Republicans have no feasible alternative to strongly, even ferociously, supporting Mr Trump's re-election.

            

             Were it not for the clear impracticability of a viable Republican alternative, however, events of the past week would give even longstanding, die-hard Trump supporters a degree of cause for concern.

            

            Trump’s continued commitment to the oppressive Covid policies and pronouncements of Dr. Fauci and Scarf-Lady Birx have been deeply concerning to Covid Lockdown skeptics like me.  Nonetheless, political and practical realities force one to concede that the President has little room to maneouver away from those tunnel-visioned Corona conformists. Removing or severely censuring either of them would surely result in another harsh media and political firestorm that the President simply does not need right now.

            

             Far less excusable, however, was Trump’s recent gratuitous condemnation of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s admirable decision to re-open Georgia to some degree of commercial and social freedom from oppressive Covid-19 constraints.  Trump, after all, had effectively encouraged actions like Governor Kemp's with a series of tweets urging the "liberation" of various states chafing under the constraints of Covid-19 lockdowns.

           As the cynical French diplomat Talleyrand would have put it, Trump’s attack on Kemp was "worse than a crime; it was a blunder."  It gained him absolutely no credit with his implacable democrat and media opponents; indeed, odious vice-presidential aspirant Stacey Abrams immediately bellowed that Trump deserved "zero credit" for his rebuke of Governor Kemp (who, incidentally, defeated Abrams in the Ga. governor's race).  Meanwhile,Trump's repudiation of Kemp's entirely reasonable action  has infuriated, or at least severely disappointed, many of his strongest supporters.    

            Were it not for the obvious impracticability of opening up the GOP presidential selection process at this late stage -- let alone doing so when there is an incumbent Republican President with a seemingly unshakeable base -- at least some disappointed Trump loyalists might start contemplating the heretofore unthinkable:  An appealing, attractive political alternative to Mr. Trump.  And the conservative Republican leader who most readily fills that bill right now is none other than Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota.

     Addendum:  Further corroborating the wisdom and popularity of Governor Kristi Noem's freedom-respecting management of the Covid-19 crisis, the article and video at the link show the people of South Dakota expressing their support and affection for their attractive governor in a tribute caravan at the capital.  The nation sorely needs more sensible and constitutionally sensitive leaders like Gov. Noem in this troublesome time.

     Addendum 2:  The following excerpt from a Powerline article of May 7 ("Coronavirus in Five States") confirms the great effectiveness of Governor Kristi Noem's measured and constitutionally sensitive handling of the Covid-19 crisis; she managed to maintain South Dakota's lowest-in-the-nation unemployment rate, even while keeping Covid cases and deaths to a minimum:

          "So, as Isaac pointed out, Governor Tim Walz has achieved the exacta of misery: Minnesota has both the highest unemployment rate and the highest COVID death rate in its region. South Dakota, on the other hand, has both the lowest unemployment and the lowest death rate. Minnesota’s per capita COVID death rate is 2 1/2 times that of South Dakota. An observer afflicted with common sense might infer that shutdown orders are a poor idea, and compliment Governor Noem on her successful policy. Rest assured, though, that no member of the national or local press corps will succumb to such logical thinking, even for a moment."  [emphasis added]

RIGHTEOUS RALLY IN RICHMOND -- COVID POLICE STATE V

     SR joined a large caravan of spirited, freedom-loving Virginians today to protest the unconstitutional COVID-19 lockdown orders imposed by the Commonwealth's utterly undistinguished gerbil of a governor (Northam by name) in a "drive-around" rally at the Capitol Square in Richmond.  As Jumping Jack Flash might say, it was a "gas, gas, gas."

     The mainstream media (i.e., the propaganda arm of the democrat party) will downplay the size and intensity of this energetic rally, but the excellent photos of the event captured by the Richmond Times Dispatch (at the link) provide colorful graphic evidence of the rally's extent and quality.  Since this was mostly a "drive-around" rally, predominantly confined to people in their cars, only an overhead helicopter photo would capture its full extent.  But SR can personally attest it was enough to tie downtown Richmond into knots, and the sound of rebellious horn-honking reverberated throughout the Capitol Square.  

