"People without fevers, coughs, sneezes cannot transmit COVID-19."

One person you can depend on to give up-to-date comprehensive overviews of key items in the news is Clarice Feldman. She writes today in the American Thinker about many subjects, as is her custom.

...We were led to believe that even asymptomatic persons could transmit the virus. We now learn that isn't true and was based on a false account. People without fevers, coughs, sneezes cannot transmit COVID-19.

...People who live in Beverly Hills, California, however, just got a big break. Local authorities are now allowing plastic surgeries in their hospitals to resume. (Tell the Indiana farmers whose hospital is about to close for good, that treacly, meaningless nonsense beloved of corporate p.r. spinners everywhere, “We’re all in this together.”)

What began as a short-term admonition to wash our hands frequently and use social distancing to flatten the curve so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed by the many anticipated patients predicted by the epidemiological models became, in the hands of too many politicians, a right to rule, picking those who could live (“essential” businesses) and those who would die (“non-essential” businesses), a made-to-order graft opportunity. Which religions could meet (Moslems in Syracuse, NY) and which could not (Christian or Jewish congregations in NYC), in effect choosing essential religions from non-essential ones.

Some governors and mayors expanded and extended the restrictions, and the arbitrary nature of these became apparent. In Maryland, the owner of a drive-through car wash was cited for violating the lockdown rules. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom opened some beaches to the public but not those in Orange County, apparently on the basis of a fake news account and without contacting local officials. In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order seems remarkably like imprisonment. She has banned motorized boating, purchases of infant car seats and gardening supplies, and a drive-in movie theater was cited for violating her directives. Does she imagine the virus travels from closed car to closed car? If so, she may soon shut down Michigan’s roads (and car factories).

...We were willing to adopt minimal restrictions -- even some more stringent ones -- when the length of the disruption was short term and the data about the virus so uncertain. The data are far less uncertain now. It should come as no surprise that rebellions are growing in response to this unjustifiable and often totally arbitrary exercise of state executive power. In Michigan, hundreds of protestors (some armed, as the law of the state allows) protested inside the state capitol in Lansing.

While promulgating and enforcing (often arbitrarily) lockdown rules, many of the same political figures, actually have made infectious rates soar. Governor Andrew Cuomo certainly has. He just got around this week to beginning a program to disinfect the subways, a known vector for the spread of the virus, and he inexplicably had ordered nursing homes, where we all know the most vulnerable are housed, to accept COVID-19 patients, even as he refused the nursing homes permission to transfer infected residents of nursing homes to the hospital ship the president and military went to such great lengths to promptly navigate there. He has reduced subway hours but not removed the homeless encamped on them, forcing already beset passengers to move into even more crowded subway cars to avoid the stench.

We can say with dismal certainty that shutdowns have destroyed millions of jobs nationwide. But despite the gargantuan costs, it remains unclear whether mandated shutdowns have any long term benefits at all compared to voluntary measures to keep clean hands and surfaces, avoid touching faces, and maintain social distancing.

Not to be outdone by Governor Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the city’s police force to prioritize 311 calls over 911 ones. That means if you are reporting a neighbor for standing too close to someone, the cops will come to the site before they come to an ongoing attempted homicide. My advice to New Yorkers under attack is to call 311 and say, “Someone not wearing a mask is trying to kill me.” Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait your turn.

Read more here.

"Slippery slope? We've slid to the bottom! Our rights are gone!"

He took an oath!

Here is the statement of Racine County Wisconsin Sheriff Christopher Schmaling.

I want to take this opportunity to notify Racine County citizens of our position on the enforcement of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services public health emergency orders.

Wisconsin law gives the Governor and the Wisconsin DHS the authority to develop emergency measures and enforce rules and orders to protect the public during a health crisis. However, state law does not have the power to supersede or suspend the Constitutional rights of American citizens.

I urge the Wisconsin DHS to develop a workable plan that balances the safety of our citizens while at the same time acknowledging the fact that there is a way for business to operate even during the current health situation. I have all the confidence in Racine County business owners that they can make the appropriate adjustments in the way they operate during this difficult time to accommodate for the safety of their employees and guests.

The overreaching measures taken by State government will have dire lifetime consequences for businesses, homeowners, and families. I took an oath to uphold the constitutional rights of our citizens and I can not in good faith participate in the destruction of Racine County businesses or interfere in the freedoms granted to all of us by our Constitution.

