Perhaps you are right but I think that I was going to have to be extreme testing of everyone involved perhaps more than once a day to make sure no one catches it unknowingly. And I do agreeThat with the reservoir of minor leaguers you should be more than enough players to make up the slack if somebody has to be sent home.

Again... their freedom DOES supersede the health of others. At least when it comes to Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

It's actually a little bit tricky for me. I want to support the protesters because I am extremely uncomfortable with how long obviously unconstitutional executive orders have been allowed to stand with the courts out of business. It feels like a really dangerous precedent - shut down the courts and then tell everyone you're violating their first amendment rights for their own good. At the same time, I can't support the protesters because they're putting other people's lives at risk, and I'm not ok with that.

I guess I wish they'd just permanently tie up the phone lines of every governor's office with their calls. Demand your first amendment right to freedom of assembly.

And then don't assemble. Because everybody knows some high-risk folks.

That is absolute bs.

You don't get to circumstantially void the Constitution. The Bill of Rights is unnecessary when it's easy. It's important when it's hard.

Posted by dahsdebater on 4/10/2020 11:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dino27 on 4/9/2020 8:55:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dino27 on 4/8/2020 11:19:00 PM (view original):
Kansas Republican state legislature strikes down gov’s attempt to limit the size of religious gatherings in time for Passover.
state atty general Schmidt insists that Jewish people should be able to congregate in large numbers ASAP.

General Schmidt will also make sure that Easter worshipers can spread good cheer on Easter Sunday.

Why I say this is dumbed down country.
sorry if I offend.
i hate to see people being encouraged that it is ok to risk suicide and negligent and reckless homocide.
Dumbcountry

My dad is kinda a lowkey hippy. He's also a physician. But he's also a pastor. When I told him that churches in DC were all closed, he asked why. I said because the mayor said so. He said "I don't think the church is beholden to the mayor." They still closed their church, but it was a decision of the church leadership at that time. The point is, in certain circumstances, the right thing to do is just to ask people to do the right thing.

I think in this case your summary of Kansas AG - as biased and inaccurate as it may be - is still basically a truism. Jewish people should be able to congregate in large numbers ASAP. Any people should be able to congregate in large numbers any time they want to. Freedom of assembly is a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment. I have no issue with executive orders closing nonessential businesses. Within reasonable bounds, enforcing social distancing is probably ok. But most states have an executive order right now banning "social gatherings" of n or more people (n usually =10); this is obviously unconstitutional. It's not ambiguous. Moreover, the wording you would use to defend circumventing a Constitutionally guaranteed right is virtually identical to the wording King George III's government would have used to forbid private gatherings during the revolutionary era in an attempt to either isolate or imprison revolutionary voices - protection of the common good of society, preservation of lives, etc. Keep in mind that while estimates of colonial casualties during the Revolution vary widely, a middle-of-the-road estimate of 50,000 deaths represents ~2% of the total population of the colonies during the war. That's on the very high end of worst-case-scenario death tolls from this virus. So this isn't "worse" or "unprecedented" as a dangerous challenge to personal liberty. It is a founding and fundamental principle of American political philosophy that it's better to forfeit lives than forfeit core liberties. "Give me Liberty or give me death."

Obviously people should do the right thing and try to avoid gathering in large groups. I don't really even have a problem with governors attempting to pass these executive orders. It's the job of government to push the boundaries and try to protect the citizenry. What bothers me is that nobody seems bothered by the fact that their first amendment rights are being blatantly violated. I'm not comfortable with how comfortable modern Americans seem with forfeiture of Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. It means the only reason we've been honoring the Constitution and its guaranteed rights is because it's been convenient to do so, not because we as a people still deeply value our freedoms.