                                                  

Legions of motorized protesters descend on Richmond to Reject COVID tyranny
                                                     Alexa Welch Edlund, Richmond Times Dispatch
       
     In short, the rally reflected a powerful surge of resistance to the disproportionate Covid-containment restrictions imposed on the people of Virginia by its feckless governor.

     It should be stressed here that it is the draconian scope of the state lockdown orders themselves that relegate Covid Coercion protesters to their cars, rather than assembling on foot in parks, malls, or capitol grounds.  

     Parking lots are largely closed (also by decree), so that it is almost impossible for large numbers of out-of-town protesters to leave their cars to walk to a central protest site.  Even if they did, they would then be subject to arrest for violating the 6-foot-separation social distancing rules, which Northam has purported to establish as a legal requirement by fiat.  Not to mention the fact that asserting First Amendment rights is not considered an "essential activity" that is exempted from the governor's obscene "stay at home" (or, worse, "shelter-in-place") rules.

     A more fiendish scheme for suppressing the First Amendment right of assembly to petition for redress of grievances would be difficult to imagine.  But here we are.

     Notwithstanding the feisty and enthusiastic protests in Richmond today, and elsewhere, the grim reality seems to be that the majority of Americans -- at least Americans who do not reside in our great Heartland, such as in South Dakota -- remain sheepishly submissive to the grotesquely coercive diktats imposed by thuggish governors in the majority of states.  Various polls indicate that only a small minority of principled Americans believe that the coercive, unconstitutional restrictions imposed in most states have gone too far.  Even if one discounts the specific accuracy of such polls -- and SR certainly does -- the silent and uncomplaining submission to these unprecedented impositions by apparently most Americans is utterly depressing and ominous.

                                                  

  Patrick Henry would not understand surrendering liberty to reduce a virus risk.


     A populace prepared to meekly and sheepishly accept (1) a ban on leaving their homes to visit friends, sweethearts, or even non-immediate family members; (2) a forced closure of all businesses save those deemed "essential" by feckless governors who lack all competence to make such a determination; (3) an arbitrary prohibition against going to the beach, swimming in a lake or ocean, or playing basketball, baseball, or any other sport; or (4) a ban on any gatherings of more than ten people, whether for a wedding, funeral, baptism, or graduation ceremony -- such a populace shamefully profanes the heritage of hard-earned liberty left to them by their historical betters.  

     Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, and Washington himself could only shake their heads in profound dismay at the readiness of so many of today's Americans to sell their birthright of freedom.  They have surrendered the precious constitutional liberties purchased with the risk and blood of patriots and warriors solely to reduce the risk that a novel virus will claim a moderately greater number of fatalities than are claimed annually by seasonal flu.

     Fortunately, more of these moribund Americans are awakening each day to the realization that the loss of liberty and livelihood demanded by the government in exchange for an uncertain reduction of an equally uncertain health risk is a very bad bargain.  In the weeks to come, we can hope that millions of aroused and angry citizens will join the vanguard of protesters who have surfaced in Richmond, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to demand the restoration of their constitutional and economic freedoms.

"When I Was Seventeen" It Was a Very Bad Year -- COVID Police State IV

                              When I was Seventeen
                                         It was a very good year
                                         It was a very good year for small town girls
                                         And soft summer nights
                                         We'd hide from the lights.

                                                           Ervin Drake, "It Was a Very Good Year"

     Frank Sinatra's soulful rendition of this timeless classic reminds anyone with a pulse of what it was like to experience the special moments of young romance "when we were seventeen."  Dates, sports events, parties, proms, and just socializing after school (or during school for that matter) were all part of those vibrant, exhilarating teenage years that can never be duplicated.  Once it's passed, you can never fully recapture it, "like time in a bottle."

     But sadly, 2020 has not been "a very good year" for today's 17-year-olds -- or for any of our young people for that matter.  Instead, it has been utterly awful.  And they will never get it back.

         17 was a "very good year" back then -- but not so much now                             
     Thanks, grown-ups.  Thanks, governors.  Creeps.