Wisconsin law gives the authority and the responsibility for investigating and enforcing public health violations to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and local health departments. We will leave the enforcement of public health orders to the health department experts.

It is important that we stay focused on our obligations and responsibilities to those areas of the law that we are charged with enforcing. We have and will continue to concentrate our resources and efforts at keeping our roads safe and protecting our citizens from criminal activity.

COVID-19 isn’t going to go away any time soon. I strongly encourage all of us to start thinking of our new “normal” way of doing business. Let’s get Racine County back on its feet again and move ahead.

I understand the seriousness of the current health situation and I urge all Racine County citizens to continue to be responsible and to follow the social distancing, mask and hygiene recommendations of the CDC and the Wisconsin DHS. Let’s continue to look out for our neighbors and those less fortunate around us. Brighter days are ahead.

Sheriff Christopher Schmaling

Advocating an enumerated constitutional right

Excerpts from Kurt Schlichter writing at Town Hall,

We’re now supposed to give up our guns because it's the 21st Century, people, and the cops will totally protect us and oh, you can’t dare criticize the FBI for failing to disarm yet another ticking time bomb and what kind of crazy nut would expect a police officer to actually confront a gunman?

...The liberal elite is using its social and cultural ties to those at the helm of big companies to essentially blacklist the NRA, and thereby the tens of millions of Americans who support gun rights. But oppression is oppression whether it’s done by a government bureaucrat or a corporate one, and our principle of non-interference in business assumes business stays out of politics. But now National, Hertz, and others are cutting ties to the NRA, and liberals are advocating banks do the same. Their intent is clear – what they can't do in politics they will simply do by not allowing the representatives of people whose politics they don't like access to the infrastructure of society. And we're not supposed to do anything about it because, you know, free enterprise and stuff. You know, our principles.

No. They are exercising political power. We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. The first step is an executive order at the federal level directing that no federal contract can go to any company that discriminates against an organization based on its advocacy or exercise of an enumerated constitutional right. We wouldn't allow a company to do business with our federal government if it discriminated on other grounds, so why should we do it discriminate on political grounds?

Next, Congress needs to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination regime designed to protect us into law and allow individuals and entities the right to sue any business that discriminates on the basis of the advocacy for exercise of any constitutional right.

...We could call it the “Civil Rights Anti-Discrimination Act” and dare the Democrats to vote against it. Now, of course, due to the filibuster, it might be tough to pass a law protecting our rights through Congress, but we own about 30 legislatures. That's 30 states that can each outlaw this kind of discrimination within their borders. So Hertz and National, welcome to a whole bunch of lawsuits in Texas and Wyoming and elsewhere. But hey, it's worth it because of the children, right?

The liberals are also pushing venues like Amazon and Roku to drop NRA News - to actively censor a news outlet because they don't like its agenda (I appear regularly on it). The difference between government censorship and corporate censorship is no difference at all. Again, the federal government and the states have the power to regulate. Once again, we must ban discrimination on the basis of advocacy for or exercise of constitutional rights, and empower individual plaintiffs to seek penalties and attorneys’ fees for violations. If these companies really believe what they're doing is right, they can hire lawyers in 30 states.

In fact, it’s clearly time to consider antitrust investigations and other legislation designed to bring to heel the massive, unaccountable, agenda-driven big Silicon Valley players.

Read more here.

Sorry, babies in the womb: you have no Constitutional rights

Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday

Stand down?

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio finally have something they agree on: Both have told the protesters in Oregon to stand down.

“Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds,” Cruz told reporters in Iowa on Monday.

“But we don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others.” He added that, “it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation.”

Other GOP candidates are speaking out as well, Marco Rubio had this to say:

“You can’t be lawless. We live in a republic,” Rubio said. “There are ways to change the laws of this country and the policies. If we get frustrated with it, that’s why we have elections. That’s why we have people we can hold accountable.”

Joshua Riddle writes at Young Conservatives,

You indeed can’t be lawless in this republic…Unless your name is Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Lois Lerner, or anyone else protected by the liberal media elite!

Read more here.

Rule of law

David Harsanyi writes at Reason,

As far as I can tell, there are only three unassailable constitutional rights left in the United States: the right not to be "discriminated" against, the right to have an abortion and the right to have a gay marriage. In the eyes of liberals, nothing—not the freedom of association or religion or anything else mentioned in the First Amendment or Second Amendment—will ever supersede these consecrated rights.

...if we're going to be rigid about the rule of law, let's throw all officials who ignore it into cells. We can start with the president and work our way down.

Read more here.