I've also heard people in the media already talking about whether we should be making contingencies to postpone the general election depending on how things are going. Moreover, all of the people leading the charge on this talking point have been left-leaning. This totally flabbergasts me. With a president with clear autocratic tendencies currently leading the executive branch, and a Senate that seems willing to do almost anything he asks, do you really want to try to give the Federal government the power to manipulate the election cycle? You think the White House can't monitor election polling along with COVID trends and push for an election delay if Trump is struggling in the polls, or demand elections proceed as normal if he's looking good? I'm not ready to put the core functionality of our democracy in the hands of this administration, or this Congress. And it shocks me that the people who are ready to do so are theoretically liberal. The fundamental basis of a liberal democracy requires regular elections and preservation of basic human rights as guaranteed in our written Constitution. The American left seems to be surrendering any claim to true liberalism in favor of an overprotective and repressive state free to ignore something as fundamental as the First Amendment.

Note what I pointed out here - the fatality rates of the Revolutionary War were on par with potential losses from the worst-case scenarios for Covid19. This is what the authors of the Bill of Rights had in mind when crafting the First Amendment. The gatherings they had held in secret, that at times the Royal government had tried to suppress, cost many lives. They still defended the right to assemble.

Posted by dino27 on 4/19/2020 11:55:00 PM (view original):
under the circumstances it is not unconstitutional.
not a single serious case has been made that it isnt
and it is universally believed to be constitutional because of the facts and circumstances.
legally and intellectually eazy peazy.
dont sweat the the lawfulness.

Also, if it is universally believed to be constitutional, what are all those people protesting about?

Awfully Trumpian of you to just dismissively call people who disagree with you names and ignore perfectly valid Constitutional concerns.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin

No. In some situations the shoe fits. These are people to whom certain truths are simply not self evident when they should be. And the reasons are extremely open to criticism. These are people that are selfish and boorish and antiauthoritarian in unjustified ways. Many of them are paranoid and fearful of authority in an irrational way and it spills into politics.

April 19, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

8 hr

197

The big news for two days has been the “protests” of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus which, as of today, has taken more than 40,000 American lives. The protests started last week in Lansing, Michigan, on Wednesday, April 15, when demonstrators descended on the state Capitol to protest the “statists” they said were destroying the economy and taking away their liberties. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that people needed to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all states with Democratic governors. Then, Saturday, the Fox News Channel advertised “emerging rallies/protests to reopen economy” and, lo and behold, there they were on television tonight: protests in Colorado, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington.

These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative.

The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. The Michigan Conservative Council, one of the organizers of the Michigan protest, was founded by a pro-Trump couple active in state Republican politics. Another organizer was the Michigan Freedom Fund, whose leader, Greg McNeilly is a Republican political operative who worked for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family.

Protests in Wisconsin were organized by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, founded by Republican pro-Trump economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, and by FreedomWorks, a training group for conservative activists that grew out of a political organization founded by David and Charles Koch. FreedomWorks is most famous for its organization of the Tea Party movement in 2009. Its president, Adam Brandon, told Vox reporter Jane Coaston that “this has the same DNA [as] the Tea Party movement.” It “just so happened a lot of our activists were organizers.”

The Fox News Channel personalities cheered on the events, with Jeanine Pirro saying of the Michigan protesters: “God bless them, it’s going to happen all over the country;” Laura Ingraham tweeting a video of it, saying: “Time to get your freedom back;” and Tucker Carlson interviewing a representative of the Michigan Conservative Council on his show before the person did another interview on “Fox & Friends” the next day. On Saturday, FNC ran graphics showing where protests were planned across the country from April 18 to May 2.

These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s. But in reality there are few actual protesters: two-thirds of Americans are worried that lockdowns will end too early, not too late. People began to separate physically even before governors required it, and say they will not stop distancing until they are certain they are safe, no matter the official government stance.

Still, the focus on partisan division is slowing down talk of the administration’s failure to provide the testing we need before it is safe to reopen businesses and stop the stay-at-home orders. Testing enables public health officials to identify and shut down hot spots; we need hundreds of thousands more tests a day. Trump says the states have enough tests to reopen. "They don't want to use all of the capacity that we've created. We have tremendous capacity," Trump said during a White House briefing. "They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that. They're the ones that are complaining." But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, the chair of the National Governors Association and a Republican, says this is “absolutely false.” Hogan told CNN today “It’s not accurate to say there’s plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That’s just not being straightforward.”

The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.