     Overnight, and by the arbitrary decree of insipid, soulless  governors who cannot see beyond a distorted corona virus projection chart, the Springtime of their young lives has been simply cancelled.

     Whether in high school or college, today's gals and guys have been summarily -- and irrevocably -- deprived of that special spring semester of the year, and all the irreplaceable experiences that come with it.

     Instead of throwing frisbees or holding hands on the quad, they are crouching in front of a computer screen, at home alone, trying gamely to stay awake as they absorb the tedium of sterile on-line education.  

     As for holding hands:  What only yesterday was a timeless rite of springtime romance is now a criminal misdemeanor under the "social distancing" rules imposed by the pretentious governors.  The mind boggles at what punishments these same governors would like to inflict upon those wayward youths with the audacity to engage in more adventurous sexual contact, like latter-day Woodstock Aquarians.  The rack comes to mind.

                                                  

            Social Distance Violators in the Orwellian Age of Covid-19

     Instead of dressing up to join their best gal or guy for the Senior or Junior Prom, today's youngsters are drowning in the insufferable boredom of day-to-day domestic confinement with their equally bored parents and siblings.  Even a small dancing party with friends is now verboten, on at least three counts.  It would violate (1) social-distancing rules; (2) the ban against any gatherings of over 10 people; and (3) the grimly Draconian stay-at-home rules against merely visiting friends.

     Courtship has been effectively declared illegal under the stay-at-home and social distancing rules.  These rules adamantly prohibit visiting anyone other than family or someone in need of special help or support.  That does not include a romantic partner, or even a fiance.  It was easier for Romeo to reach Juliet by fighting off the Capulets and climbing over her balcony than for a suitor of the Covid Age even to get near his sweetheart.

     Young love and romance have thus been relegated to the barren wasteland of "non-essential activities" that remain prohibited unless and until the governors decide that the risk of  COVID-19 has been nullified to their complete satisfaction.  Which could be next year, or beyond.  Until then, lads and lassies must keep their dismal distance and romance remains on a hard hold.

     If this sounds like some dystopian nightmare out of Orwell or Huxley, it should.  Because it is.

     The Covid-19 virus has not been demonstrated to inflict harms exceeding those of a bad seasonal flu by any orders of magnitude.  Although it appears likely to equal or modestly exceed the 61,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the 2017-18 seasonal flu, there was essentially no political, governmental, media, or societal reaction or mass response to that flu or its spread.  

     Yet the comparable Covid-19 has generated a degree of mass, lunatic hysteria and irrational overreaction that is utterly unprecedented in American history.  Not even the fleetingly crazed response to Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" in 1938 approximates the insanely disproportionate societal and governmental reaction to the corona virus threat.

     As Jefferson Airplane foretold in the oddly prophetic White Rabbit,  we have reached the point "when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead."

     Should an entire generation of millions of young people be deprived of the most precious, irretrievable experiences of their lives so that clueless political poltroons can claim they went "all out" to minimize the risk (not the probability!) that aged, infirm retirees, already "playing with house money" (including yours truly, except for the "infirm" part) might contract Covid-19 and possibly succumb?

     The answer is plainly "No!"  Any reasonable elderly person with a grain of decency and proportion will recognize that an entire generation of youngsters should not be deprived of the best years of their lives so that the oldsters can stretch a few more months out of the worst of theirs.  After all, we are "playing with house money."  The kids aren't.
    

     

     

COVID POLICE STATE III: "THE SILENCE OF THE LAWYERS" AMID CONSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE

     Throughout America, an undistinguished lot of Babbitt-like governors have exploited the COVID-19 panic to impose unprecedented police-state restrictions upon a largely docile and groveling populace (excluding you and I, dear rebellious reader).  

     Never has such enormous power been exercised over so many by such small and mediocre men and women.     

     The Draconian "rules" recently imposed by the feckless Governor Northam of Virginia -- who only months ago narrowly escaped ignominious removal from office for posing in creepy black-face photos -- are typical of these pullulating coercive atrocities.

