In 2016, I, along with some other privacy advocates including writer and commentator Andrew Napolitano, was applauding Apple Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Cook for standing up for privacy and the United States Constitution in a situation that pitted his company against the power of the United States government and the desire of many Americans to seek information related to a mass shooting. Five years later, Apple has decided that, in the name of countering child pornography, it will throw privacy protection for all its customers out the window.
Francis S. Collins, the director of the United States government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), went full-on authoritarian in his Sunday interview with Jake Tapper at CNN’s State of the Nation. Collins, in the interview, supported in short succession the imposing of several extreme violations of the freedom of people who have chosen not to take experimental coronavirus vaccines — some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term.
Use vaccine passports to prevent these individuals from attending public events and entering businesses, fire them from their jobs, and bar them from traveling, Collins championed.
For how long can you trust a politician to stick to his commitment to defend freedom? In the case of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, it looks like three months max. After signing into law on April 29 legislation prohibiting mask mandates by state and local governments in Arkansas, Hutchinson on Thursday, July 29, declared he intends to call a special session of the state legislature, likely to occur next week, for the purpose of exempting kindergarten through 12th grade public schools from the statute’s mask mandate prohibition.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, over the last year and a half, has been one of the American governors imposing the most extensive crackdowns on freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. He also famously exhibited extreme hypocrisy in November by flagrantly violating his own California coronavirus-related mandates while taking part in a dinner party at the uber-expensive French Laundry restaurant. Newsom’s attitude seems to be that his rules are for regular people, not for himself and his friends.
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Ineffective Coronavirus Vaccine
On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden was hyping the supposed effectiveness of experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. He claimed in a CNN event that people who take the shots will not “get covid,” “be hospitalized,” “be in an ICU unit,” or “die.” It turns out Biden’s assurance is wrong.
The experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, are not miracle drugs. Indeed, recent information from Israel, where shots were given very widely and early, indicates that whatever effectiveness the shots may have in countering coronavirus appears to wear off mighty quickly.
Australians have been subjected to some of the most draconian restrictions in the world, purportedly pursued to counter coronavirus, since early last year. Yet, Kerry Chant, the chief health officer of the Australia state of New South Wales, has found a way to up the dehumanizing demands placed on the suffering Australians. No more conversations, Chant has declared.
There has been much movement in the United States government over the last few years toward women being required, like men, to register with Selective Service and thus join the pool of individuals who could be drafted into the military. Will this be the year that women will start having the threat of being conscripted hang over their heads?
There was some great news last month when the state of Florida won, in a United States district court, a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mandates, including for vaccine passports, under the CDC’s draconian and unprecedented “conditional sailing order” imposed on cruises in the name of countering coronavirus. I provided details about the court decision in an article here.
Unfortunately, late Saturday night — before the district court’s preliminary injunction was set to take effect on Sunday, a panel of three judges of the 11th Circuit decided by a two to one vote to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal. The appellate court’s decision thus dictates that the CDC’s mandates on cruises, and cruise ship crews and passengers, remain enforceable for the time being.
Over the last two years, I have been writing about how the congressional Democratic leadership has stood in the way of the bipartisan effort that would be needed to adopt marijuana legalization at the national level. It has done so by choosing as its legalization vehicle the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act that features race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies that ensure that nearly no Republican congressional members will support the bill. The strategy has allowed Democrats in Congress to continue to bluster in favor of marijuana legalization while making no progress toward legalization becoming reality.
In May, when experimental Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus “vaccine” shots were being rolled out for children ages 12 to 15, I wrote that state and local governments should decline to participate in the promotion and distribution of these shots to children. What is the sense in subjecting kids to known risks of the shots, as well as risks that in part due to the rushed introduction of the shots are still unknown, in response to coronavirus that poses near zero risk of death or severe illness to them? Governments, leave the kids alone.