     The edicts come under the obnoxious rubric of "stay-at-home" orders (hereafter "SAH's").  By mere executive fiat, Northam has decreed that Virginia citizens cannot leave their homes except to purchase food or supplies; go to those designated places of work that are still "allowed" to remain open; or to exercise in permitted areas (e.g., running or bike paths, but not, e.g., soccer fields or basketball courts).  The callow mediocrities who pass as governors in most of our states have done essentially the same.

     These SAH rules follow other decrees which, among other things, mandate "social distancing" and prohibit gatherings of more than ten (10) people.  They at least "permit" families of more than ten to remain together, for now.  Mormons must be uttering deep sighs of relief.

     Is it necessary for SR to explain that these imperious COVID-based decrees violate precious constitutional rights that our Founding Fathers risked all to establish, and which generations of brave servicemen have risked their lives to preserve?

                                                

  America's Lawyers:  Silent as Lambs in the face of constitutional collapse

     Most notably and clearly, the governors' orders violate the First Amendment guarantees of Free Exercise of Religion and Freedom of Peaceable Assembly; the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections against the deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law; and the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the taking of private property without just compensation.

     These state and local edicts violate the Free Exercise Clause, for example, through their ban against gatherings of more than ten people, as well as by other provisions that effectively force churches to close.  For example, a simple Catholic mass on Sunday, with one priest, two altar boys, a few attendant nuns, and a tiny congregation of, say, six parishioners would plainly violate the Virginia order and those of many other states, counties, and cities.  These innocent religious congregants could be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to a year in prison, simply for attending a mass in compliance with Catholic doctrine and liturgy.

     There is no doubt that this result violates the Free Exercise Clause on its face.  The only question, discussed below, is whether the violation can be justified under the constitutional standards governing the fairly extensive (but not limitless) leeway given governments to take necessary measures to protect the public health.

     (Parenthetically, the fact that many or most religious authorities have slavishly endorsed these government restrictions as fully justified tells us more about the weakness of their own religious convictions than it does about the validity of the restrictions.  There was a time when religious ministers and adherents actually considered the observation of their religious tenets more important than merely minimizing the risk of catching a virus or flu.  Not so now.)

     There is also the prospect that these orders violate Due Process, as recently illustrated by a reported incident in Connecticut.  Under various SAH orders, people cannot go out to visit others unless the visitees are family members.  In the case of an elderly woman confined to her old age home, with no living relatives to visit her, this is the functional equivalent of state-imposed solitary confinement, without due process.  When it was pointed out that the applicable SAH order would prevent the woman's only close friend from visiting her, the governor apparently relented in the face of the friend's argument that the lady's due process rights had been violated by what amounted to de facto solitary confinement.

     The comprehensive closures of many thousands of businesses as "non-essential" also present serious due process and takings concerns.  Countless companies have been designated for arbitrary closure without the slightest demonstration of the underlying rationale, let alone a due process hearing.  Any third-rate official who happens to be a governor can now shut down your business by fiat, and deprive you of your living and the use of your property, without so much as a pretense of rational justification.  If this does not raise a genuine constitutional claim, warranting at least a judicial or administrative hearing, we are all in serious trouble.

     But Virginia's and other states' rules most explicitly and literally violate the First Amendment right of assembly, which forbids both the federal and state governments (the latter via the 14th Amendment's "incorporation" effect) from "abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

     There is, again, no question that a government edict broadly forbidding assemblies of more than ten people on its face violates the Assembly Clause.  As previously noted by SR, these edicts would have prohibited the gathering of the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia to declare independence.  The only question is whether the judicial precedents upholding broad government authority to impose quarantines and similar restrictions to protect the public health are sufficient to sustain the Draconian SAH edicts imposed by governors on the basis of the COVID-19 crisis.

     As with other First Amendment rights, restrictions on freedom of assembly can only be justified if they are "narrowly tailored" to further a "compelling government interest" (this principle is so well established by so many cases that citation is unnecessary).

     SR will stipulate arguendo that the compelling interest standard is satisfied here, although automatically conceding this point could create dangerous precedent.  While the need to combat the troubling expansion of COVID-19 cases and deaths seems obviously compelling -- at least in heavily infected states like New York, if not in low-impact states like Wyoming -- the same can be said with regard to the annual seasonal virus, such as the one that claimed about 61,000 lives in the 2017-18 season.  In other words, the fact that there will always be a contagious and dangerous flu or virus for the government to contain means that the government will always be able to invoke a compelling government interest, without more.

     But the really critical issue for the sweeping SAH edicts' constitutionality is whether they are narrowly tailored to further the object of containing and defeating the COVID contagion.  This is a difficult issue on which reasonable medical, policy, and legal minds can differ.

     To SR's thinking, a blanket ban on gatherings (indoors or outside) above ten people is overly broad; regardless, it hardly seems "narrowly tailored." For example, a gathering of 15 healthy high school youngsters to discuss and organize their concerns and opposition regarding the termination of their senior academic year and their last chance to participate in their chosen sports would be banned by the Virginia rules -- even if held in the open air, under social distancing guidelines.  Any public health danger posed by such an assembly would be minimal at worse, yet it would constitute a core exercise of First Amendment rights.

     Further, the constitutional vulnerability of the 10-person gathering limit and other oppressive SAH restrictions is even more evident in those states that have adopted them on the basis of the more severe problems in other states rather than their own experience.  States like Hawaii (3 deaths), Montana (6 deaths), and Idaho (9) have imposed totalitarian SAH's and gathering limits that can only be based on the panic caused by higher death totals in states like New York (2,935) rather than on the magnitude of COVID's impact in their own states.  

     The death tolls in the named states and others are miniscule in comparison to the routine annual death tolls resulting from the seasonal flu, yet neither those states nor any others found the latter to be a compelling interest justifying Draconian public health restrictions on constitutional rights.  The less the magnitude of the COVID-19 impact, the more narrowly the government restrictions should be tailored.  The mindless governors' reflexive adoption of  "one-size-fits-all" SAH edicts, regardless of extreme variations in the severity of the threat between states, seems patently incompatible with a contention that they are "narrowly tailored."

     It cannot be stressed too forcibly:  comparison of the virtually non-existent government response to the seasonal flu in, e.g., 2017-18 (61,00 deaths, averaging over 450/day) to the insanely excessive, economically suicidal over-reaction to COVID-19 (7,000 deaths so far, with Summer around the corner) strongly indicates that the state-ordered SAH's and other restrictions in response to COVID-19 are not narrowly tailored to respond to a public health threat that has not yet been shown to be decisively greater than seasonal flu.

     Despite the obvious constitutional concerns posed by the Draconian SAH's and similar decrees, America's legal establishment and so-called civil liberties bar have been conspicuously silent in the face of this unprecedented assault on liberty.  SR has diligently searched internet web sites for articles or reports reflecting the concerns and questions of the American Bar regarding the coercive COVID-19 regime, but has largely come up dry.  Only a few libertarian gadflys, like FOX News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano, appear to raise the constitutional concerns outlined above.

     The paucity of outrage or objection from the legal and civil liberties establishments tells us more about their utter hypocrisy and political corruption than it does about the constitutional concerns that are so obviously presented here.

     America's lawyers have had little difficulty in finding or inventing novel or "creative" constitutional arguments to protect the interests of nefarious criminals and terrorists, even when those arguments have no foundation in the constitutional text and little support in judicial precedent.  They fiercely defend the most malicious murders against the death penalty with "inventive" arguments that fly in the face of the Eighth Amendments' text and previously settled precedents.  They have fashioned radical arguments that fly in the face of constitutional and military history to defend the murderous terrorists of the September 11 attacks, with the result that some of the worst of them, like Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, have yet to even face trial for their epochal crimes (KSM's trial is now set for Jan. 11, 2021 -- 20 years after his terrorist crimes).

     Yet when it comes to the enforced confinement of at least two-thirds of America's population, without so much as predicate deliberations or findings, let alone a due process hearing, the American legal and civil rights establishments are nowhere to be found.  Perhaps if the confined populations were more heavily populated with suspected murderers or terrorists the American bar would engage the case.

     In the face of American history's most wide-ranging restriction of personal liberty by unfettered government fiat, the Silence of the Lawyers is deafening.  Histories tyrants, from Caligula to Henry VIII to Stalin, would be proud of them.